In lighter mood

I love the experts. Like the economists, they have two hands. They tell you something sweet with one hand and then sour it with the other hand. Sometimes they tell me what I love to know; sometimes they tell me what I hate to hear. But either way, their knowledge is invaluable. With them around, you do not need to beat the path to the hut of the babalawo to know what the future holds for you and your family – unless, of course you are in search of enemies and to prevent the wicked from doing their worst to you or your family.

So, what are the experts saying? One good thing about experts is that they are proactive. They try to see far into the future. But they do not prophesy. They wisely leave that to the men and women of God. The experts are professionals and scientists and do not dabble in dubious claims on knowing the mind of the almighty.

I am happy to report that the experts are already looking into the post COVID-19 world. What would that would be like when all these face masks have been withdrawn from our faces and put away in the drawers? Well, it should come as no surprise, really, that they have the bad news and they have the good news. The good and the bad are always in bed with each other.

The bad news, according to them, is that the post pandemic world would be  a weary world, emerging poor, confused and devastated from the virus that refuses to show any mercy to mankind, even with everyone wearing a face mask that shuts them up. Try talking like a Nigerian with your face mask on and see if you can hear yourself. They say that all national economies would collapse and throw millions of people to the streets without jobs. Unemployment is always bad news.

A national economy in bad shape is really some bad news for a nation and its people. Given the nature of the pandemic, they say no national economy would be safe. You can say the pandemic is a great leveller, socially and economically. Every nation could dust off the begging bowl and hit the streets and take to doing what the almajirai are now doing to the great annoyance of Dr Abdullahi Ganduje, governor of Kano State. But don’t despair. There is some good news too from what they can see of that new world.

So, on the other hand, they say it would not all be bad news. There would be good news, very good news too. According to them, there would be a baby boom globally. Meaning, more babies would be born everywhere you look. It happened after World War II. And it could happen again. Those baby boomers have since come of age and are the current leaders in the politics, business and the economy of their various countries today. Former US president, Bill Clinton, was one of such baby boomers.

What the experts are saying, in effect, is that those who were killed by the virus would be replaced by many more babies. So, there would be no population depletion. China and India would still lead the world and number their people in billions. The rest of the countries would tag along with millions more people. This means, I think, that couples still in the business of making babies apparently put their long stay at home to creative use. The results would show when the virus succumbs to the superior of power of science. Expect the labour wards to be unusually over-crowded with new and continuing mothers and their lovely new arrivals in our brave new world remade in the image of the pandemic. I would imagine that the hundreds of Covid-19 isolation centres would be cleaned up and be turned into new and more welcome purposes as baby factories.

Well, the baby boom may be good news but I wonder if it is such welcome news in the post Covid-19 world. A population explosion visits nations with critical challenges. Food, for one. Mouths, old and new, need to be fed daily. The devastation of the global economy means that farmers would be hard put to produce enough food to feed the current and the newly-added mouths throughout the world. We should fear another killer called famine. Or, perhaps not.

The Rev Malthus, a 19th century man of God, I think, once argued that there was nothing to be agitated about a population explosion. It should present no problems because with every mouth, God provides a pair of hands. The almighty does take care of everything, hence he equips every man and woman with a pair of hands and one mouth and said, let every pair of hands feed one mouth. Do the maths and you can easily see that in the natural order of things sans the word but, a pair of hands should comfortably feed one mouth.

But, and this is the but, this simple maths has never quite added up. If it did, we would have been rid of the greatest challenge the world continues to face despite improved economic opportunities: poverty. It causes the shortage of everything, including food placed beyond the easy reach of a pair of hands. My non-expert advice is that it is not always wise to stand on simple maths in dealing with a complex issue such as the determination of babies to pour forth into the world in huge numbers. There is even something punitive about this. More babies are born to couples whose pairs of hands cannot feed the mouths that have been imposed on them.

This demonstrable lack of capacity by a pair of hands, sturdy hands, to feed one mouth worries the experts. World history has records of famines, devastating famines, that humbled countries such as India, in its struggling days with its populations, Ethiopia, Sudan and other countries in and outside Africa where pairs of hands failed single individual mouths. My take is that there would be no difference between the world before and after the coronavirus. It would be the same old world, full of social, economic and political challenges and pronounced inequalities. Meanwhile, you may do well to invest in baby things if you want to become a millionaire.