Urban Nigeria makes visible how Covid-19 was never a great equaliser

Zainab Onuh-Yahaya

Nigeria recorded its first case of Covid-19 in February 2020. A little over thirty days later, an initial 14-day lockdown was enforced in three states, including the nation’s capital. This meant all citizens were to stay in their homes, travels to or from other states were to be postponed and offices within those states to be fully closed.

As the world retreated behind the closed doors of home, and as schools and offices closed down indefinitely, life on one side of my little neighbourhood, six miles away from the city centre continued as usual.

I live in what is in theory a middle class neighbourhood but, in actuality, that small and undefined space between the lower and middle class. The neighbourhood is divided sharply into two – the gated estate on the right and what is close to a shanty on the left. Residents on what is literally the right side live in 2-3 bedroom apartments with proper security, playgrounds, supermarkets, schools and amenities. And residents on the left side live communally in what can only be described as tiny studio apartments, sharing everything from kitchen space to toilets to the unswept gutter right in front.

The first official day of the lockdown was a Monday. And as residents on the right side hit snooze on their alarm, half terrified at the thought of an indefinite global pandemic right at their doorstep and half grateful at the idea of a door to shield them from it, the residents on the other side were up and ready to start the day’s activities, children who could no longer go to school, strapped to their mothers’ backs. Petty traders began their daily commute to the markets, jumping in the back of pickup trucks; local cab drivers were cleaning their cars, ready to hit the road; private security personnel, handymen, deliverymen, shop girls – all scurrying past one another, oblivious to anything else but the thought of the day’s work.

Residents on the right watched this occur daily, both incredulous and angry.

‘What is so important that they cannot stay in their homes for two weeks?’ They would say to one another from their balconies, shaking their heads with trepidation.

And after a week, one of the residents whose genius was tremendously applauded made a huge post that read ‘Stay inside. We are only as strong as our weakest links.’ and planted it by the roadside. Another person in big red letters wrote beneath it ‘This is not a drill!!!’ By the next morning, the post had an extra line beneath it written in small black letters.

‘Hunger is not a drill, either’, it said.

“…The belly is an ungrateful wretch. It never remembers past favours, it always wants more tomorrow…”

Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn

Perhaps it was a fleeting desire to play god, perhaps it was a realisation that they indeed were as strong as their weakest links and as it was, their weakest link was so weak it was shaking, or perhaps it was simply the human instinct for self-preservation, but as a second stage of lockdown was announced and a restriction on movement was placed on everybody except persons providing essential services, the estate residents made a unanimous decision to hire some workers from the other side.

The workers did odd jobs cleaning, gardening, and fixing stuff. And the estate residents in turn ensured they were fed, and their hands constantly washed and sanitised.

“You pray for the hungry. Then you feed them. This is how prayer works.”

Pope Francis

This was a perfect arrangement until the infection scare. A resident had been in close physical contact with a confirmed case of Covid-19 and she, as well as everybody around her, had to self-isolate for fourteen days as per directive from the Centre for Disease Control.

And again as the human instinct for self-preservation kicked in and residents retreated wholly into their homes, nobody thought to ask what the concept of self-isolation meant for the other residents of the neighbourhood. How does one maintain a social distance of six feet from the next person, in a shanty that has a total land mass of less than a thousand feet, and a population of over five hundred adults and children living in one-bedroom apartments while sharing amenities?

The answer is simple – one does not.

As the city went through various stages of lockdown, and as social media, news stations, telecom providers, local celebrities, and community leaders joined the Centre for Disease Control in sending out information on preventive measures, social distancing, hand-washing techniques, and mask usage; and as discussion panels applauded the swift and widespread methods used in disseminating information on Covid-19 right down to rural areas and low income neighbourhoods, it became clear that the mere availability of information was irrelevant if a whole group of people cannot act upon it or carry out the instructions contained therein, not because they do not want to but simply because they cannot afford to.

A principle of Law I have always found fascinating is the Principle of Reasonability Test which is applied in trying to determine what an ordinary man in ordinary circumstances would do when confronted with a particular issue.

However, by virtue of class division and every other peculiarity associated with social class and privilege, the Reasonability Test becomes inherently flawed as one can never begin to envisage or even understand the decisions that other people make or fail to make for survival.

So when residents of the middle and upper class neighbourhoods turn their noses and say ‘we are only as strong as our weakest links’, they conveniently fail to realise that the weakest link is poverty and hunger, not bullheadedness, that would make their next-street neighbour look a global pandemic in the eye and say ‘Not today’.

Politics-2jfa28 August 2020Covid-19