Recently, the Nigerian Medical Association expressed concern from lack of information and refused to welcome Chinese scientists and medical practitioners despite their generosity to assist Nigeria in its fight against the COVID19 pandemic. What was necessary would have been to recruit Nigerian research scientists on infectious diseases at home and abroad and where necessary secure foreign assistance from the developed nations to train them and for them to provide the self reliant leadership in the fight against the COVID19 pandemic. These indigenous scientists should also serve as the building block for a self reliant strategic plan that should have by now been translated into action. Consequently, the poor perception of the Nigerian people over the suspected alien foundation of the NCDC and the need to be informed and enlightened over the past government plans may have contributed to their refusal to subject themselves to the NCDC personnel for the COVID19 testing among the 36 states of Nigeria, leading to the low number of tested individuals.
A fourth explanation which casts doubt over Nigeria’s paradoxical low number is the engagement of many Nigerian victims to charlatanry in the practice of all forms of chicanery, traditional religious healers, professing agents of hubris research, and the G-5 for COVID19 pandemic religious agents, who secure their victims through newspapers and the social media or verbal campaigns. Past Nigerian governments have encouraged a vacuum quickly occupied by these wuruwuru and abracadabra charlatans by neglecting the cultivation of a scientific culture in our national life.
When three decades ago, Doctor Abalaka performed his abracadabra on the Nigerian people under the false claim that he had developed a vaccine to cure AIDS, no laws were passed by the National Assembly to prosecute him for committing such a heinous crime against the Nigerian people. During the Ebola epidemic of the last decade more charlatans, pseudo scientists and pseudo native doctors sold and offered their concoctions without dosage and brought the death of many Nigerians, but no laws were passed by the National Assembly and no arrests made to prosecute these enemies of the people. Obviously, many Nigerians still go to seek the assistance of these charlatans instead of reporting to be tested leading again to the low numbers reported for Nigeria by the NCDC.
The present National leadership which has projected its anti-corruption ideology, and rediscovered the primary and imperative role of science in winning the battle against the COVID19 pandemic requires audacity to establish a law to discipline these agents who in pursuit of hubris and money, prolong the poverty, suffering and underdevelopment of the Nigerian people. The Nigerian leadership also needs audacity to actualize an indigenous, self reliant strategic plan for a national community centered defense against all future infectious diseases.
Audacity of leadership is required to ensure that the Presidential Task Force (PTF) on COVID19 with the 5.1 billion Naira budget despite its proclaimed aim of service to the Nigerian people does not become the targeted and sandwiched buffoon between our now excited research charlatans, placebo drug manufacturers, pseudo-vaccine researchers, tradition and religious spiritualists and professors of hubris and their political class recommenders of ministers, ex-governors and governors, honourable and ex-honourable cockroaches of the National Assembly. By such treasonable treachery, the PTF would have betrayed their noble objective only to perpetuate the existing culture of charlatanry and make the growth of a scientific culture, which is one of the two variables necessary to defeat the COVID19 pandemic impossible.
Already, the first act by the gang of charlatans has commenced. The attempt to abolish the objective laws of nature with the rigours of evidence and the scientific method and substitute it with their subjective thoughts has began in the press and Nigerian media. Suddenly, the return of Afrocentricism and Black consciousness wrongly understood are now the guiding light to our national response to the COVID19 pandemic and no longer the universal method of science, which they mutely falsify as Eurocentric. Behind these vapid maneuvers appear the professors, traditional herbalists and spiritual healers, most without any peer reviewed research article in any of the globally known scientific research journals. They may finally join forces with our honourable ex-members and members of government among other agents of the political class for their commendation and recommendation to sublimate the bloody money of the people only to substitute and perpetuate the continued corruption culture of chicanery in place of the much needed and imperative scientific culture.
Indeed, an audacity of leadership and a robust scientific culture are essential to surviving the COVID19 pandemic. The growing COVID19 data has also confirmed the importance of community leadership at the local, national and international levels with regard to China which had continued globally to retain the lead of the lowest numbers of infection and deaths relative to its staggering population of over 1.4 billion people. Nigeria as the largest population in Africa with a focus on Pan-Africanism or African unity must learn from China with regard to scientific culture and most importantly its community-based, life first before materialism leadership. In its struggle to eradicate COVID19 infection, it must not exclude other fraternal African nations and more urgently the ECOWAS nations in designing an effective assault on the COVID19 virus. As long as the infection is present among ECOWAS members or in any nation within the African continent, the pandemic is still a threat. An infection to one is an infection to all. Now may be the chance for Nigeria to forge a new community-based beginning.
A victory by the people against the COVID19 pandemic and the setting up of a virulent scientific culture is a victory against corruption. It is imperative that Nigeria should give greater attention to building and developing its scientific culture, by its heavily investing in its centers of innovation, from its university laboratories to its research institutions. It should also invest to develop its science museums, zoos and other scientific infrastructures for the scientific enlightenment of the Nigerian public. Above all, the National Assembly must pass and update laws to contain corrupt-researchers and charlatans who distort the space for scientific culture and breed poverty and national underdevelopment for the sake of hubris and money. The leadership in pursuit of the development of a scientific culture with an anti-corruption ideology should be cognizant that it may sacrifice all that it deems possible in its anti-corruption war. It must keep in mind that it is only when the Nigerian people have imbibed the message that a scientific culture cannot thrive in a culture of corruption and charlatanry that the people by themselves can now make the necessary change. The leadership may propound the message of anti-corruption but only the people can effect that change.
•Onwubiko, is a Senior Fellow, Oakridge Research Institute for Science and Education, Research Scientist, Laboratory of Persistent Viral Diseases Rocky Mountain Laboratories, Hamilton, Montana, Professor & Head, Department of Biochemistry, University of Nigeria, Nsukka