{"id":72845,"date":"2020-04-16T23:34:55","date_gmt":"2020-04-16T22:34:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pointblanknews.com\/pbn\/?p=72845"},"modified":"2020-04-16T23:34:55","modified_gmt":"2020-04-16T22:34:55","slug":"social-issues-eclipsing-covid-19","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pointblanknews.com\/pbn\/articles-opinions\/social-issues-eclipsing-covid-19\/","title":{"rendered":"SOCIAL ISSUES ECLIPSING COVID-19"},"content":{"rendered":"

> By Emmanuel Onwubiko
\n>
\n> “Hunger can not be quarantined”
\n> Ex-Governor Peter Obi.
\n>
\n> Exactly two years ago or a little less than that length of time,
\n> Nigeria overtook India to become the World’s Poverty capital. The
\n> symbolism and significance of this clearly overwhelming human
\n> catastrophe is that Nigeria with a population that hovers within 180
\n> million or two hundred million has the largest concentration of poor
\n> households numbering over 90 million far and above India with a
\n> population of well over 1 billion or so people.
\n>
\n> The truth is that even amidst the claims of the existence of some
\n> forms of corruptions amongst the political class in India, the
\n> government still devoted substantial percentage of their financial
\n> resources to aggressively train their manpower in some rare skills
\n> that are competitive internationally to an extent that these skills
\n> MOBILIZATION of the population of India saw a progressive shift from
\n> the deeply rooted social failures that gave rise to widespread poverty
\n> and unemployment in India which inevitably may have accounted for its
\n> departure from the disgraceful position of the global POVERTY capital
\n> and thus handed over the horrific\u00a0 medal of infamy\u00a0 to the so-called
\n> Africa’s biggest economy-Nigeria.
\n>
\n> Although President Muhammadu Buhari and his media spin doctors
\n> attempted to dispute this apparently indisputable fact that Hunger,
\n> Poverty, violent crimes have taken the shine off Nigeria and has
\n> crippled the nation to the dangerous dimension of becoming a basket
\n> case.
\n>
\n> Tried as much as they could without success, the same President who
\n> upon been declared the winner of the disputed March 2019 Presidential
\n> election, took over 8 Months to constitute a cabinet ended up
\n> summersaulting in the feeble attempt of his media minders to dispute
\n> the report which classified Nigeria under the watch of PRESIDENT
\n> Muhammadu Buhari as the nation with the greatest concentration of
\n> absolutely poor household in the entire planet Earth.
\n>
\n> Muhammadu Buhari personally belied the lame propaganda of his
\n> officials to engage in dubious self denial regarding the poverty state
\n> of Nigeria when he stated that he has lined up programmes to
\n> kick-start the economy of Nigeria basically through aggressive
\n> agricultural financing to take 100 million Nigerians out of poverty.
\n>
\n> So from the horses mouth we have been told by the current political
\n> administration in Nigeria that there are actually nothing less than
\n> 100 million Nigerians that are ‘imprisoned’ by poverty.
\n>
\n> The claim by President Muhammadu Buhari that there are at least 100
\n> million Nigerians that are too poor to eat two square meals per day
\n> was reported by the bewildered media that attended the public event at
\n> which he made this admission.
\n>
\n> This Presidential admission was made as Nigeria marked June 12 as
\n> Democracy Day, last year in which clearly President Muhammadu Buhari
\n> made a solemn promise to take 100 million Nigerians out of poverty in
\n> 10 years. For a man elected to spend only four more years and no more
\n> to promise to take 100 million people out of poverty in ten years
\n> shows the manifest dishonesty in the entire gamuts of the public
\n> speech containing the outlandish pledge.
\n>
\n> Speaking at the inaugural June 12, Democracy Day celebration in Abuja,
\n> Buhari said that his administration would ensure rapid and positive
\n> growth in the economy to move Nigeria away from poverty.
\n>
\n> Hear him: \u201cOur Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is expected to grow by
\n> 2.7 percent this year. Our external reserve have risen to 45 billion
\n> dollars enough to finance over nine months of current equal
\n> commitments. This administration has laid a foundation of taking bold
\n> steps in transforming our country and delivering our people from the
\n> shackles of poverty.”
\n>
\n> Now this is how President Muhammadu Buhari said he will lift 100
\n> million Nigerians out of poverty: \u201cFirst we will take steps in
\n> integrating the rural economy to national economic grade by extending
\n> access to input to rural farmers as well as credit to rural micro
\n> businesses and opening up many critical feeder roads. Secondly, all
\n> small scale enterprises in towns and cities would share facilities
\n> currently available so that we can continue to encourage and support
\n> domestic production of basic goods to improve our lives,” he said.
\n>
\n> He added that in the next four years his administration would remain
\n> positive to improve the lives of people.
\n>
\n> Sadly, hardly had the government improved the living conditions of
\n> millions of poverty stricken citizens of Nigeria before the outbreak
\n> of the CORONAVIRUS disease IN NIGERIA which started in Wuhan China.
\n>
\n> Nigeria was almost financially ruined by poor economic policies and
\n> official corruption, gross absence of respect for procurement laws and
\n> the total neglects of the principles of transparency and
\n> accountability by top federal and State government officials before
\n> the coming of Covid-19 with vengeful devastation.
\n>
\n> Most of the 36 States became financially insolvent to the disgraceful
\n> extent that the Federal ministry of Finance went around the World
\n> borrowing heavily just to meet the financial demands and obligations
\n> of even the payments of salaries to the workforce. The states borrowed
\n> heavily from banks to pay salaries of political appointees\u00a0 even as
\n> the allocations coming from the central pool in Abuja are used to
\n> service these debts and the rest pocketed by the governors. Primary
\n> and secondary healthcare facilities in the States have collapsed.
\n>
\n> Then again, the agencies of the national government that generate much
\n> of the external revenues such as the Nigerian National Petroleum
\n> corporation (NNPC); and those that generate domestic revenues through
\n> taxations like Nigerian Customs Service(NCS); Nigerian Immigration
\n> Service and the Federal Inland Revenue Services (FIRS) are so badly
\n> administered and due to apparent governance failures there are
\n> loopholes and contradictions in the exact amounts generated by these
\n> agencies because even as these agencies are always in the public media
\n> announcing huge turnovers the Federal Government of President
\n> Muhammadu Buhari is globetrotting in search of loans from all
\n> conceivable places.
\n>
\n> This is the exact position of Nigeria before the advent of COVID-19
\n> AILMENT into the Country.
\n>
\n> For the specific purpose of re-emphasis, let me restate that
\n> CORONAVIRUS challenge came at a time of a multitude of sociological
\n> issues of mass poverty, mass hunger, unemployment, gravely
\n> deteriorated and neglected health sector and frightening widespread
\n> violent crimes.
\n>
\n> Another sociological factor remains that Nigeria being a nation that
\n> the ruling class have so much underdeveloped to a level that it is a
\n> nation of strong individuals and deliberately weakened institutions,
\n> it then seems practically impossible for the systemic and deeply
\n> entrenched social maladies aforementioned to be confronted and
\n> decisively resolved or minimally controlled.
\n>
\n> The institution put in place to dispense and re-distribute the Social
\n> investment funds (NSIP) has so far not provided transparent account of
\n> how the officials have wasted so much money running into Trillions in
\n> the last five years but have barely reached less than a million poor
\n> Nigerians. This interventionistic institution has been paying a ghost
\n> consultant the whooping sum of N100 million Monthly for doung God
\n> knows what. The fact that the consultant is anonymous manifests the
\n> absence of governance standards in the adminisfration of the SIP
\n> domiciled under the OFFICE of the President for five years before been
\n> divested to create a seaparate ministry of humanitarian affairs and
\n> social development.\u00a0 This is one leg of the sociological factors.
\n> Another is the inefficient and ineffective security architecture in
\n> Nigeria.
\n>
\n> The security forces have their internal operational issues such as the
\n> disproportionate deployment of majority of the armed security forces
\n> to protect few individuals in government and so only very few are left
\n> to provide security of lives and property of millions of Nigerians.
\n>
\n> In Nigeria there are about fifty percent of the security forces that
\n> are guarding and running domestic affairs for prominent Nigerians and
\n> infact all that it will take a rich Nigerian to get armed guards made
\n> up of police and soldiers is to bribe the commanders or the
\n> commissioners of police as the case may be.
\n>
\n> Then there is something like forty percent of security forces paid
\n> through the tax payers fund but who are actively engaged in running
\n> extortion rings all over Nigeria.
\n>
\n> So effectively, only about ten percent of the security forces are
\n> actually working to protect lives and property of over 199 million
\n> Nigerians. So the consequence is that violent crimes of all genres are
\n> widespread and are getting out of hands ad are compounded by the poor
\n> handling of the LOCKDOWN by the Nigerian state.
\n>
\n> These factors were on ground before COVID-19 came and then the Federal
\n> Government of President Muhammadu Buhari decided to lockup and
\n> lockdown Nigeria.
\n>
\n> This translates to a monumental disaster that has been unleashed
\n> because as I expounded above, those social issues of hunger, poverty,
\n> violent crimes that have torn Nigeria into shreds have not disappeared
\n> nor have they been quarantined for the one month that the President
\n> BUHARI decided to lockdown Federal Capital Territory ( FCT); Ogun and
\n> Lagos just as the entire Northern States are operating as if they are
\n> not part of NIGERIA WITH the banks operating in those places whereas
\n> the residents of Abuja, Ogun and Lagos do not have the privilege of
\n> even withdrawing their money from the banks to restock their kitchens.
\n>
\n>
\n> President Muhammadu Buhari unlike most other responsive World leaders
\n> who talk to their people daily, but in Nigeria there have been two
\n> recorded television broadcast of the president who has not been seen
\n> since his CHIEF of staff Abba Kyari came back from Germany with
\n> Covid-19.
\n>
\n> In those two recorded television broadcast the president made heavy
\n> weather about the relevance of observing the regulations worked out by
\n> the world Health organisation regarding the combating of the
\n> CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC.\u00a0 But his decision to lock up over 100 million
\n> poor Nigerians and has only promised to feed only 3.6 million poor
\n> people means that his government is in breach of the fundamental law
\n> guiding the declaration of LOCKDOWN. The World Health organisation has
\n> clearly stated that lockdown will not work in poor Countries without
\n> palliatives.
\n>
\n> The World Health Organization (WHO) strongly\u00a0 advised governments
\n> imposing lockdown restrictions to provide palliatives for their
\n> citizens to enable them to comply.
\n> \u2018How do you survive on lockdown when you depend on your daily labour
\n> to eat?\u201d WHO\u2019s director-general, Tedros Ghebreyesus, asked at a
\n> press briefing in Geneva on Monday.
\n> Ghebreyesus said he was aware some governments were trying to impose,
\n> extend and lift restrictions but added that it should not be at the
\n> expense of human rights.
\n>
\n> He also said that for countries with large poor populations,
\n> particularly in Africa, Asia and Latin America, the stay-at-home order
\n> used in some high income countries may not be practicable.
\n>
\n> He said it was because most of them were already living in overcrowded
\n> conditions with few resources and little access to health care.
\n>
\n> He also said that 1.4 billion children who were not in school due to
\n> the lockdown stand the risk of being abused.
\n>
\n> \u201cNews reports from around the world describes how many people are in
\n> danger of being left without access to food.
\n>
\n> \u201cWe also call on all countries to ensure that where lockdown
\n> measures are used, they must not be at the expense of human rights.
\n> Each Government must assist their situation while protecting all their
\n> citizens, especially the most vulnerable,\u201d he said.
\n> But he warned that either way, the lockdown should be lifted slowly,
\n> not immediately. He also urged everyone to keep complying with the
\n> public health advisory on COVID-19.
\n>
\n> Speaking further, he said, \u201cSome countries and communities have now
\n> endured several weeks of social and economic lockdown. Some countries
\n> are considering when they can lift the lockdown, others are
\n> considering whether and when to introduce them.
\n>
\n> \u201cIn both cases, this decision must be based first and foremost on
\n> protecting human health and guided by what we know about the virus and
\n> how it behaves. Control measures must be lifted slowly, it cannot
\n> happen all at once.\u201d
\n>
\n> In view of what the WHO said with regards to the necessity of making
\n> palliatives available to all the poor citizens if the Nigerian
\n> government will have any justification to lockdown the commercial and
\n> political\u00a0 capitals of Nigeria for a Month, it has become crystal
\n> clear that President Muhammadu Buhari is in violations of
\n> international human rights laws.
\n>
\n> To make matters worst, the armed security forces can’t\u00a0 protect the
\n> people who are observing the compulsory lockdown from the bloody
\n> criminal attacks of violent bandits and armed robbers who have
\n> continued to go on unrestrained rampage in Ogun, Lagos. This is one of
\n> the factors that\u00a0 the well respected erstwhile governor of Anambra
\n> state Mr Peter Obi envisaged when he warned against not providing for
\n> the poor and disadvantaged in the current lockdown.
\n>
\n> The Vice Presidential Candidate of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Mr.
\n> Peter Obi, had expressed concern over the plight of vulnerable and
\n> unemployed Nigerians whose survival is tied to their day-to-day
\n> activities.
\n>
\n> Obi who was reacting to the imposed total lockdown of the country
\n> being announced by federal and state governments, said that whilst all
\n> possible measures should be deployed to stop the spread of the
\n> coronavirus, appropriate measures should be taken to mitigate the
\n> suffering of the very vulnerable in our midst.
\n>
\n> According to Obi in a statement from his media office, there are
\n> several millions of our populace who are unemployed and underemployed,
\n> whose means of livelihood depends on daily income which the present
\n> situation will definitely worsen.
\n>
\n> Obi said that in locking down the country, such vulnerable people
\n> should be factored into government policies, as is the case in other
\n> countries, by putting measures in place to cushion the effects of the
\n> lockdown on them.
\n>
\n> Peter Obi a Philosopher said: \u201cit would be counter-productive to
\n> keep only the elite in mind when taking such far-reaching decisions as
\n> closing down markets without having some cushioning measures for the
\n> traders.\u201d
\n>
\n> Obi also tasked elected leaders in the country as follows; \u201cThis is
\n> the time to be with your people in your various constituencies.\u201d
\n>
\n> He said it does not make sense that elected public officials,
\n> especially the Legislators, should be observing the stay-at-home in
\n> various places outside their constituencies at this trying time,
\n> instead of being with their constituents to help their people to find
\n> solutions to their problems and challenges.
\n>
\n> Obi said that by being in their constituencies to monitor the
\n> situation, the elected leaders will be in a position not only to
\n> support their people in their time of need, but to also properly
\n> advice government on how to address the fallouts of government
\n> policies.
\n>
\n> Finally, Obi called on leaders of all segments of society to make
\n> sacrifices and show commitment at this critical period in the history
\n> of our dear nation.
\n>
\n> What this means is that the Nigerian government must design a home
\n> made solution to the all important issue of containment of the
\n> COVID-19 AILMENT in Nigeria and stop borrowing Western models\u00a0 even
\n> without following the complete steps adopted by those advanced
\n> societies to care for their citizens and to reduce the financial
\n> burdens of the LOCKDOWN.
\n>
\n> So hunger, poverty and WIDESPREAD violent crimes which have inevitably
\n> eclipsed the worrying COVID-19 challenge in Nigeria must be confronted
\n> with precision and measures put in place\u00a0 to provide solutions to
\n> them.
\n>
\n> President Muhammadu Buhari as someone who spent considerable amount of
\n> time living as an average citizen in Kaduna and interacting and
\n> interfacing on regular basis with the wretched of the Earth before he
\n> was financed by rich politicians like former governors Bola Ahmed
\n> Tinubu, Rotimi Amaechi amongst others to ascend the Presidency in 2015
\n> and for the irrevocable final four years in 2019, must listen to the
\n> voice of reason and introduce humane measures for combating the
\n> CORONAVIRUS disease without pushing millions of our citizens to their
\n> untimely death.
\n>
\n> *Emmanuel Onwubiko is the Head of the Human Rights Writers Association
\n> of Nigeria
\n>
\nandblogs@www.huriwanigeria.com<\/a>;www.emmanuelonwubikocom;www.thenigerianinsidernews.com<\/a>
\n> [1];www.huriwa@blogpot.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

> By Emmanuel Onwubiko > > “Hunger can not be quarantined” > Ex-Governor Peter Obi. > > Exactly two years ago or a little less than that length of time,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":72846,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-72845","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles-opinions"],"yoast_head":"\nSOCIAL ISSUES ECLIPSING COVID-19 - Pointblank News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/pointblanknews.com\/pbn\/articles-opinions\/social-issues-eclipsing-covid-19\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"SOCIAL ISSUES ECLIPSING COVID-19 - 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