Barr Blessing E. Ogbu
By Ogbu, Blessing Ekpere Esq.
I must admit that I was one of those who did not believe that Covid-19 has berthed in Nigeria when the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) reported that Nigeria has recorded its index case. My suspicion was founded on three premises. First, the Federal Government had earmarked ₦620Million to fight against the pandemic. Second, government officials, not least the State governments, seemed to be in a race for an award in profligacy. Third, the government – both at the federal and the state levels – does not place a premium on transparency and accountability as the function of governance. Unlike those people in Kano who washed their hands in a bowl of water and drank the water in a disgusting display of defiance and refutation of the reality of Covid-19, I was, however, pragmatic enough to appreciate that in this age of global interactions, it was only a matter of time before Nigeria recorded her Covid-19 incidences. I did not have to wait for long: on the 27th of February, 2020, Nigeria confirmed her index case.
My scruple about the sincerity of the government heightened following the skulduggery that attended the government’s approach in the early days of the pandemic in Nigeria. While confidentiality is a cardinal principle in the medical profession, the handling of two principal cases raised more questions than it answered. The first was the index case. The aureola of mystery which surrounded the Italian made Nigerians – and I daresay deservedly – to view with suspicion the claim that Covid-19 was in Nigeria. The second was the meretricious management of the case of the late Chief of Staff to the President, Abba Kyari.
For a government which considers transparency a bête noire and pursue obscurantism with fanatical fervour, it leaves the citizens with no option than to fill the vacuum its dearth of information creates. Understandably, Nigerians view the numbers from the NCDC with skepticism, with some attributing devious motives to the claims of some governors of the presence of the infection in their States. Like everything else in Nigeria, the philistines in government use politics and religion to undermine the efforts at combating the menace of the pandemic in Nigeria. As Professor Cyril Northcote Parkinson once said, “the void created by the failure to communicate is soon filled with poison, drivel, and misrepresentation.”
The government itself did not pretend to crave credibility. In his first broadcast to the nation, President Buhari informed Nigerians that the school feeding programme will continue. When one considers that schools across the country had been shut down one week before Buhari ordered the lockdown, one begins to wonder how the government intends to continue with the school feeding programme in spite of the lockdown. The sheer impossibleness of the venture is accentuated by the irrefutable reality that the lockdown has as its corollary the limitation of all human interactions and a restriction on social activities. When this is juxtapositioned with the absence of a national database, it becomes clear why Nigerians always take the dish the government serves them with a pinch of salt.
Perhaps, nothing emphasizes this mendacity better than the claim by the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs that it had disbursed over ₦100 Billion within a record period of 72 hours. This claim elicited cynical reactions from Nigerians with some pressure groups calling for a forensic audit of the claims of the Ministry. A responsive and responsible government should have considered it a necessary invitation to introspection and an opportunity to ascribe a modicum of respect to the intelligence of the citizens.
When the National Assembly queried the standard of accountability in the disbursement of the palliatives and the social intervention funds, the Treasury House which houses the office of the Accountant-General of the Federation, the headquarters of the Corporate Affairs Commission, the headquarters of the Independent National Electoral Commission and the Jos branch of the Central Bank of Nigeria went up in flames. The relevant agencies put out dry press releases. The citizens snickered.
If the citizens thought the government would maximise the sobriety of the Covid-19 pandemic to win their trust, that hope was shattered following the opacity that surrounded the government’s management of the condition of the late Chief of Staff to the President. Initially, the Commissioner for Health, Lagos State, Professor Akin Abayomi and the Minister for Health, Dr. Osagie Ehanire both claimed they were unaware of the whereabouts of the Chief of Staff. This was against the backdrop of a press release by the late Chief of Staff that he had made private arrangements for his treatment.
Upon his demise, however, both the Commissioner and the Minister claimed that the man had been receiving treatment at a private facility in Lagos. While we must respect the principle of confidentiality in medical practice, the case of the Chief of Staff was no ordinary case. Here was a man who had come to be seen as the embodiment of this government. As a public officer, therefore, Nigerians, especially, taxpaying Nigerians, were entitled to know how their patrimony was being spent. At the end of the day, it came to light that contrary to his claim that he had made private arrangements for his treatment, the Federal Government had, indeed, spent undisclosed sums running into millions of Naira to save the life of the Chief of Staff. When a government adopts obfuscation as a style of governance, it loses legitimacy and the trust of the citizens wanes.
Legitimacy is at the core of responsible governments. A government without legitimacy can sustain its grip on power only when it drops every pretence to the principles of constitutional democracy and adopts absolutism as an alternative to legitimacy. It is in this light that one begins to understand why the government has been consistent in its insistence on the constriction of the civil liberties of the citizens. It began with the two-horned bills whose general purport was an abridgement of the citizen’s right to freedom of expression and the press. These bills, the Protection from Internet Falsehood and Manipulations Bill, popularly known as the Social Media Bill and the National Commission for the Prohibition of Hate Speeches (Est, etc) Bill, popularly known as the Hate Speech Bill, were attacked, most justifiably, by Nigerians who saw the Bills as what they were: an attempt to muzzle free speech by a government which had shown remarkable intolerance to contrary views.
Today, riding disingenuously on the back of this global pandemic, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, introduced the Bill for an Act to Repeal the Quarantine Act 2004 and replace it with the Control of Infectious Disease Law 2020. Perhaps, Nigerians would have given this bill the benefit of doubt if they were not already distrustful of the government, a distrust that is founded on an acute awareness of the insistence of the government on those odious Social Media Bills.
Perhaps, Nigerians would have overlooked this Bill if Gbajabiamila had not deployed specious casuistry in pushing this Bill. Perhaps, Nigerians would have agreed with Gbajabiamila that drastic situations required drastic measures if the drastic measures that have come to define this government had not included a crude attempt at absolute abrogation of constitutionally guaranteed rights, rights which are ancient in their provenance as they are primal in their definition of constitutionalism. Perhaps, Nigerians would have trusted the government to do what is in the best interest of the citizens of the Federal Republic of Nigeria if the government has not breached repeatedly the trust of Nigerians in the past in so cavalier a manner.
A careful study of this Bill reveals sections which are grossly unconstitutional in all ramifications, rabidly dictatorial in their nature, encroachingly acquisitive of judicial powers, disturbingly expansive of the powers of the police in a manner that negates the constitutional presumption of innocence, insalubriously constrictive of civil liberties and totally at variance with the established principles of constitutional democracy. Should this Bill be allowed to see the light of day, it is the death knell on democracy. In fact, it is goodbye to constitutionalism and welcome to absolutism. When citizens distrust their leaders, therefore, they do so because the leaders behave like the proverbial dog which ate the bone that was hung on its neck.
Ogbu, a legal practitioner, writes in from Abuja via Email: sir_ideology@yahoo.com