The tantalizing report that Nigeria, the self-acclaimed giant of Africa has vaccinated only one percent of its 200 million population is certainly no complimentary news. To the extent President Muhammadu Buhari, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo and other political elite in the national assembly and state governments were the first recipients of the first 100,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine Nigeria received last January; the failure of the federal government to vaccinate ordinary Nigerians on a national scale is a monumental moral failure with profound, and profoundly unjust, public health consequences. It’s hard to look at the current African map of Covid-19 cases and feel anything other than deep sadness, shame and anger that, this is where Nigeria is, over a year into the pandemic. There’s a lot of blame to go around, including for the Nigerian Center for Disease Control (NCDC) and the federal government failing its own citizens in catastrophic ways. It has been a triumph of science and the hard work of many scientists, doctors, nurses, and other frontline medical professionals that many effective vaccines are now available. But for far too many Nigerians, that vaccine availability is merely theoretical, and no one seems to care. This is an international embarrassment and an unbelievable national shame!
Covid-19 infections are increasing in Nigeria with 305 new average daily infections; the highest number since March. That’s a 19% spike of the deadly Delta variant and the highest daily average reported since January. From January 3, 2020 to July 30, 2021, Nigeria has reported 172,821 confirmed cases of Covid-19 with 2,141 deaths, according to the WHO. Since the pandemic began, and as at July 26, 2021, Nigeria had so far administered 3,938,945 doses of Covid-19 vaccines across 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory, (FCT) Abuja, representing 98% utilization of the 4,024,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine it received from COVAX in March. This comprises 2,534,205 people who received the first dose, and 1,404,205 who received both doses of the vaccine. Just for the record; assuming every person needs two doses; that represents a paltry 1% of the country’s population. During the last week reported, Nigeria averaged about 35,325 vaccine doses administered daily. At that rate, it will take over three (3) years or 1,138 days to administer enough doses for just another 10% of the population.
It is just as well that the United States is making and emergency shipment of four million vaccines to Nigeria. WHO Director-General, Tedros Ghebreyesus, who is Ethiopian, has called for vaccinating at least 10% of the most vulnerable in every African country – including health workers and the elderly – by September. Another 3,577 million doses of Pfizer or Moderna vaccines are expected from COVAX in the third quarter, as well as 29.85 million Johnson & Johnson shots purchased via the African Union, but no one can say with any precision when these vaccine consignments will arrive. The Nigerian government has set a target of vaccinating 40% of the country’s population by the end of this year. This at best is an unrealistic expectation; and at worst mere wishful thinking.
With all its available human and material and huge financial resources, it is indeed shameful that a country that is supposed to have outgrown primordial healthcare challenges cannot even secure vaccines for its people. This has predictably created a mood of national anxiety and fear as the third wave of the pandemic hits with death rates now spiking up to 43%. One big reason for the current anxiety and fear is because ordinary people sense that the government does not care about them. It is not even enough to get the vaccines in Nigeria; what’s more important is to get the shots into peoples’ arms. Speed in vaccination delivery is important with a virus that is spreading fast and mutating in worrisome ways. Nigerian officials should have prioritized vaccine delivery from the beginning, and now must accelerate their efforts, both for their own good and for the national good. Unfortunately, limited vaccine supplies are being allocated by wealth and geography, not by science, public health, or human need. This is disproportionately affecting certain geo-political zones. Months into the vaccine rollout in many states of the federation, the exercise seems to be replicating patterns of religious and political fault lines and that is simply unacceptable.
While emergency help is desperately needed, we mustn’t lose sight of the imperative to also ensure that as many Nigerians across the country are vaccinated as quickly as possible. While it’s welcome news that the Biden administration is providing emergency vaccine supplies to Nigeria; that is far from enough. And it does nothing to address the imperative for a more equitable and effective vaccine distribution plan to all 36 states proportional to their populations; regardless of whether they are APC or PDP states. Such a strategy will address the current inequitable and selfish approach, which has led to what some are calling “vaccine politics” and others have more forcefully called out as “vaccine apartheid” in Nigeria.
But two questions first: who is to blame for our alarming shortage of vaccines? Why have they not already been sacked for criminal negligence? Buhari administration officials were claiming credit for handling the pandemic because the mortality rate had remained so low when developed countries with much better public health services had seen such high death tolls. It was this low mortality rate that caused an insane complacency to settle over Nigerians and it gave Buhari’s handlers a chance to sing paeans to him and give him credit for saving Nigeria from Covid-19. Had he not been president, they said, we would not have been able to stop Covid-19 from killing millions of Nigerians. Buhari accepted the tributes as he always does and became so complacent that he declared two public holidays to mark Ramadan celebrations, which undoubtedly spread the virus. Buhari seems not to have noticed that in America and Europe, the return to almost full normalcy begun because nearly half the population was already vaccinated; and even then the US is now facing a pandemic of the unvaccinated!
His government instead showed such disdain for vaccinations that it did not bother even to order sufficient supplies to get close to having enough to vaccinate at least half of Nigeria’s population. He outsourced that primary responsibility to COVAX and the African Union. If the men who make up the federal government’s Covid-19 task force have the smallest sense of honor and integrity, they should resign immediately. Since people don’t resign in Nigeria, they must be sacked and replaced by people who can deliver. Nigerians can no longer afford to wait for vaccine donations; Nigeria must move forward and order and pay for its own vaccines. The only way to win against this awful pandemic is by vaccinating as many people as possible. This will need to start happening now on a war-footing.
What is worrying is that despite the precarious situation with the more infectious and deadly Delta variant, the horror of what is happening seems not to have affected the Buhari administration. Mercifully, this time around, workers who have yet to regain their jobs and are struggling to survive will not be subjected to another lockdown. The damage the lockdown did to the economy is incalculable. Lockdowns always harm the economy more than the pandemic, but this desperate measure might have to be re-imposed as hospitals begin running out of capacity -oxygen, medicine, doctors and beds. There are signs of this happening in Lagos and in cities across the country. New and potentially dangerous Covid-19 variants will also flourish as long as we fail to vaccinate enough people all over the world.
Who should we blame for things having come to this pass? Should those high government officials who we trusted with our lives not come forward and accept responsibility? Why is the President silent at a time when he should be leading from the front? Restrictions on the export of foreign vaccines have been lifted, so someone needs to take charge of ensuring that vaccines are made available to those who are ready to pay for them, and most important of all is for Mr. President to tell Nigerians when he expects enough vaccine supplies to be made available for every Nigerian who wants to take them. Only when this happens will the panic and hysteria that is spreading across the country begin to wane. So many lives are at stake—each one precious, each one loved. Let’s not look the other way.
