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Henry A. Onwubiko
It is possible to discern from the present COVID19 data the existence of a nexus between the numbers of infection and death brought by the dreaded COVID19 contagion in each country and the ideological qualities of leadership coordinating the collective response of their citizens. A scientific culture and equally significant, an active sense of community at the local, national and international levels nurtured by the leadership appear as critical variables not only to survive the COVID19 Pandemic and its anticipated undulations but also to prepare for over 1.6 million viruses and their mutants yet to make their debut. The case of Nigeria with considerably low numbers of 250 deaths and over 8000 infections for a population of 200 million cannot easily be classified based on its scientific culture or leadership qualities, unlike the United States, paradoxically with the most advanced scientific culture in the world but with the worst case of over 1.6 million infections and nearly one hundred thousand deaths with a population of 300 million.
America globally has the largest number of Nobel Prize winning Scientists, Research Laboratories, and Institutes in its universities and towns, populated by its own innovative post doctoral researchers and able foreign scientists attracted from all parts of the globe. In its cities, the numerous science museums reflect the active engagement of the government to ensure that a scientific culture dominates the thinking mode of its population. As a Senior Fellow, I had the opportunity to engage in Research on infectious diseases at its Rocky Mountain Laboratories in Hamilton Montana, a level four facility that is part of America’s unrivaled National Institute of Health (NIH). Clearly the defeat of America by the COVID19 contagion was not due to a lack of scientific culture. It can only be attributed to the ideological qualities of racism and the deadly effects of its sophisticated and instituted Jim Crow forms, which amounts to poor housing, poor jobs and cheap and unhealthy foods for her Afro-American, Latino and Native-Indian minorities, projected by its present republican leadership.
From the data indicating the highest numbers of death and infections of over 100,000 and 1.6 million Americans respectively, nearly 70 percent are Blacks or African-Americans, Latinos and native Indian American minorities considering that blacks are only 12 percent of the population of the United States, with lower percentages for other minorities. Evoking racism and White Supremacy by the Republican Trump, ferments disunity among America’s fifty states and citizens at a critical moment of history when a sense of community is most needed to conquer the marauding contagion.
For Nigeria which harbours the largest population of Africa but conspicuously lacks a scientific culture, the reported low numbers of infection and death remains a bemusing paradox that has attracted some observations and speculations. One fact is the low testing rate, with only 50,000 persons tested since the encroachment of the COVID19 pandemic into Nigeria in a national population approaching 200 million. Despite the growing branches of the Nigerian Center for Disease Control mostly situated in motorable townships serving the 36 states of the Federation, these test centers might not be easily accessible to the poor, elderly, populous but largely illiterate rural population. The elderly are known to be most susceptible to the COVID19 infection and unlike the Europeans whose elderly populations reside in rented homes in the towns; Africans by tradition have their most aged populations settling in the villages and rural areas.
It is evident that the means of communication, working infrastructure and a means of procurement or manufacture of all testing reagents and most important of all adequate indigenous labour power, which include researchers, technicians and the lower skilled sample collectors and service staff would be grossly inadequate. Also, the state governments have not made stringent efforts in reaching out to the rural population by taking the COVID19 test to our remote villages. Efforts to send text messages by the NCDC to these majority rural dwellers are futile since they lack the means of communication and literacy to comprehend such messages. There is also the hunch that the senior scientists handling the core technique of applying the Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) to detect the disease in the towns are either not Nigerians or are foreigners not patriotically committed to seeing the COVID19 contagion defeated in Nigeria.
A second and perhaps most vital point for the Nigerian people is to be caught a second time by a coronavirus attack without a self reliant strategic plan against virus infections; the first being the Ebola virus epidemic of the year 2014. The nation presently is still the victim of the Human Immune-deficiency Retrovirus (HIV), the causative agent for the Acquired Immune-deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). The Nigerian people are also victims to the Lasser Fever virus, transmitted by the ubiquitous multi-mamate rat found in the various armpits of the nation. Yet, Nigeria has no scientifically well grounded strategic line of action of its own without the backing of any superpower against viruses and many future infectious diseases, that are expected to invade the nation at anytime.
The present improvisional construction of several branches of the NCDC and isolation centers are necessary but a strategic plan requires the construction and fortification of our university laboratories and national research institutes with workable economic plans such as SMEs, for the supply of adequate research tools, chemicals and other necessary infrastructures. It requires the construction of one of the research centers as a level four laboratory, with the imperative aim of obtaining and storing knowledge, primarily but not exclusively on infectious diseases, ready to be mobilized for vaccine, drug production, or the investigation of new diseases on the coming of inevitable future infections.
A third and commonly held view which had already taken its toll on the nation is the cantankerous resistance by such states as Kogi, Cross River and perhaps pockets of people in other states who refuse to be tested for the COVID19 virus by the NCDC due to the alleged information over the American Foundation and origin of the NCDC. The NCDC is alleged to be an offshoot of an American Research Institute clandestinely linked to its National Institutes of Health that has been in operation in Nigeria without the knowledge of many Nigerians including many of its research scientists for over a decade before the past Ebola and present COVID19 pandemic.
•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
