SOME 15 Chinese medical experts arrived Nigeria last week supposedly to bolster the fight against COVID-19 which has officially infected over 300 people and caused or hasten the death of seven.
When Chinese officials speak about the experts, they give the impression they were invited by Chinese contractors in Nigeria to take care of certain health issues pertaining to some Chinese workers.
When Nigerian officials speak about the same experts, they give the impression they are in Nigeria to impart technical skills to their Nigerian counterparts.
In between these two somewhat mutually exclusive positions, Nigerian and Chinese officials have spoken confusedly, if not untruthfully, about what the experts have come to do.
Perhaps the most representative position of the experts’ presence in Nigeria comes from the Executive Director, China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation, Jacques Liao. According to him, “All members of the (Chinese experts) working team have tested negative for COVID-19 and shall commence their stay in Nigeria by spending 14 days in quarantine.
The primary purpose of the team is to provide CCECC employees with critical and necessary healthcare assistance. They are also coming with adequate personal protective equipment and medical items for the employees.”
Probably the most representative position of the Nigerian government on the same subject comes from the Health minister, Osagie Ehanire, who, after oscillating between many conflicting opinions, finally says that the Chinese experts are in Nigeria to share their knowledge and expertise of fighting COVID-19 as well as to strengthen the management of the disease with regard to critical care.
Leader of the presidential task force on the disease, Boss Mustapha, who is also the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), is more sanguine about the experts. Of all the things they have come to do, he says, treating Nigerian patients is not among the tasks assigned to the Chinese experts.
They will only share experience. But with whom? It is hard to say. Nigerian doctors have proved spectacularly adept at handling the disease, are adamant they are uninterested in interacting with the Chinese experts, and have balked at the invitation.
The Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) and the National Assembly, not to talk of a majority of Nigerians, are also suspicious of the invitation extended to the Chinese experts, and fear that there is more to their presence than meets the eye.
In fact, most Nigerians fear that both the Nigerian government and the Chinese are lying, especially at this time when China, purporting to fight coronavirus disease, has executed deeply racist measures against Africans in China.
Indeed, the obduracy of government officials over the Chinese experts has fuelled suspicion that neither the Chinese nor Nigerian officials are telling the truth about the invitation.
The Chinese may have partially exited the pandemic, but the disease in Nigeria has neither risen to the scale the Chinese contended with months ago in their own country nor is their success rate in treating the disease as notable as Nigeria’s.
Many Nigerians have begun to think that the Chinese are in Nigeria for totally different reasons. After all, Nigerian officials were so desperate to allow the so-called experts in, regardless of widespread opposition from Nigerians, that it is no longer unreasonable to think that the government has not given the public full disclosure.
They had better hope there is no spike in COVID-19 cases, for they would be held accountable, much more than the carelessness and uncooperativeness of Nigerians who defy lockdowns to feed their families.
The visit of the Chinese experts is totally unnecessary and insulting. It is unwarranted at this point, not even for reasons that presume to stave off huge future coronavirus outbreaks. Chinese officials say the visit is to afford Chinese workers in Nigeria medical treatment.
Treatment for what? Has any Chinese reported coming down with COVID-19 unknown to Nigerian health officials, and are they averse to being treated by Nigerian doctors when they are manhandling Nigerians in China? And rather than importing experts into Nigeria, would evacuation not have been far better and cheaper for the Chinese?
The Chinese population in Nigeria is not as huge as in some other African countries. What is more, the number of infections in Nigeria has so far been low, a fact that seems to displease some countries which have predicted doom for Africa.
How many experts have the Chinese sent to those other places to dispense medical tourism? And is the number of the Chinese supposedly needing medical care or critical care in Nigeria so high as to merit the expensive array of equipment brought into the country, even as part of corporate social responsibility?
Nigeria has managed to inspire its own novel way of handling epidemics, whether Lassa fever or Ebola. Medical staff and hospitals in Nigeria may not be funded as adequately as situations demand, but doctors in these parts have performed very well within the availability of resources and equipment.
It will be a tragedy if Nigeria’s successes, rather than be recommended to other countries, is stunted or disparaged in favour of other countries’ scientific and medical achievements.
There is much to recommend Nigeria. But Nigerian leaders and government officials have schooled themselves in disdaining local expertise and becoming entranced by foreign scientific breakthroughs and developments.
Nigerian leaders have done the country a huge disservice by allowing the importation of Chinese medical experts even for the one month period they claimed. Until COVID-19, these leaders always went abroad for treatment for the most common ailments.
They have consistently underfunded, and sometimes even defunded, the health sector on a criminally negligent scale. They seldom think highly of local achievements, preferring to embrace and applaud foreign breakthroughs in science, medicine and engineering.
Their schools are in tatters, and research and development have been almost completely abandoned. They run their country with as much tentativeness as their lethargy can muster, forsaking long-term goals and ambitions — ambitions that should lead to considerations of the well-being of future generations.
In fact they have not spoken out about finding a cure or vaccine for any kind of coronavirus disease. They are not desperate about progress, have been distracted by various silly schemes such as IPPIS, and have allowed their research institutions all over the country to go to seed.
When Nigerian doctors, by sheer industry, knocked Ebola into a cocked hat, the government simply closed the books on the disease while other countries continued to work hard to find a cure. Lassa fever, like meningitis, has become for them a routine and tolerable disease.
They are used to annual outbreaks, endure them, placate the disease, and have made only half-hearted attempt to completely eradicate it. Nigeria has been hit by flu epidemics on a number of occasions.
Is there any research institution dedicated to finding a cure, especially giving the huge casualty figures, a cure that can be commercialised? Confronted by COVID-19, and apart from empanelling a task force to lead the assault against it, Nigeria has not made any significant effort to assemble and fund a research group to find a cure. Instead, they have mired themselves in a needless controversy over the importation of Chinese experts, and deflected the necessity of achieving a worthy and indigenous treatment regimen.
It is clear that Nigeria is afflicted by mental servitude. There is no other way to explain why the government will forge ahead despite opposition to the invitation of Chinese experts. The government obviously has more regard for the Chinese than they have for Nigerians who put them in office.
This official defiance speaks to the country’s hideous political structure, particularly the aspect of leadership recruitment. The government’s defiance illustrates the huge responsibility Nigerians have in electing into office the right, tested and enlightened representatives and leaders.
At a time like this, such as COVID-19 represents, the administrative and intellectual mettle of a government is tested. There have been flashes of individual brilliance in tackling the crisis, both at the state and federal levels.
But just as the federal government has approached the problem desultorily by bamboozling the people with insincerity and lethargy, the states have also exposed many of their governors as either petty tyrants or incompetent administrators.
Shutdowns and lockdowns have been administered with only flimsy and uncoordinated consideration for the vulnerable, while poor and hungry people have been pilloried in terms that are too gross to repeat in this place.
Even when the objective of achieving a healthy society is sound, the implementation has sometimes been outlandishly offensive. Cross River brusquely ordered the wearing of masks without ensuring they are available or tested to be free of contamination, and has inflicted unreasonable pains on those who fail to conform.
The offenders’ failure is interpreted as defiance to be visited with brutality and extrajudicial measures. Rivers State is probably the most autocratic and insensate at this time, hiding under the sound objective of proactively curbing the disease to make incendiary statements against individuals, organisations and governments.
Other states have grovelled before religions, pandered to the rich, oppressed the poor who are left to their own devices, and propounded knee-jerk panaceas so backward and imponderable that it is hard to imagine they emanated from elected governments.
It is not certain that Nigerians will learn any lesson from the abominable ways their governments at the national and state levels are tackling COVID-19.
But it must be stated that once the people ceded control to a government, they are undone if such controls are ceded to leaders who suffer from all kinds of complexes, who are not enlightened, who are narrow-minded, and who are simply too mentally lazy, intolerant and retrogressive to either take the people into confidence and treat them as the real owners of power or make sane and reasonable policies designed to ameliorate the people’s harsh conditions.
Parents know that in their old age, their children will invariable begin to take decisions on behalf of the family. That time always comes.
But parents always hope that when that change occurs, their children should take the right and sensible decisions that would not destroy family reputations and legacies. But God save parents who have not inculcated the right character and values in their children.
The same goes for nations. In crisis, elected leaders, or even usurpers, must grapple with their countries’ existential problems and take decisions and make judgements they consider fitting.
May God save a nation whose leaders can’t analyse issues properly, expand the boundaries of debate, embrace and promote uplifting ideas, consult widely and deeply, and take a walk in the woods in order to contemplate on the best decisions that are viable for the short term, medium term, and long term; decisions that will retain their validity and vitality for decades.
Nigerians should answer whether the men and women they put in office at the executive and legislative levels in their states and at the federal level have justified the confidence reposed in them.
Or whether the people themselves have been foolish in electing tyrants and incompetents. Either way, the country must now live with the choices they have casually and parochially made.
The NMA may keep its resolve not to have anything to do with the so-called Chinese experts. But the federal government has doctors in their employment who may be cajoled into giving the expatriates a listening ear.
Still, it will not be a bad idea if as many resolute groups as possible show that while Nigeria may not be as rich as its human and mineral resources indicate, they still possess enough character to put up open and dignified resistance.
As David O. McKay once aptly admonished, “Always remember that a soldier’s pack is lighter than a slave’s chains.” If the Nigerian government is too short-sighted to see into the future, partly because they can’t even understand the present, the people should not display similar encumbrances.