Nigeria is at its Bankruptcy State Courtesy of Mismanaged Family Systems

COVID-19: “Nigeria is at its Bankruptcy State Courtesy of Mismanaged Family Systems” _Alhaji A. Z. Al-Hasan

 

By: Jeremiah Enaholo Kadiri

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jeremiahkadiri@gmail.com

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This week on OUR GUEST, AUCHI BLOGspot visited Chief (Alhaji) A.Z Al-Hasan

Alhaji Abubakar Al-Hasan is the Daudu of Aimanesi Village in Auchi Sacred Kingdom. He is also a Chief Lecturer in Auchi Polytechnic who doubles as the Deputy Director of the Center for Research, Innovation and Development (CRID) in the Polytechnic.

Issues of the moment, lessons learnt and sundry matters around and about covid-19 were discussed in the course of our meeting.

Happy reading!

 

We are glad that you’ve granted this interaction and happy to meet you Sir:

Alhamdulillah! First of all let me appreciate you because I have had some insight about your programmes and they are really wonderful in trying to project the cultures and values of the Auchi and extensively, the Afenmai value to the world to see and so that our people are abreast of some of our local issues, the socioeconomic polity, traditional issues and all the rest. You are really doing well.

Thank you Sir.

How does it feel to operate both as a traditional ruler and an academic?

Well, frankly speaking, I will consider my appointment by His Royal Highness, the Otaru of Auchi Sacred Kingdom to be the Daudu of Aimanesi Village as a privilege. This is because in my own thinking, some of these appointments are better reserved for people who have accomplished in their careers in life and have decided to retire home so that all the experiences they have garnered over the years will now be translated into the development of their local communities.

It’s not really easy combining traditional administration as well as public service bureaucratic processes because at one time you are needed here and at the other time you are needed there, so, dividing your time is not really easy. But because of the flexibility in academics and for the fact that one of our core mandate in academics is community service we are able to blend both together at a time. The challenges are there but these reposes us in the position to serve the community better.

What does covid-19 mean to you?

Basically speaking, corona virus is a disease that has gripped the world today and is affecting the world in all ramifications _politically, economically, socially, spiritually and otherwise. This is the first time we are having a pandemic. If you have read the history of plagues in the world you’d see that before now all other plagues like the Spanish flu, the influenza, the bubonic plague and everything were regional epidemics that targeted a particular race, geography or population. This is the first time in human history we are having a plague that is ravaging the entire globe and has tampered with every segment of the world’s economy. It is so systemic that no part is spared at all. Again, unlike other diseases that have imparted the world before, this is the most mild and when compared to the likes of Ebola, Lasser fever, cancer and so on, you’d see that the death burden that comes from these diseases mentioned are more severe but the corona virus is the one that has affected the world the most in terms of all its stretches. Again, it is about the most misconceived plagues in the world today that has affected geopolitics, international relations (when you look at what is going on between China and the USA), even in internal/local politics, look at what is happening in Kogi state, cross-river state and the NCDC. Economically also, no area is spared. It’s really a problem.

What are the critical issues that have been brought to bare locally in the wake of covid-19?

This disease has shown us that what we basically need in life is a ‘minimalist existence’. For instance, I couldn’t drive my car for many days, I couldn’t go to work, I couldn’t wear my clothes (Chuckles), you know, I just discovered that some of the externalities of life are not necessary. It has reduced my living to a basic minimalist existence to the extent that what I just needed was food, shelter and my family. I’ve again seen that in life, some of the things we hanker after for are just frivolities that stress us out. That’s one issue.

One other thing I’ve learnt is that we have a system that is ill prepared to manage any risk or shock that may come up. Look at the hospitals, they are not there. We don’t even have ventilators, we don’t even have human resources. This is on the one hand. Then on the economic side we are fundamentally vulnerable. We are so vulnerable that we cannot sustain ourselves. Everybody needed food, needed palliatives and that was why a lot of people had to react to the lockdown and begin to resent whatever measures of guidelines that government put in place that would curb the spread of this disease.

Again it was wonderful how some people expressed their humanity. You know, individuals came in to  assist one another in terms of providing food, support for one another and all the rest. On the flip-side of the same coin, a lot of people were building their fortunes from the misery of others in this whole situation. It brought to bare so many things.

Globally, it has further reinforced my conviction for globalization _that something would happen in China (Wuhan) and no less a time it has rippled across the whole world.

How can the lessons learnt be translated into bettering our lot?

The pandemic exposes so many NEEDS gap in all ramifications of our life but to start with, the first thing was, people needed food. There’s one policy that was highly criticized of this Buhari’s administration when he asked people to go back to land. You know he blocked the borders and said no more importation of rice and others. Were it not for that policy, honestly, in the face of this pandemic I wonder how we would have been able to feed ourselves. Thank God that Ebonyi, Kebbi state and others had produced, so we had local rice to feed ourselves with. Even when politicians were doling out palliatives it was some of these local productions that were readily available for us because all other countries needed their own resources to manage themselves. It was everybody to himself, God for us all. Even the Empire state, the Unite State of America had to look for support from others but then everybody had to look inwardly. Now in terms of looking inwardly, we need to go back to land, go back to agriculture. In fact there is no developed economy or country of the world today that dispensed with agriculture because food is a basic necessity of life. We have vast arable land for agriculture unlike other countries so you discover that we have to go back to land in order to be able to produce food that will take care of our existence.

Another thing is that we should deemphasize rural-urban migration. If you ask me, when you divide space into two, rural and urban, the space that was really imparted by this pandemic are thecities, the urban areas and this is because over time, governments have concentrated their effortsin developing the cities at the expense of the rural areas. The raw materials needed to develop the urban areas, the food required to feed those in the urban areas, even the surplus labour required to drive activities in the urban areas all comes from the rural areas. If you ask me, I’d say, let us reverse this trend. Try to create smart rural areas now that would decongest urban spaces for sustainable regional development.

Additionally, the concept of interaction is changing. Before now we have emphasized the concept of mobility, meaning I have to move in order to access places but now what we have discovered in the course of this pandemic is that, that concept of mobility has changed to the concept of accessibility. In so far as you can access any person or thing by virtue of any media you don’t need mobility as such and this will further create a barrier that curtails the spread of this pandemic.

We should invest in ICT and data. We should make sure that the Nigerian Communications Commission will make data readily available to Nigerians so that with access to data you can create your own niche of investment at home, you can work from anywhere, you can access anywhere. You know _tele-living, teleconferencing, tele-meeting, telecommunication and all. A virtual kind of existence is what we are going into.

We need to change our educational curriculum because of what we have seen now. Just like the case of Access bank, a lot of people will lose their jobs. So, the whole thing about going to school, learning and working in a particular industry and job styles is changing and so we need to adopt  curriculum that would meet the needs of the next generation or the post-pandemic expectations of job requirement.

Do you think our current crop of leaders will be able to take a cue from all your analysis so far?

Much as I’m not a pessimist, I do not have confidence in most Nigerian leaders; given a synthetic analysis of history and the current. Even though we have to live forward, we only understand life backward. From past experiences and what is occurring now and the way this whole pandemic has been managed, I do not have confidence in the present leadership of this country but that does not mean that all hope is lost. For instance, it is said that history has a way of repeating itself that ridicules the collective sensibilities of people. This is not the first time plagues or epidemics have occurred. How did we manage the previous ones? Lessons derived from those were supposed to be deployed into the current to be able to manage effectively well what’s happening.

It was reported this corona virus started from Wuhan and people started spreading misinformation. ‘You see it doesn’t affect black man’ and all the rest. So nobody was concerned and eventually, someone came in from Italy and brought in the virus. What wyou supposed to have done? You were supposed to shut off the borders but because you have your own outside, the borders were still relaxed. You know, it was people who came in from the Diaspora that introduced the whole thing. In Many state it was reported that it was a former ambassador that introduced it there? So, you discover that it was initially the elites who introduced this thing to the common man. Their selfishness calls to bare in all these.

Look at the issue of palliatives. According to media reports some of the governors have come to say they’ve spent billions of Naira and all the rest. Elsewhere, people are proactively thinking of ways forward, thinkingand planning about how the face of businesses will look like after the pandemic and as well as coping mechanism. How will education and other sectors be, which way forward? But in Nigeria most are not thinking about that other than telling us they’ve spent billions. We have not created industries for the production of facemasks, to reproduce ventilators and so on. We are not building nor improvising on the present state of medical facilities we have, so, what exactly are we doing other than asking people to stay at home?

We are supposed to find that a national economic forum is taking place now to articulate post-pandemic adaptations for Nigeria. Look at crude oil has fallen. The mainstay of our budget is from crude oil. Nobody is thinking, after this whole thing, how do we manage? How will the country manage? How do we feed? For goodness sake, nobody knows when this whole thing will pass, so, how do we manage our education? Are we going to be borrowing? Absorbing models from outside? Why can’t we think inwardly? Imagine Senegal producing less than one dollar test kits, Madagascar produced a solution that would help to abate this whole thing. Now the Ooni of Ife came up to say he has a solution, Prof. Maurice Iwu said there’s a solution and these were discarded. This is the time when Nigeria was supposed to tap into the academia. ‘…look for solutions here, drive this and that’, ‘chambers of commerce and industry, how do we manage the economic sector after this pandemic?’, ‘Ministry of Science and Technology do this and that’, ‘Academics, overhaul your academic system and everything’. You know.

I have a friend in Botswana. Botswana’s currency is far higher than the Naira. Do you know what? In the wake of the pandemic, immediately, they went online and they have been schooling at home. My friend is on sabbatical there and told me that they have been teaching seamlessly. But the reverse is the case here. We are not prepared. I don’t see much proactivity coming from this crop of politicians we have.

How has the pandemic transformed Businesses, Agriculture and Communications:

You know, the main sector that has really benefitted from this pandemic has been the communications sector. Never before now have people appreciated the importance of IT. You discover that as a result of the lockdown, it was the availability of data, telecommunications, social media that afforded people some cushion from boredom and distress in their lone cells. You now see that people begin to communicate hold teleconferences through Zoom, Google meet and all other apps. These have come to stay.

The issue of e-commerce will further be boosted but then, a lot of people in the traditional sectors of the economy will lose out except they are able to upgrade into the IT-base driven industrialization. Even though there have been postulations about the connection of 5G to Corona Virus, I will say that with the need for an IT-base driven economy, the world will come to appreciate the need for 5G more. Traditional businesses without the wherewithal to key into this  platform will fall aside while multinationals, banks and other tech based businesses will ascend with the 5G when connected. In China, Jack Mo has been able to set up the Ali baba/Ali Express to enable even businesses in the rural areas in China to come to global platforms for sales. It is important that Nigeria begins to key into these things because otherwise, it will be unfortunate. As we go further into the pandemic, a lot of informal jobs will not be able to cope with the fall in Dollar, being able to pay for labour and it is possible they’ll have to lay off some of their staff just like Access has started even when the CBN has said that no banking staff should be laid off.

For Agriculture, I said earlier that this covid-19 has exposed a NEED-gap for food. It is now time for us to go back to land so that we begin to produce food for us to be food secure.. Now this whole thing about innovation diffusion, information transfer through IT will be brought to bare because, if I decide to go into cassava production, I may decide to look through the internet to study how Brazilians are producing their cassava, if I decide to go into fishery I should be able to see how Asians are producing some of these things. You know, information is now at our disposal. So, if we go into that area, and as we are producing, Nigeria should begin to think of how to produce silos. We have a very poor storage culture! You discover that in the season there’s abundance, there’s crash in price, we don’t store and a lot of things waste. Look at fruits in Ewu, Esan _mangos and every other thing are some of the fruits people in Europe cannot even come by but we just get them readily from nature and waste them without processing. We need to create processing centers, storage facilities, so that whatever we produce can be stored for years when scarcity might come up. It’s just that we’ve not really been challenged that’s why.

On a personal note, how has covid-19 engendered some positivity in your relationships at home?

Let me tell you frankly. I have never enjoyed any other time better than now. You know why? Because I’m a very busy person. For the first time I’ve had time to be with my family, all of us in one space. I’ve had the opportunity to know my children better than how I thought I knew them before. We have been able to spend quality time together

I’ve had to discuss with my wife and we’ve put up a programme of routine for the time we now have. We need to account for this time. We drew up a programme for the kids, for us and every other thing.

Academically, I try to see how many papers I can publish during this time, how many books I can write, my spiritual life and other priorities were refocused. There’s an educational, spiritual and social programmes for the children structured in time and everybody respects this. It has afforded me the chance to really interact with my family, I’ve discovered so many traits in my children I never thought were there with a view to correcting the bad ones and improving the good.

The thing I miss is the bond that co comes from the congregation of Muslim brotherhood. We however had to now utilize the ICT, created so many platforms were we now interact with ourselves using zoom and other platforms. It still isn’t as sweet as meeting one-on-one.

What would have been your focal point immediately after the pandemic if you were at the helm of affairs?

The thing is, a lot of people are going to go hungry. The economy is nose-diving and so, we need to see how we can grapple with that reality.

First thing first, go back to farm. Let us produce a lot of food then try to see how we can reduce tax and VAT and come up with a very stiff policy of non-import. We have to substitute our dependency on oil into non-oil sectors in order to drive the economy because we have just discovered that oil cannot drive the budget and economy. Will try as much as possible to ensure that we cushion the effort from the private sector angle of employment and encourage people not to lay off their staff because, even those who are working and receiving salaries, honestly they are poor if you consider the number of dependence around that salary which they earn. We need to stabilize this, if not, there’s going to be  disaster. We need to look inward and challenge every sector to see how we can become ingenious. Create data. Just as the telecoms are making text messages free, make data. By the time we have sufficient data, we can access the world, bring our ingenuity to bare and begin to create innovations that will serve us. You know, that is one lesson I learn from the igbos immediately after the civil war.

What has been your contribution towards managing the pandemic in your community?

Usually, in any crisis situation, responses are usually dissected into two. You look at your areas of influence and areas of concern. “How does this concern me but I may not be able to influence anything?” here you feel concerned but can do nothing. The other segment is the circle where you feel you can influence something and all the rest.

Now, what we did was also to contribute to the palliatives. We got some of the elderly ones and widows and we offered them some food items. We’ve done that about thrice but of course food being a basic necessity, it was not sufficient enough _that’s why we call it palliative. Then we created some social networks where we were constantly updating all members about covid-19. From a personal angle, as an academics, I did some linkages with some colleagues _one in Nairobi, the other in china. I chose China because I wanted to get updates of exactly what is happening over there and what we can learn from their models. Then again I had another in Britain. One paper is already complete and two more are ongoing. This is a collaborative network effort at managing the situation with shared regional collaborations and interest.

 One is, as a town planner, What Is The Role Of Town Planners In Addressing The Covid-19 Pandemic? Let me tell you, there is no visible expression of physical planning in our towns. We have failed in that and this is why you discover that even the guideline cannot be complied with. We as the architects of settlements, how do we now design settlements to be risk-free? The other paper is to look at Covid-19 and Urban Related Issues. What we are examining here with a colleague in Nairobi as an expert in smart cities, is how do we now deploy efforts at developing smart rural areas in order to decongest the cities?  So, looking at the WHO guidelines on how to manage this thing, are our cities, African cities ready to manage this? How do we now plan and redesign cities and every other thing is what we are looking at. Then from the transport angle also, for example, in Auchi, we have what is called ‘captive users’.  A captive user in transportation is somebody who has no other alternative than one mode of transport. All of us depend on the Okada other than your personalized mobility. Before now in transportation, we have discouraged the personalized mobility in favour of mass carriage. Today there’s nothing like mass carriage now because of the covid-19. Even personalized mobility is again being encouraged. Usually, in the suburbs where we live, there’s the system of ride sharing. You are coming out and you discover that there are people in the area who ply along the road and you ask them to come in for a lift but now with the covid-19 nobody is willing to give any lift. You just wine up and continue your ride. You discover that concepts are changing, paradigms are shifting so, how do we now redefine third-world transportation to be able to stand the stay of the pandemic? These are some of the things I’m working on and we are looking at  our level in the hope that our research would help policy issues and reconceptualise development paradigms.

What are your thoughts on disobedience of the ban in interstate travels?

From a very dispassionate perspective I’ll react to this issue of travels. Our government isn’t serious at all. You know, there is an interstate agreement among the governors across the federation. One would have expected that every Governor would have marshaled their security operatives to ensure that this lockdown is effective and our security apparatus be deployed to ensure this and in the event of any violation sanction offenders. But rather, the security personnel have been the ones abusing the fundamental rights of human beings. You see, when government has failed in its responsibility, you cannot manage an aftermath process. For example they say Kano state is a risk area because of the number of covid-19 patients  in the place. I follow the story. Ganduje said the people dying is not as a result of covid-19, it is because of heat stroke, meningitis  and every other thing. This is where I blame the entire system. The National Center for Disease Control was not only meant for corona virus. One would have expected that this team would have gone to Kano state to find out what was killing people there and to also index it. That is also in their mandate but nothing was done about it. Rather you begin to foist it on the man, ‘look its covid-19, its covid-19’ and the man is trying to tell you that, look, ‘I manage this jurisdiction and am telling you this is not covid-19, this is what it is’. We were supposed to find out.  Around the same period, fishes were dying in the coastal areas massively. In Bonni Island and co. The NCDC were supposed to have gone there also to find out because all those fishes will find their way into the market and before you know it, another disease is out. Nobody looked at that because funds were not coming into that area. This is why I said it was ill-managed.

Now, in mystudies, we studied migration. There are motives behind migration. If somebody wants to move from A to B there’s a motive that drives his movement. The thing is that these Hausa people that are moving, first of all, what I query in the whole thing is that within this whole period of lockdown, it was insensible for some people to jam-pack themselves in trucks to move from one location to the other, putting themselves at risk. However, let us analyze the scenario. The two main itinerant tribes in Nigeria are the Igbos and the Hausas. You do not find the elite Hausas moving the way these Alimajiris were described. We’ve found out that when it is raining season these people will move to the North to farm. When they farm, all the money that they make having worked in the South, they take it to the North, plough the land, engage in Agriculture. They produce the rice, maize, millet, carrot, onions, everything that you need for you fried rice. Then they feed their animals. With that, it imparts on the food value chain that comes down to the South. December-January in anticipation of the raining season these people went back to their home land in order to plough the land and they were caught up in this lockdown. Of course, a lot of people were stranded wherever they were. Up till now Nigeria is still evacuating people from China, USA and Britain. So, these people by nature of their itinerancy would want to come back down South where they earn from their other jobs. By their economic status, there’s no formal means of transport to move them, they don’t have the main pay to move about. It was only natural that  they would follow some of these haulages as cheap affordable means most often free to come down. Of course, if you go down to Aviele in the night, even in this pandemic, you will see the number of luxurious buses bearing different names, moving. Who are they moving? Igbos. They are moving Igbos from the East to the North in the Night. Nobody queries this, nobody interrogates this and they are going about their businesses. The reason why the Hausas go to the North (in the first place) is to plough the land to produce food that will benefit and feed us too. The way people now sensitize the whole thing was becoming too bad… however, it was very very wrong for them to jampack themselves in trucks coming to the south putting themselves at risk. (Anyway) I do not find fault with any government that says, no, you cannot stop here, go back. Because we are in a crisis situation everybody needs to manage themselves. Taken from the Prophetic principles it is said, that wherever there is a crisis, whether it was covid-19 or not (whether it was killing people in Kano or not) stay where you are. This was sufficient for you to remain there so that you don’t transport this thing to another community. The way the whole issue was now politicized and sectionalising the hausas is not something that appeals to me.

How can we encourage those in the frontline, the health workers?

I must tell you that from the bottom of my heart, I salute all health workers, medical experts all over the world in this period of pandemic. You see, at a time I  told someone, we are all locking up ourselves in the house in order to protect ourselves from covid-19 but there are some persons who on a daily basis will have to kit-up and go out to confront the corona virus. These are the health people and when they come back some of them eventually contract these diseases and loss their lives. May Allah accept their souls. Honestly, this is the best time to encourage, to advocate good pays, good working conditions for the health sector workers and particularly their hazard allowance. Those people working in the oil industries should not receive any better hazard allowances than the people that are working in the health sector because they have put their lives at risk in order to salvage humanity. Our government should create a good salary structure for them, include robust hazard allowances proportional to the risk they face in the demands of their job because, by and large we’ve all discovered that of all workforce it was only the medical experts that were there on forefront to work. They should really be encouraged. I salute them.

What would you say to some of our people who see covid-19 as a brandished name for fever?

Even though there is a lot of misinformation about this covid-19, I tell you it is real! It is real because if you read what is happening in the UK, in America, if you see what is happening in Italy and Ecuador, you’ll just beg God, let such an occurrence not get here. Maybe, because of our poverty status, poor governance and all the rest, God has in His mercy been merciful to us. So it is real. I will advice everybody to please obey the guidelines. You don’t lose anything obeying the guidelines in order to keep yourself safe while we begin to find solutions to the end of this pandemic. Honestly this is real. It’s just that most of us have not come in contact with real victims of this disease and we do not pray to be victims of this. A stitch in time saves nine. Like I said earlier, if we had shutdown our borders when the first Italian man came in with the infection, we won’t be where we are today. Truth is, we don’t even have the means or apparatus to dispose our dead ones. So, at best, keep yourself safe from harm’s way. That’s my advocacy.

What’s your advice for those who are not comfortable with being confined to one space with family  and are experiencing some sort of crisis as a result of the lockdown?

Like I said earlier, the greatest lesson I’ve learnt in this pandemic is to reduce my life to a minimalist existence. What do we truly hanker after in this life? Is it the job or what? Look, I have a friend in China who cannot come home because of the lockdown. His family is here and he is pained he cannot join them. I have another friend in Russia facing same situation. They are pained that they have been removed from their families because of this pandemic.  . Fundamentally, you discover that the  in the whole what we need is the family at this period of time. Let us use this time to build our family because the society is built upon the family. If we take time to improve the family then the society will be better off. Perhaps why Nigeria is at its bankruptcy state is because of the way we have mismanaged our families. We have misplaced priorities thinking so many other things are important but now the realities stare us in the face. For instance, if you had a good relationship with your wife, why will you be having crisis with her now? If have been a very good father or good mother to your children, your being together now would have been very sweet. You know, you’d be on the same page on many issues but because of misplaced priorities you don’t take care of the children and all the rest. We need to come back because the family is sacrosanct. It is important we address the structure of the family because by and large, we come from the family and we’ll end up in the family. By the time you impart qualitatively on your family, it will certainly blossom out into the larger society.

Please Note

1.     Covid-19 IS REAL!

2.     That it is in your best interest to stay at home in order to be safe from contaminating this deadly viral disease.

3.     That it is important to observe safety/precautionary measures such as regular washing of hands, usage of hand sanitizers, cleaning of all surfaces regularly, observing social distancing, keeping the throat moist at all times with warm water, eating healthy/organic/homemade food and sleeping well.

·       Dial 112 or call NCDC on 080097000010 in case of any emergency or if you experience symptoms of Covid-19.

·        For regular updates of verified info about Corona virus visit covid19.ncdc.gov.ng or @NCDCgov on Facebook and Twitter

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