To get a clearer picture of the eventual effects of COVID-19 and any successor virus or pandemic, sometimes it pays to consider the fact that this phenomenon will affect countries differently.
The global effect is difficult to figure out – especially the human angle. We know things have changed. Lives have changed. Economies have changed.
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Technology has taken over and will take over some more. Everything has become digitized. Things are being created anew. New protocols everywhere.
It is easy to begin to imagine a cyber-world of flying machines and gadgets untold, with incredible things happening just as we had seen sometimes on television.
Fiction is meeting reality eventually as it had always threatened. Even if COVID-19 clears out millions or billions, the emerging picture looks idyllic in a postmodern way. A world with less filth and inefficiency, where we can finally deal with a growing climate crisis.
But how long do we need, and how much destruction to lives before this picture emerges? Will the eventually be pyrrhic, with the ruin and destruction leaving such a horrible and lasting taste in the mouth?
And will we be happy if after the promise of a ‘new normal’, COVID-19 disappears and the world is not as fresh as we expected, save for the paranoia that will last for much longer?
I just saw a friend’s post on Facebook that the welcome pack in hotels has transformed from cute biscuits and fruit juice or a glass of wine, to gloves, masks, sanitizers and more things to sterilize yourself.
I must quickly add that the epidemic of mental problems, depression and so on, is riding the wave at the back of COVID-19. At best we should say, COVID-19 oughtn’t have happened at all. It is a great curse to humanity, no matter the upsides… after it may have blown over. But will it? When?
Now let us zoom the picture somewhere closer. Bring it to Nigeria. As I type, the businesses of most of Nigeria’s 20 odd million ‘entrepreneurs’ have been destroyed.
This means tens of millions laid off, by now firing calls to friends and family, just to survive. These calls will take on a more desperate tinge in the coming days even as the privileged few get tired and stop giving.
Nigerian businesses were always fragile, most of them built on importations of machines, merchandise and equipment. Their unraveling was equally fast.
The few who could still open up daily and show some signs of life, found out that no one was buying anything. Purchasing power has collapsed. A few bold and monied people are continuing with say building project or something fanciful but I suspect even they may soon get tired.
Cranes are not going to be up in the skies anywhere in the world soon. That means fewer and fewer things will get built and therefore there is less investment in hope for the future.
In Nigeria the reality already is hollowed out high streets, even more desolate malls, many companies playing on global fringes are on life support right now, or just dead.
So I ponder whether this Covid will bring the revolution. If people are unable to feed, and stare in the face of daily despair, what do they do? If social capital – which still upholds many souls as we share the little that we have from one to another – dries up, what will be the response of our people?
Are the poor going to be able to organize the way they have always been encouraged to do, and this time, perhaps just to survive? Will we see real advocacy on the streets?
I mean will Nigeria finally get a chance to close this income gap?
Will the rich understand the need to give up something for the poor? Do we even have enough of rich people to make reasonable sacrifices?
What form will these sacrifices take; direct cash transfers or investment in infrastructure which impacts the people indirectly but for the creation of jobs while projects last?
Will we have an opportunity through a mass uprising induced by the extremities foisted by Covid19 and concomitant lockdown, shutdowns, bankruptcies and meltdowns, to finally deal with the corruption question?
We can see that the top news in Nigeria right now, continues to be about corruption. Even the Chairman of the anti-corruption house was locked down in jail for 10 days. Well that is how it is seen elsewhere in the world.
It shows that the whole war may be a ruse when the man in charge has any question marks around him. There is the roiling drama at the Niger Delta Development Commission, an entity which has only ever developed the account balances of its executives; a thoroughly and perennially corrupt organization that is a sore on the conscience of the Niger Delta and Nigeria.
Will Nigeria be ready for a total smackdown of anything called corruption as a result of a people’s uprising induced by mass hunger, poverty and despair imposed by COVID? Or will the people be too tired to even try, or to come together?
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