Every country, at the moment, including the very few countries currently free of the new virus, is a hotspot, if you put into context the apprehension and the degree of activities to either eliminate or keep away the plague.
Although the mortality rate in the developed economies is very high, there is still the predominant feeling, especially in this part of the world, that still considers them lucky, obviously because these developed economies have the capacity in terms of expertise and technology to contain Covid-19. This notion is often justified by the opinion that it is only a question of time, as the pandemic will soon be contained by their knowledge and technology-driven medical infrastructure.
The same cannot be said of virtually the whole of Africa. Perhaps by divine allocation, Africa is being spared the ferocity of Covid-19 with the divine powers being fully conscious of her vulnerabilities. This annoyingly defeatist and predominant fatalism in the underdeveloped world attracts on the third world, particularly Africa, a corresponding view as the dark continent. This perception is captured eloquently in a Washington Post opinion article captioned; “The pandemic is about to devastate the developing world.”
In the article, the author, Brian Klaas, noted: “In the coming months, the coronavirus death tolls will be horrific. Yet, astonishing as it may seem to all of us living in lockdown, we are the lucky ones. In rich countries, it is likely that hundreds of thousands, if not millions, will die in the coming months. But if past pandemics are any guide, those numbers are likely to be a small fraction of the body count in the poorest parts of the globe. Every public health problem that we face will be far worse in the developing world.“
Beyond these varying narratives and the grim spectres of death and economic ruin being spread all over the world by Covid-19, there are likely to be a number of, on the one hand, willing but radical calibration, and on the other hand, swift, forceful or revolutionary changes, in governance trajectories in both the developed and underdeveloped nations. At the end of these highly possible socio-political combustions, Covid-19 might come to be considered as one tragic disaster to have triggered a revolution for the re-balancing of society that was inherently exploitative and unacceptably unequal.
For Africa, and Nigeria in particular, the most demanding change should arise from the prevailing scenario of despondency of the ruling elite who now feel trapped in their comfy homes and being compelled to endure receiving treatment at the decayed and ill-equipped medical facilities as the doors of advanced and technologically-driven health facilities were sprung shut following the pandemic.
The sad reality of the moment should be able to drive or motivate, if not compel, the Nigerian ruling class, both those currently in positions of authority and those that will later emerge post-contagion, to engage in a massive infrastructure upgrade, reconstruction and institutional re-imagining for broad national development.
Another dimension of the pandemic is that, as it may have now become a scientific or medical metaphor for consciousness, dignity and self-respect, Covid-19 may or ought to draw the curtain on the traditional notion of security in Nigeria, if the underlying current in international power discourse and diverse theories around the origin of the pandemic, are any reliable and valid yardsticks to stimulate our ruling elite to the realities of the emergent security and defence outlook.
This dynamic too is tied to the earlier infrastructure speculation, in which case, the emerging notion of security would rely on the theory that the greatest and most potent armies are no longer necessarily artilleries, missiles, rocket launchers, number of troops, etc. After all, armies of this nature are not equipped to defend citizens against a virus. The composite army to emerge in the post Covid-19 revolution will be knowledge based – quality education symbolised in universities and research institutions, the types that have been envisaged by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) for decades, which we have never come close to getting.
This thinking can be extended to a broad range of areas in our national life, be it food and agriculture, manufacturing, energy or petroleum refining, aviation, shipping, etc. One may just have to imagine what will be our fate if Covid-19 is active for up to two months: we are not self-sufficient in anything, including petroleum that we have in excess in the belly of our Niger Delta, we depend on import for everything. We are at the verge of importing doctors from China, yet we have thousands of our bothers and sisters sustaining the healthcare systems of the developed world. There are countless others in other disciplines!
There are of course diverse social dimensions to be imagined but the question is: will the Covid-19 infection be able to change the dynamics and orientation of our leadership, which decades of street protests, workers strikes, contestations and even the prospect of a revolution were incapable of accomplishing?
