The first and the easiest way to decimate Nigerian school attendees is to reopen schools amidst the worst ravages of Covid-19 pandemic, and Nigeria has embraced it. After a confusing week when different government officials openly disagreed on the desirability of re-opening schools it has been announced that schools should reopen from this weekend.
Yet, in all that cacophony, the President Muhammadu Buhari said nothing. It is like the man is not there, as though he is missing in action. Yet, he is there. So, why has he not taken charge in this most serious of matters? At stake is the lives of our school children. But the President has refused to say even a word. Instead the Education officials would say that schools should not resume, or that the resumption date would or should be reconsidered, a Covid-19 committee or panel head would counter them, and the private school proprietors, have been giving the impression that the schools are ready to observe all the Covid-19 protocols. And we are talking about all the schools in Nigeria – the well-equipped and properly staffed ones and the examples of what schools should not be and so should not have been registered, would all resume on the crazy assumption that all would observe Covid-19 protocols.
Please, may someone, anyone please, remind Buhari that he is the Nigerian President. He is the one elected to point Nigeria in the right direction. He may appoint anyone into any position to help him meet his duties, but he remains OUR PRESIDENT. So, at times, he should not only take charge but be seen to be truly in charge. Such a time is now. Some countries are now talking about vaccinating their citizens with the Covid-19 vaccines such countries produced. Apart from the global giants, Cuba, South Africa, Taiwan, Iran and such other developing countries are also developing their own vaccines. But not Nigeria. It is as though we have no universities and no research institutions. It is like we are still in the dark ages.
Having known that Nigeria lacks either the capacity or the will or both to seek for an anti-Covid19 vaccine, what stopped Nigeria from joining COVAX, the vaccines pillar of the Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator, co-led by the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, and the World Health Organization (WHO) – working in partnership with developed and developing country vaccine manufacturers to ensure COVID-19 vaccines are available worldwide to both higher-income and lower-income countries? 80 self-financing and 92 low- and middle-income economies –minus Nigeria – are in this cooperative endeavour.
Serious countries completed their commitment payments in this coordinated effort on 9 October 2020 to be eligible to secure enough doses of vaccines from this source to protect the most vulnerable populations, such as health workers and the elderly. Nigeria did not participate.
Yet, on this cooperation, Stefan Löfven, Prime Minister of Sweden had explained: “Equal access to a COVID-19 vaccine is the key to beating the virus and paving the way for recovery from the pandemic. This cannot be a race with a few winners, and the COVAX Facility is an important part of the solution – making sure all countries can benefit from access to the world’s largest portfolio of candidates and fair and equitable distribution of vaccine doses.”
Now, amidst the second wave Covid-19 spike decimating Nigerians, the Finance Minister, Zainab Ahmed, said on January 13 that government is currently resolving what type of Covid-19 vaccine to procure and the quantity needed and that “FG was committed to a quick supplementary budget that makes way for…. This would have been laughable were it not tragic. While other countries have devised a time table to fully vaccinate all their citizens, Nigeria is still planning for a supplementary budget for vaccine doses acquisition. I pray that outrageous contracts would not be awarded to source the vaccines from the open market.
As though the self-disgrace is not enough, FG through the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA), announced its distribution plan for the Covid-19 vaccine doses, already bought. How many vaccine doses for the entire nation of over 200 million people? According to the NPHCDA; not more than 4,000 for each state with the top states being Kano State 3,557; Lagos 3,131; Katsina 2,361; Kaduna 2,074; Bauchi 1,900; Oyo 1,848; and Rivers 1,766.
Meanwhile, the total number of Covid-19 cases in Nigeria surpassed the 100,000 mark as at Sunday, January 10, 2021. Lagos state has arrested over 200 people for violating COVID-19 protocols in clubs, strip joints. Edo state is enforcing the use of face masks in public transport vehicles. From 392 cases in the last week of last November to 694 cases the first week of December, Lagos state recorded over 1,000 in the second week of December, 7,420 cases in December, according to the Lagos health commissioner, Akin Abayomi, thus surpassing the total infections for the previous three months.
The Chairman of the Presidential Task Force (PTF) on COVID-19, Mr. Boss Mustapha, said on Monday 11 January, that the reopening of airports and increased local and international travels as well as the reopening of schools and religious centres without adherence to safety protocols contributed to the rise in COVID-19 cases across Nigeria.
An online newspaper showed a few days ago that “one in every six persons (16 per cent) tested for COVID-19 in Nigeria in the past two weeks tested positive, indicating how fast the virus is spreading.
Just as the decision to reopen the schools was being announced on January 14, Nigeria recorded her worst COVID-19 day with 23 deaths and 1,479 new infections). Active cases in the country rose sharply by some 600% from about 3,000 two months ago to over 20,000.
The Chief Medical Director (CMD), Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH), Idi-Araba, Lagos, Prof. Chris Bode, said: “The resurgence of COVID-19, through the newly mutated form, is ravaging our land, claiming many lives. Unlike what we witnessed in the first wave, this one is even more easily transmitted and deadlier too.”
Dr. Chikwe Ihekweazu, head of Nigeria Centre for Disease Control, said January 15, 2021, that Nigeria may be forced to take “tough decisions” about the serious COVID-19 cases.
It appears the tough decision taken is to kill our own children by reopening schools. It is either that Covid-19 pandemic has not reached Nigeria and the officials are manufacturing the infection numbers as many Nigerians suspect and so refuse to even wear the face mask for protection, or we want to murder our school children.
Please listen to this:, Mr. Ben Goong, spokesperson for the Nigerian Education Ministry, told reporters that “Parents and respective institutions must ensure full compliance with COVID-19 protocols, including the compulsory wearing of face masks by all students, teachers, and workers in all schools, temperature checks, and hand-washing facilities at strategic locations in all schools. Also, they must ensure a constant supply of water, hand sanitizers, and enforcement of maintenance of social distancing and suspension of large gatherings such as assembly and visiting days.” Dear Mr. Goong and company, are you ready to testify before God that even you believe in that empty promise? How many towns and villages have water for drinking, let alone for hand washing? And how widespread is face mask usage in the open society?
Is Nigeria an island, complete and total onto itself? If no is the answer, how many countries where schools reopened hastily have been studied for Covid-19 infections? None. Yet, the evidence of children being asymptomatic spreaders and the increase in pediatric cases in several countries have increased public pleas for closing schools until a large number of the population has been vaccinated.
From the experience in several countries, schools have been called the “potential source of COVID-19 outbreaks, due to the number of individuals intermingling in close proximity for extended periods of time, wrote Rebekah Jones, Scott Glasgow, and Oscar Wahltinez in the US News and World Report of December 2, 2020. They argued that “It makes sense when you think about it. Stuff a bunch of people into a confined space for eight hours a day and the likelihood of catching the virus increases.
“And internationally, data indicates how quickly schools may become supers-spreaders. In Israel, for example, many schools closed due to COVID-19 outbreaks only two weeks after the country fully reopened classrooms. Districts in Georgia and Mississippi (two American states) experienced similar scenarios when they started school in August. They said that between August and September last year, “The COVID Monitor – our database tracking coronavirus cases in K-12 schools, a joint effort between the finance-focused nonprofit FinMango and Florida COVID Action to provide timely, transparent and unbiased data about the impact of K-12 education (primary and secondary) on the spread of the virus, and vice versa. Run entirely by a small army of volunteers – showed nearly 250,000 students and staff new Covid-19 cases across the United States.
A United Kingdom study in November also showed a decline in cases in every age group except, apparently, among school-aged children and teens.
Basically, the US study observed that “the higher the community case rate, the higher the school district case rate”, so as the infections increased in the general society, so too it went in the schools. “A recent study based on our data found school districts can reduce COVID-19 case rates by about 40% by reducing the in-person class size by 50%.
“Based on data from Florida, we know that school districts without mask mandates have an average case rate (12.1 per 1,000) nearly twice as high as those with mask mandates (6.9 per 1,000). But we know that school children do not know how to use face masks well.
In our opinion, the data suggests schools are NOT safe and DO contribute to the spread of the virus – both within schools and within their surrounding communities. Because of this, many should be closed to in-person learning– especially as cases continue to rise across the country,” the study concluded.
Now, may God save the fool who would ask me that stupid question: “do you know anybody that has died of Covid-19?” Prof. Nick Idoko, a friend from my University of Nigeria, Nsukka, days in the early 1980s, died of Covid-19 on January 13 at UNTH. And without determining the cause and course of the Covid-19 second wave, the government is also asking Nick’s children to resume school. There must be a limit to bad governance. I dedicate this article to Nick; last December I invited him to my hotel to pick up a column in the Independent group of newspapers and express his ideas of making Nigeria a better place. We reconnected after over ten years. He said he lacked the time because of his load of work at Christopher University, Mowe, Ogun State, and other engagements and proposed that we team up on a book on Nigeria. Then he died in January. Sorry Nick, you belonged to an awful country that never grew tired of her sorry story – and which wasted your incandescent brain. My soul mourns even as the state and federal governments toy with the lives of our children. Rest in peace, brother.
Independent
