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Edited by Francis Egbokhare
Adeshina Afolayan
Global Health,
Humanity and the
COVID-19 Pandemic
Philosophical and Sociological
Challenges and Imperatives
Global Health, Humanity and the COVID-19
Pandemic
Francis Egbokhare • Adeshina Afolayan
Editors
Global Health,
Humanity and the
COVID-19 Pandemic
Philosophical andSociological
Challenges andImperatives
ISBN 978-3-031-17428-5 ISBN 978-3-031-17429-2 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17429-2
© e Editor(s) (if applicable) and e Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature
Switzerland AG 2023
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e use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication
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e publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book
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Cover illustration: Jasmina007 Getty Images
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Editors
Francis Egbokhare
Linguistics and African Languages
University of Ibadan
Ibadan, Nigeria
Adeshina Afolayan
Department of Philosophy
University of Ibadan
Ibadan, Nigeria
v
Pandemics have always been a part of the world’s historical heritage.
From the rst series of plague pandemic—or the Justinian plague—of
541 to c. 767 down to the second plague pandemic—or the Black
Death—of the fourteenth century that killed between 75 and 200mil-
lion people, to the Spanish Flu of the twentieth century (that decimated
over a hundred million) and the HIV/AIDS pandemic that started in
1981 (that has so far killed over thirty seven million), humanity has
always battled unknown pathogens that were unleashed, sometimes as
the consequences of human activities under the auspice of the march of
civilization. Since the dawn of the twenty-rst century, scientists have
identied a new species of virus—severe acute respiratory syndrome-
related coronavirus (SARSr-CoV)—with the capacity to infect humans.
Two strains of the virus have been responsible for millions of deaths. e
rst one, SARS-CoV-1, manifested between 2002 and 2004, across about
29 countries, and led to over 800 deaths. e second strain, SARS-CoV-2
(also referred to as COVID-19), has had a worse impact than the rst
strain. Both strains were rst discovered in China from where they
became worldwide pandemics.
e emergence of pathogens has been simultaneous with the inexora-
ble civilizational progress of humans. And science and technology have
played the most fundamental role in the dening of the human world as
Preface and Acknowledgements
vi Preface and Acknowledgements
we have come to know it. Both have been borne by the epistemological
legitimacy that science constructed for itself as the template for human
knowledge, especially about the universe and its dynamics. And that tem-
plate has been consistently applied to societal understanding of human
activities, all to the deliberate sidelining of the humanities themselves. In
other words, the sciences have attempted to be humanitarian without any
consideration for the humanistic values and sensibility that derives from
the humanities. And from that disregard has emerged the horrors of the
atomic bomb, climate change and the tragedy of pandemics that have
transformed the human world.
Global health denotes the cumulative health prole of the entire global
population. It refers to the complex of not only the framework of
researches and practices that investigates and improves the health of all
people on the globe, but also the range of humanistic issues—economic,
cultural, social, ideological—that constitute the sources of inequities and
threat to the achievement of a positive global health prole. Pandemics of
all sorts in human history, including the recent COVID-19, have consti-
tuted the major threat to the framework of global health. Science can no
longer be scientistic in its explanation of the universe. And that depends
a lot on the humanities jettisoning its besieged mentality in order to be
able to take its pace besides science and technology in the understanding
of the world, and the appropriate monitoring of the progress of civiliza-
tion. It is the hope that this volume will serve as a space-clearing gesture
that will outline an interrogation of science through a humanistic analysis
of the COVID-19 pandemic and how a post-pandemic world would be
better with science walking side by side with the humanities in the recon-
struction of a new world order where dangerous pathogens are kept at bay.
In putting together this volume, we would like to rst appreciate all
the contributors who are united in their collective belief in the values of
the humanities and how they could be deployed to make the world bet-
ter. ey have patiently and assiduously committed themselves to mak-
ing this volume a reality.
Ibadan, Nigeria FrancisEgbokhare
AdeshinaAfolayan
vii
1 Introduction: Humanity and Disease Discourse 1
Francis Egbokhare and Adeshina Afolayan
Part I Humanistic Understanding of Disease 13
2 Toward a Fuller Understanding of the Enigma of Health 15
Peter Amato
3 Ubuntu and COVID-19: A Philosophical Reection 33
M. S. C. Okolo
4 Limits of Science-Based Approaches in Global Health:
Sociocultural and Moral Lessons from Ebola and
COVID-19 51
Samuel J. Ujewe
5 e Vaccination Mandate Debate Revisited 75
Peter Aloysius Ikhane
Contents
viii Contents
Part II Critical Framing of the Pandemic in Africa 95
6 An African Perspective on the Ethics and Politics of
Foreign Medical Aid in a Pandemic 97
Adeolu Oluwaseyi Oyekan and Ademola Kazeem Fayemi
7 Disease Discourses, African Knowledge Systems, and
COVID-19 in Senegal 123
Karen S. Barton, Jieun Lee, and Ivan J. Ramírez
8 Enulebo: Ethical Imperative of Yorùbá ought on
Eating for COVID-19- Related Crises 151
Adewale O. Owoseni
9 Epidemiology and an Epistemic Evaluation of the
Management of COVID-19 in Nigeria 171
Anselm K. Jimoh and Francis Ikhianosime
10 Borders, Boundaries, and Identities: Navigating the
Barriers to Solidarity and Cohesion in a Pandemic 197
Adeolu Oluwaseyi Oyekan and Wasiu Abiodun Balogun
11 Discourses of the Wandering Almajiri Child as
Representation of the (Post-)COVID Generation 223
Malami Buba and Mika’ilu Ibrahim
12 Quarantining the Holy Spirit: Africa and the Pentecostal
Economy of COVID- 19 Pandemic 247
Asonzeh Ukah
13 On Pandemic Planning and the Frontline Workers in
Nigeria 283
Damilola Victoria Oduola
ix Contents
14 Dialogism and Polyphony in the Interpretations of
COVID-19 Discourse in Zimbabwe 303
Tobias Marevesa and Esther Mavengano
Part III Representing COVID-19 327
15 Cartooning COVID-19 on Facebook 329
James Yékú
16 “It’s in Your Hands”: Communicating a Pandemic to a
Disengaged Public 353
Eyitayo Aloh
17 Musical Representations of COVID-19 on Social Media
Among Young People in Nigeria 373
Toyin Samuel Ajose and Jeremiah Oluwadara Omotayo
18 COVID-19, Food and Freedom to Worship: An Analytic
Approach to Nigeria’s Religioscape 401
Benson Ohihon Igboin
19 Analysis of COVID-19 Risk Communication and
Community Engagement on Social Media in Nigeria 427
Abiola I. Odejide and Olayinka A. Egbokhare
20 COVID-19 (Post)Proverbials: Twisting the Word Against
the Virus 461
Aderemi Raji-Oyelade
Index 483
xi
Adeshina Afolayan teaches philosophy at the University of Ibadan,
Nigeria. His areas of specialization include philosophy of politics, African
cultural studies and African philosophy. He is the author of Philosophy
and National Development in Nigeria (2018), a coeditor of the Palgrave
Handbook of African Philosophy (2017), Pentecostalism and Politics in
Africa (2018), Pathways to Alternative Epistemologies in Africa (2021), the
editor of Identities, Histories and Values in Postcolonial Nigeria (2021) and
the co-author of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti: Afrobeat, Rebellion, and
Philosophy (2022).
ToyinSamuelAjose is an ethnomusicologist with broad research inter-
est in Christian/gospel music in Nigeria/African Pentecostalism. His
research focuses on musical expressions in Prayer Mountain Spirituality
among Yoruba Pentecostals in Southwestern Nigeria, and Christian
music and social engagements in contemporary Nigeria. He holds a doc-
torate degree from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. He currently serves
as the Ag. Head of Department of Music, University of Ibadan, and also
the Director of Music at the Chapel of the Resurrection, University of
Ibadan. He is also the Public Relation Ocer of the Association of
Nigerian Musicologists (ANIM).
EyitayoAloh is currently an assistant professor (limited term) at Trent
University, Peterborough. His research focuses on the representation and
Notes on Contributors
xii Notes on Contributors
portrayal of Black/African Canadian Identity in Literature and Popular
Culture, and how immigration plays a role in shaping this representation.
He is particularly interested in how such representations are problema-
tized in humour and comedy productions in the mainstream Canadian
media. Aloh has authored four children’s books, contributed to poetry
and prose anthologies, and is a regular writer and columnist forNew
Telegraph newspaper, Nigeria. His research interest includes cultural stud-
ies (broadly dened but with a particular focus on Yoruba oral culture),
postcolonial studies and its cultural interpretations, masculinity, media
and communication studies and interdisciplinary studies.
Peter Amato teaches philosophy, politics and economics in the
Department of English and Philosophy at Drexel University in
Philadelphia, PA, USA.His areas of specialization include political phi-
losophy, ethics, phenomenology and Marxism. He also researches in the
history of Western philosophy and African philosophies.
WasiuAbiodunBalogun is a scholar of history, diplomacy, global energy
developments and maritime aairs. His current research focuses on energy
and maritime security challenges in West and Central Africa. Balogun had
his bachelor’s degree in History and Diplomatic Studies from Ogun State
University and a Masters in International Relations from Obafemi
Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria. He then moved to the Centre for
Energy Petroleum Mineral Law and Policy (CEPMLP), University of
Dundee, Scotland, where he obtained a Master of Science degree in
Energy Studies, specializing in Energy and the Environment. Balogun had
his doctoral degree in Energy and Maritime Security from the Department
of International Relations, Lancaster University, Lancaster, England.
KarenS.Barton is Professor of Geography, GIS and Sustainability at
the University of Northern Colorado. Her work focuses on Africa, com-
munity resilience and adaptation in marine and agricultural communities,
and global environmental change. With support from Fulbright and the
National Endowment for the Humanities, she recently published Africa’s
Joola Shipwreck: Causes and Consequences of a Humanitarian Disaster
(2020). Barton has led numerous expeditions abroad focused on conser-
vation and local communities, including Iceland, Peru, Nicaragua, Nepal
and Guyana. In 2022, she was selected as a fellow for Cohort 7 of
xiii Notes on Contributors
Homeward Bound, a global leadership initiative for women in science.
She currently serves as a fellow of the Explorers Club, the Royal
Geographical Society, and is the Co-President of the Fulbright Colorado.
She is also the president of the Society of Women Geographers, a group
formed in 1925 when women were denied entry into most professional
organizations. In September 2022, she carried the SWG’s expedition ag
to the oceanic site of the Joola disaster in memory of the 1863 individuals
who lost their lives.
MalamiBuba has been a professor in the Division of African Studies,
Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Korea, since 2016. Before then,
he was a professor in the Department of English Language and Linguistics,
Sokoto State University (Nigeria) as well as the Deputy Vice- Chancellor,
Administration, in the same university. He was also a professor in the
Department of Modern European Languages and Linguistics,
UsmanuƊanfodiyo University, Sokoto (Nigeria). He has held visiting
scholar positions in the USA (Indiana University, Bloomington),
Germany (University of Potsdam) and the Netherlands (Leiden
University). His recent publications include: “Hausa ‘Native’ Speakers
and the Racialisation of Knowledge Production” (2021) and “Look East”
and Look Back: Lessons for Africa in the Changing Global Order (2022)
Francis Egbokhare is Professor of Linguistics at the University of
Ibadan, a public intellectual and a former president of the Nigerian
Academy of Letters (NAL). His areas of specialization include ethics, lin-
guistics and syntax. He is the coeditor (with R.P. Schaefer) of A Dictionary
of Emai (2007), A Grammar of Emai (2016) and Class Marking in Emai
(2019). He is currently working on a dictionary of Nigerian Pidgin.
Olayinka Egbokhare is a senior lecturer in the Department of
Communication and Language Arts, University of Ibadan. She is also a
Commonwealth Rutherford Fellow. Her research interests cover media
eects, marketing communications, creative writing, literacy, gender and
health advocacy.
Ademola Kazeem Fayemi is a senior lecturer in the Department of
Philosophy, University of Lagos, Nigeria. He is a principal investigator at
the African Cluster Centre of the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence,
xiv Notes on Contributors
University of Lagos. He writes and lectures widely in African philosophy,
African Bioethics and African environmental ethics. Fayemi received
Global Excellence Postdoctoral Fellowship Award from the University of
Johannesburg in 2017 where he interrogated beauty by surgical and non-
surgical designs in sub-Sahara Africathrough an Afro-bioethical lens. He
won the 2020 Mark S.Ehrenreich Prize in Healthcare Ethics Research
for the African region, awarded by the Pacic Center for Health Policy
and Ethics, University of Southern California at the 15th World Congress
of Bioethics Virtual Conference for being the best paper from Africa pre-
sented at the Congress. Until recently, he was a research fellow, Moi
University African Cluster Centre of the Africa Multiple Cluster of
Excellence, Kenya. Fayemi’s current research is on developing a relational
framework for research ethics in African Studies.
Mika’iluIbrahim is a specialist in applied linguistics with interest in
discourse studies and early grade reading instruction in education sys-
tems. He coordinated international reading projects in Nigeria and is
currently the Education Adviser for Foreign Commonwealth and
Development Oce (FCDO). He was a technical advisor and lead on
Reading and Numeracy Activity (RANA) which aims at ensuring sus-
tainable reading practices and policies in Nigeria. In the academics, he
taught and conducted research on English language and reading instruc-
tion at Usmanu Danfodiyo University, Sokoto and Zamfara State College
of Education Maru, Nigeria.
BensonOhihonIgboin is Professor of Philosophy of Religion, Adekunle
Ajasin University, Nigeria. He is also an academic associate in the Research
Institute of eology and Religion, University of South Africa. His areas
of interest include philosophy of religion, African cultural values, African
Pentecostalism, among others. He is the editor of Corruption: A New
inking in the Reverse Order (2018), coeditor, African Pentecostalism:
Probity and Accountability (2019), e Mighty Temple of the Gods: A
Festschrift for Professor (Bishop eologian) Dapo F.Asaju (2021), Nigerian
Pentecostalism and COVID-19: Dynamics, Worship, and Creativities (2022)
and “I am an African” (2021).
PeterAloysiusIkhane holds a PhD in Philosophy from the University
of Ibadan, Nigeria, where he also lectures. He is presently completing an
xv Notes on Contributors
MSc degree in Bioethics in the Department of Bioethics and Medical
Humanities from the same university. His areas of research interest
include rationality and multilateral trade relations, rational choice theory,
decision theory, global health discourse, applied epistemology and African
epistemology. He is a co-editor of African Epistemology: Essays on Being
and Knowledge (2023).
Francis Ikhianosime teaches philosophy in the Department of
Philosophy, Seminary of All Saints, Uhiele-Ekpoma, Nigeria, with
research interests in social epistemology, contemporary philosophy and
metaphysics. Some of his publications in peer-reviewed books and jour-
nals include: “Levinas’ eory of Alterity and the Sketching of an
Epistemology of Otherness” (2018), “Prejudicial Dysfunctions, Epistemic
Practices and Priestly Formation: Anselm Jimoh and the Pursuit of
Genuine Knowledge” (2019), “e Metaphysics of Empiricism: Two
Dogmas of Empiricism Reexamined” (2021), “What Can a Woman
Know? Epistemic Bias as Depersonalization” (2021).
AnselmK.Jimoh is Professor of Philosophy with specialization in epis-
temology and a special interest in African epistemology. He is currently
the Head of Department of Philosophy, SS. Peter and Paul Catholic
Major Seminary, Bodija, Ibadan, Nigeria. He is the author of Certitude
and Doubt: A Study Guide in Epistemology (2017); Philosophy: A Guide for
Beginners (2021); Introduction to Existentialism, Phenomenology and
Hermeneutics (2014); “Reconstructing a Fractured Indigenous Knowledge
System” (2018); and many other papers inlocal and international peer-
reviewed journals. He is currently working on the prospect of a decolo-
nized African epistemology and African philosophy curriculum in African
universities.
Jieun Lee is a professional geographer and a faculty member in the
Geography, GIS and Sustainability Department at University of Northern
Colorado. Her research focuses on the intersection of urban environ-
ments, travel behaviour and community health. Her search focuses on
disparities in accessibility and health through the lens of social equity for
marginalized populations due to their income, race and ethnicity and
gender using various Geographic Information Systems and Sciences
(GIS) applications and geospatial analysis. Specically, her recent studies
xvi Notes on Contributors
explore interconnectedness between housing aordability and public
health crises such as mental health and COVID-19in Colorado. She has
published in journals such as Urban Studies, Journal of Urban Design,
the Journal of Urban Aairs, International Journal of Environmental
Research and Public HealthInternational Journal of Disaster Risk Science,
Spatial and Spatio-temporal Epidemiology and Behavioral Medicine. She
has also authored several book chapters—including in the Handbook for
Teaching and Learning in Geography and the Handbook of Global Urban
Health—and has published in the London School of Economics Urban
Centre’s Politics and Policy blog.
Tobias Marevesa is New Testament Lecturer in the Department of
Philosophy and Religious Studies, under the Joshua Nkomo School of
Arts and Humanities at the Great Zimbabwe University where he teaches
New Testament Studies and New Testament Greek. He is a research fel-
low at the Research Institute for eology and Religion, College of
Human Sciences, South Africa.He holds a PhD from the University of
Pretoria in South Africa. His areas of interest are New Testament studies
and politics, Pentecostal expressions in Zimbabwean Christianity, cul-
ture, human rights and gender-based violence. He has also published in
the area of New Testament studies and conict- resolution in the
Zimbabwean political landscape. He has attended and presented a num-
ber of papers in both regional and international conferences and has pub-
lished articles in reputable international journals.
EstherMavengano is Lecturer in areas of Linguistics and Literature in
the Department of English and Media Studies at Great Zimbabwe
University. She is also a research fellow at the Research Institute for
eology and Religion, College of Human Sciences, UNISA, South
Africa. She holds a PhD in Linguistics and Literary studies from the
University of North West in South Africa. Her areas of interests are
applied linguistics, discourse analysis, poetics and English as a Second
Language. She has published in these areas.
AbiolaOdejide is Emeritus Professor of Communication and Language
Arts, University of Ibadan, Nigeria. Her research interests are in commu-
xvii Notes on Contributors
nication skills development, gender issues in higher education, women in
the media and institutional cultures of higher educational institutions.
DamilolaVictoriaOduola is a graduate student in the Department of
Philosophy, University of Ibadan, Nigeria. Her areas of interest include
applied ethics, social and political philosophy and African philosophy.
M.S.C. Okolo is a lecturer at the Federal University of Agriculture,
Abeokuta, Nigeria. She studied Philosophy at the Universities of Calabar
and Ibadan. A Civitella Ranieri Fellow, she is the author of African
Literature as Political Philosophy, Philosophy: Contemporary Concerns in
Africa, and, Contesting the African Public Sphere. She also has several pub-
lished novels,and has contributed to many short story and poetry anthol-
ogies. Okolo’s research interests include philosophy and African literature,
political philosophy, and African identity. She is the recipient of
CODESRIA Doctoral Prize for Africa in 2005.
Jeremiah Oluwadara Omotayo is a junior research fellow in the
Political and Governance Policy Department, Nigerian Institute of Social
and Economic Research (NISER). He is currently a PhD student of
Political Sociology, Department of Political Science, University of Ibadan.
Omotayo has engaged in several political and social research studies
across Nigeria. As a public policy practitioner, he has engaged in the
consultancy and training of civil servants. He has contributed to schol-
arly articles on youth politics, federalism, security studies and peace and
conict.
AdewaleO.Owoseni holds a doctoral degree in philosophy from the
University of Ibadan, Nigeria. His research interests include African phi-
losophy, Animal and Environmental Ethics, Philosophy of Culture and
Development. He recently published a co-authored article titled “A
Complementarity Reection on Human Interest and Common Good in
Africa.”
AdeoluOluwaseyiOyekan holds a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in
Philosophy from the Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ago-Iwoye, and a
PhD in Philosophy from the University of Lagos. He has taught at under-
graduate and postgraduate levels in the Department of Philosophy, Lagos
xviii Notes on Contributors
State University, Ojo, Nigeria, and published peer-reviewed articles in
political philosophy, ethics and gender theory. He is currently a research
fellow of Identities and Social Cohesion in Africa (ISCIA) at the Nelson
Mandela University, Port Elizabeth, South Africa.
Aderemi Raji-Oyelade teaches Literature of the African Diaspora,
Literary eory, Creative Writing and NewMedia in the Department of
English, University ofIbadan, Nigeria. His scholarly essays have appeared
in journals including Research in African Literatures, ARIEL, Wasari,
Matatu and African Literature Today. His book Playful Blasphemies:
Postproverbials as Archetypes of Modernity in Yoruba Culture(2012) has
received acclaim as a seminal work in contemporary African studies. Raji-
Oyelade has won multiple literary and academic prizes, including the
ANA/Cadbury Prize (Nigeria), the Ford Foundation Research Grant
(USA), the West African Research Council Prize (West Africa) and the
Harry Oppenheimer Award (South Africa). He is the coordinator of the
multi-site, pan-African research project on the theory and practices of
postproverbials in seven African countries.
IvanJ.Ramírez is a geographer whose research focuses on the intersec-
tions of climate change, urban health, disasters and environmental jus-
tice. Using geospatial and community-based approaches, he seeks to
address health and social inequities across and between communities in
the USA and internationally. Current projects include El Niño-Southern
Oscillation impacts on malaria, ecosyndemics and syndemic vulnerabil-
ity in Colorado. His work is published in interdisciplinary journals such
as Weather, Climate, and Society, EcoHealth, International Journal of
Disaster Risk Science,Behavioral MedicineandSpatial & Spatio- temporal
Epidemiology. As a teacher, he is committed to diversity, equity and inclu-
sion, and cross-disciplinary environmental and public health education.
Ivan is a faculty member in the Department of Health and Behavioral
Sciences at University of Colorado (CU), Denver. He is also an aliate at
the Consortium for Capacity Building (CCB), INSTAAR at CU Boulder.
Ivan has a PhD in Geography from Michigan State University with spe-
cializations in Ethics, Development, and Community Engagement, and
an MA in Climate and Society from Columbia University.
xix Notes on Contributors
Samuel J. Ujewe is a researcher and expert in Bioethics and Health
Policy, especially global health ethics and policy, health research ethics,
healthcare ethics, ethics of clinical trials, ethics of infectious diseases and
international bioethics—with vast international experience in leading
ethics research teams and delivering on several ethics projects. He obtained
a First Class BA Hons in Philosophy from the University of Zimbabwe; a
Master of Health Sciences (MHSc) in Bioethics from the University of
Otago, New Zealand; and a PhD in Bioethics and Health Policy from the
University of Central Lancashire, United Kingdom. He is the coeditor of
Socio-cultural Dimensions of Emerging Infectious Diseases in Africa: An
Indigenous Response to Deadly Epidemics (2019). Ujewe is a fellow and sub-
faculty chair at the Global Emerging Pathogens Treatment Consortium
(GET-Africa), leading projects and research within the Cultural,
Anthropological, Social, and Economic Impact (CASE) Work Group.
AsonzehUkah is Professor of Christianity and African Religions in the
Department for the Study of Religions, University of Cape Town. He is
also the chair of Religious Studies and the director of a newly created
research unit, African Centre for Religion, Ethics and Society (ACRES)
at the same institution. He trained as a sociologist of religion and a histo-
rian of religion, and has taught in several universities in Africa and
Europe. With eldwork experience in west, east and southern Africa, his
research interests include Religious Urbanism, New Religious Movements,
Sociology of Pentecostalism and the Media. From 2014 till January 2022,
he was the director of the Research Institute for Christianity and Society
in Africa (RICSA); since 2019, he has been the Head of Department for
the Study of Religions, University of Cape Town, South Africa. He has
published extensively in internationally reputable journals in English,
German and Spanish.
JamesYékú is Assistant Professor of African and African American stud-
ies at the University of Kansas, where he leads the African digital humani-
ties program. He is the author of Cultural Netizenship: Social Media,
Popular Culture, and Performance in Nigeria(Indiana University Press),
and a book of poetry,Where the Baedeker Leads (Toronto).Yékúisa 2022
fellow at the Center for Advanced Internet Studies (CAIS) in Bochum,
Germany.
xxi
Fig. 7.1 Senegal’s COVID-19 cases by regions; COVID incidence
per 1000 127
Fig. 7.2 Map of Senegal and e Gambia. (Source: Jieun Lee) 130
Fig. 7.3 Percentage of elderly per region (>60) 135
Fig. 7.4 Sleeve Your Sneeze Grati 137
Fig. 7.5 Combat coronavirus postage stamp. (Le Poste 2020) 138
Fig. 7.6 October new case counts for Senegal post-Magal.
(Source: JHU CSSE COVID-19) 140
Fig. 7.7 Urbanization rates in Senegal 142
Fig. 12.1 A public message about COVID-19 (Photo: author 2021) 253
Fig. 12.2 A Public Service advertisement to curb religion-induced
vaccine hesitancy in South Africa (Photo: author) 264
Fig. 15.1 e Death Trap (Facebook) 337
Fig. 15.2 Flattening e Curve in Kano (Facebook) 339
Fig. 15.3 Masks of e Beast (Facebook) 341
Fig. 15.4 When Equity Forgets To Wash Its Hands (Facebook. https://
www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=102228671515
67898 &set=a.2058448341395&type=3&theater) 347
Fig. 19.1 Video types 436
Fig. 19.2 Type of message 437
Fig. 19.3 Identied sponsors 437
List of Figures
1
1
Introduction: Humanity andDisease
Discourse
FrancisEgbokhare andAdeshinaAfolayan
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it
was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of
incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the
spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.
—Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities (1859)
When Charles Dickens penned this famous opening statement of his
iconic novel, England was in the grip of a world-historic event.
Industrialization, as well as the impending revolutions in America and
France, was already fundamentally restructuring the social fabric of
F. Egbokhare (*)
Department of Linguistics and African Languages, University of Ibadan,
Ibadan, Nigeria
e-mail: fo.egbokhare@ui.edu.ng
A. Afolayan
Department of Philosophy, University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria
e-mail: a.afolayan@ui.edu.ng
© e Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023
F. Egbokhare, A. Afolayan (eds.), Global Health, Humanity and the COVID-19
Pandemic, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17429-2_1
2
Victorian England, and it had become so terrible that there was a serious
concern with the threat of gradual dehumanization. A Tale of Two Cities
therefore is a historical novel concerned with the problem of historical
dehumanization (Marcus 1976: 57). Dickens’ understanding of history
was catastrophic. us, the “haunted and contradictory” quality of the
opening paragraph attests to both the vision of that historical continuum
and the possibility of liberation from it. According to J. M. Rignall,
Dickens’ distinctive vision of history:
is a peculiarly grim one. As oppression is shown to breed oppression, vio-
lence to beget violence, evil to provoke evil, a pattern emerges that is too
deterministic to owe much to Carlyle and profoundly at odds with the
conventional complacencies of Whig history. Instead of progress there is
something more like the catastrophic continuum that is Walter Benjamin’s
description of the historical process: the single catastrophe, piling wreckage
upon wreckage. (1984: 575)
e London that is depicted in most of Dickens’ novels, and in A Tale of
Two Cities, is one that is already in deep misery, not only from what has
been called the “mysterious circulation of capital” (Robinson 2004: 76)
but also from the terrible spread of diseases that claim thousands of lives.
With capitalism and diseases, we arrive at the intention of Dickens
through the passage: a deep confusion about the inability to achieve a
neat certainty about one’s era. e contrastive literary framework
deployed in the famous paragraph also speaks to the contemporary period
caught in the awful grip of the coronavirus pandemic.
In terms of the urgency of nding a solution to the scourge of the
COVID-19, we can also reiterate that it is the best and the worst of times
for all of humanity. When an epidemic or a pandemic breaks out, it
aects not only the physical/biological congurations of humanity but
also its infrastructural fabric—social, economic, religious, nancial,
moral, relational, and developmental. e COVID-19, like all other pan-
demics in the history of humankind, has not only invaded the human
physiognomy and wrecked mortal and fatal havoc, but it has also brought
the global economies to the point of recession, transformed social think-
ing, initiated political maneuvers, generated mental health issues, forced
a rethinking of governance measures, and excavated the best and the
F. Egbokhare and A. Afolayan
3
worst in the human relational dynamics. In essence, this pandemic had
practically stopped humanity dead in its track. With global statistics of
over 636million cases, number of deaths at 6.61 million,and still count-
ing, and new variants of the coronavirus still threatening and killing, the
last two years, from 2020, has been humanity’s annus horribilis.
As has usually been the case with all the disease outbreaks in history,
the response to the COVID-19 pandemic has been largely reckoned with
in scientic terms. e World Health Organization (WHO), together
with global pharmaceutical giants and other health consortiums, has
been at the forefront of the massive and concerted global eorts to arrest
the tragic decimation of human populations by the virus. e search for
vaccines that will undermine the deadly drift of the virus began immedi-
ately. And success has been recorded in terms of the AstraZeneca,
Moderna, Pzer, Johnson & Johnson, as well as many other vaccines that
have been developed in record times to battle the scourge. ese vaccines
preceded other scientic infrastructures that led to the mapping of the
virus’ structure, the epidemiological understanding of its behavior, and
the containment of its spread. Indeed, it was so easy for science to step
into the breach of the pandemic scourge. Since the beginning of the sev-
enteenth century and the Enlightenment, the scientic worldview has
gradually evolved to the point of dening and determining the architec-
ture of the universe and all its components, including humans. With the
collective eorts of the Vienna Circle of logical positivists, the scientic
conception of the world gained a clearer and rmer foothold on the
world’s imagination. According to Otto Neurath, one of the most formi-
dable members of the Vienna Circle, the scientic world-conception is
characterized by two fundamental features: “First it is empiricist and posi-
tivist: there is knowledge only from experience, which rests on what is
immediately given. is sets the limits for the content of legitimate sci-
ence. Second, the scientic world-conception is marked by application of
a certain method, namely logical analysis. e aim of scientic eort is to
reach the goal, unied science, by applying logical analysis to the empiri-
cal material” (1973: 309). In other words, this scientic worldview, the
search for a unied science, springs from:
the search for a neutral system of formulae, for a symbolism freed from the
slag of historical languages; and also the search for a total system of
1 Introduction: Humanity and Disease Discourse
4
concepts. Neatness and clarity are striven for, and dark distances and
unfathomable depths rejected. In science there are no “depths”; there is
surface everywhere: all experience forms a complex network, which cannot
always be surveyed and can often be grasped only in parts. Everything is
accessible to man; and man is the measure of all things. Here is an anity
with the Sophists, not with the Platonists; with the Epicureans, not with
the Pythagoreans; with all those who stand for earthly being and the here
and now. e scientic world-conception knows no unsolvable riddle.
Clarication of the traditional philosophical problems leads us partly to
unmask them as pseudo-problems, and partly to transform them into
empirical problems and thereby subject them to the judgment of experi-
mental science. (ibid.: 306. Emphasis in original)
is scientic world-conception also oers what Wilfred Sellars regards
as the “scientic image of man-in-the-world.” And this image of humans
is constructed by science to overshadow what anyone would have mis-
taken for a naïve understanding of humans. Sellars contrasts between the
“manifest” and “scientic” images of man (both derived from an “origi-
nal” image of man-in-the-world).1 While the manifest conception of
man-in-the-world is “the framework in terms of which man encountered
himself” (2001: 476), it is dierent from the scientic image essentially
on the basis of deploying dierent scientic methodologies for under-
standing human. In other words, Sellars warns that in juxtaposing the
manifest image to the scientic, we should not make the mistake of
thinking we are comparing a pre-scientic understanding of man with a
more scientic understanding. On the contrary, according to him:
…what I mean by the manifest image is a renement or sophistication of
what might be called the “original” image…. us the conceptual frame-
work which I am calling the manifest image is, in an appropriate sense,
itself a scientic image. It is not only disciplined and critical; it also make
use of those aspects of the scientic method which might be lumped
1 By the “original” image, Sellars means a framework of reckoning, before the gradual unfolding of
civilization, within which all objects are perceived as persons and all kinds of objects constitute
ways of being persons. “is means that the sort of things that are said of objects in this framework
are the sort of things that are said of persons” (ibid.: 478). However, the renement of this original
image, which Sellars calls the “manifest” image, is characterized, with the advancement of civiliza-
tion, by the “de-personalization” of all objects other than persons.
F. Egbokhare and A. Afolayan
5
together under the heading “correlational induction.” ere is however one
type of scientic reasoning which it by stipulation does not include, namely,
that which involves the postulation of imperceptible entities, and princi-
ples pertaining to them, to explain the behavior of perceptible things.
(ibid.: 476)
What is then called the scientic image of humans emerged from
many integrated images deriving from several sciences which then deter-
mines itself to be “a complete image, i.e., to dene a framework which
could be the whole truth about that which belong to the image” (ibid.:
484). It is therefore just a little step from this conception of the scientic
image as a complete image to its understanding as a rival to the manifest
image. And the logic becomes almost unassailable: if the scientic image
constitutes a complete image of man-in-the-world, then the manifest
image must be, by that fact, “an ‘inadequate’ but pragmatically useful
likeness of a reality which rst nds its adequate…likeness in the scien-
tic image” (ibid.: 484). Unfortunately, to reject the manifest image,
argues Sellars, is for the scientic image to reject its own foundation since
the postulational idealization of the scientic image of man-in-the-world
is constructed on a foundation taken from the manifest image itself. In
other words, for Sellars, we can assume that “the categories of a theoreti-
cal science are logically dependent on categories pertaining to its method-
ological foundation in the manifest world of sophisticated common sense
in such a way that there would be an absurdity in the notion of a world
which illustrated it theoretical principles without also illustrating the cat-
egories and principles of the manifest world” (ibid. Emphasis in original).
But then, it is not just the grounding of the positivistic understanding
of science in the methodological omnipotence of the scientic method
but most importantly the epistemological arrogance of science being the
only mode of genuine knowledge that facilitates the construction of the
scientic image of the world and of humans. Scientism speaks to the
assumption that science is the best and even the only legitimate means by
which knowledge could be deployed for material and social progress. In
Jurgen Habermas’ words, scientism constitutes “science’s belief in itself:
that is, the conviction that we can no longer understand science as one
form of possible knowledge, but rather must identify knowledge with
1 Introduction: Humanity and Disease Discourse
6
science” (1971: 4). e fundamental questions faced by scientism and
the scientic image of humans, which underlies this entire volume and its
adjudication of the rift between science and the humanities in the under-
standing of global health and the COVID-19, are as follows: can humans
be scientically conceived in strictly neurophysiological terms? Or is
there an irreducible core to the understanding of human that goes beyond
its description as a mere scientic specimen? Wilfred Sellars provides a
fundamental and even transcendental argument that takes humans away
from the descriptive specimen-tation of the scientic image into the
intentional framework of being in community of meaningful discourse.
According to him, “To say that a certain person desired to do A, thought
it his duty to do B but was forced to do C is not to describe him as one
might describe a scientic specimen. One does, indeed, describe him, but
one does something more. And it is this something more which is the
irreducible core of the framework of persons” (ibid.: 495). To be a person,
that is, is to be construed as being within the communal context with
other persons, a context of a “we” that imbues the person’s actions and
deeds with intentions and meanings.
However, such a proper specication of persons within the scientic
image seems out of sync with what that image demands. e epistemic
arrogance underlying scientism is founded on the disdain for what Hans
Radder sees as “the reexive Kantian question of the general conditions
of the possibility of scientic knowledge” (2009: 62). For positivism to
have arrived at science’s self-appraisal of its own epistemic signicance, it
needed to circumvent the possibility of an external reexivity. is made
it impossible to interrogate science “within the horizon of possible and a
priori reected knowledge” (1971: 71). Positivism’s understanding of the
supremacy of science arose out of the funeral pyre of the “perceiving and
judging subject” (ibid.: 73). Essentially, however, it is human actions that
constitute the condition that makes scientic knowledge possible.
Habermas argues that,
Science can only be comprehended epistemologically, which means as one
category of possible knowledge, as long as knowledge is not equated either
eusively with the absolute knowledge of a great philosophy or blindly
with the scientistic self-understanding of the actual business of research
F. Egbokhare and A. Afolayan
7
(Forschung). Both equations close o the dimension in which an epistemo-
logical concept of science can be formed—in which, therefore, science can
be made comprehensible within the horizon of possible knowledge and
legitimated. Compared with “absolute knowledge” scientic knowledge
necessarily appears narrow-minded, and the only task remaining is then
the critical dissolution of the boundaries of positive knowledge. (ibid.: 4)
Indeed, for Habermas, communicative action—the condition for the
possibility of the humanities—serve ultimately as the platform from
which scientic knowledge can be critically interrogated. It therefore
takes little reection to see how the scientism that rejects the self-
reexivity demanded by philosophy2 will equally reject the imperatives of
the humanities. It is this rejection of reection and the conditions that
make it possible that create the epistemic dissonance between science as
scientism and the humanities. With this seemingly unassailable scientic
conception of the world, and the epistemological strength of scientism
that ows from it, humanities seems to go deeper into crisis. And that
crisis seems accentuated by the near invisibility of the humanities in any
consideration of the search for a cure for the COVID-19 pandemic.
e crisis of the humanities today, accentuated by capitalism’s redeni-
tion of pedagogical relevance for worldly progress through the emergence
of the STEM—science, technology, engineering, and mathematics—cur-
riculum, is deepened by the scientized understanding of higher education
across the globe. And this has severely undermined the signicance of
humanistic values in contributing to the conversation of humankind.
Eric Adler makes a convincing argument:
e triumph of the sciences would spell serious trouble for humanism. e
latter, after all, foregrounds the wisdom of the past as the means to shape a
student’s character. e sciences, by contrast, promote the creation of new
knowledge. And the dominance of the scientic outlook in higher educa-
tion has turned the modern humanities distinctly un-humanistic…. Our
scientized universities focus almost exclusively on what the great humanist
2 Indeed, Habermas argues that scientism makes possible the eacement of epistemology for the
emergence of scientic knowledge. In other words, “Positivism is philosophical only insofar as is
necessary for the immunization of the sciences against philosophy” (ibid.: 67).
1 Introduction: Humanity and Disease Discourse
8
Irving Babbitt called humanitarianism: the drive to improve the material
conditions of the world. ey desperately require a balancing emphasis on
humanism: the drive to improve the self. Bereft of the humanities, educa-
tion only accomplishes half of what it should. We cannot, of course,
improve the world if we cannot improve ourselves. And the humanities
cannot thrive without the spirit of humanism. (2020)
Unfortunately, the humanitarianism-without-humanism template of the
scientized response to the coronavirus pandemic has denitely not atten-
uated the numerous consequences of the pandemic, from vaccine nation-
alism to the anti-vaxxers, and from the accentuation of racial inequalities
to the relationship between thepandemic and underdevelopment. We
cannot even begin to talk about a search for a universal scientic panacea
that overlooks the contextual reactions to the coronavirus. And this
becomes a critical issue in the face of the underlying ideological dynamics
that already divides the world along several doctrines and ideologies.
Indeed, the COVID-19 was initially recognized in racial terms as the
“Wuhan” or “Chinese” virus. And Africa, as the famous “diseased” conti-
nent, has had its fair share of innuendos and references in relations to this
virus and with diseases in general.3 Even though the World Health
Organization has spearheaded the scientic response to the resolution of
this crisis, it is already clear that a universal vaccine will get bogged down
in ideological and pecuniarywarfare fought on several fronts. Essentially,
COVID-19 instigated an all-encompassing human development catas-
trophe that magnied horizontal inequalities across and within countries.
Gender, income, class, and racial dynamics became very signicant in
mapping the unequal power relations that the pandemic exhumed.4
Populations groups and their unique physiological congurations, for
3 In April 2020, two French doctors, Dr Jean-Paul Mira and Camille Locht, the research director
for France’s National Institute of Health and Medical Research, stirred ideological controversy
when they suggested that the BCG tuberculosis vaccine that was about to enter into trials as a
potential treatment for COVID-19 be tested in Africa, “where there are no [face]masks, no treat-
ments and no ICUs.” Even though the suggestion was met with a swift and angry global reaction
(the director-general of WHO saw it as “a hangover from a colonial mentality”), the doctors’ sug-
gestion coheres with a historical trajectory that takes Africa and the rest of the developing third
world as an experimentation laboratory.
4 See Carolina Rivera etal. (2020), William Mude etal. (2021), and Maitrayee Chaudhuri (2021).
F. Egbokhare and A. Afolayan
9
instance, have demonstrated why the deployment of universal vaccines is
ill-thought-out. e gender, structural, and health inequalities that the
pandemic reinforced attest to this.
ere is also the signicant issue of how vaccination infringes personal
freedoms. e anti-vaccine activism suggests the reaction against vaccina-
tion is not just an issue of ignorance about the dynamics of vaccination
or the ecacy of vaccines. On the contrary, the twenty-rst century vac-
cine resistance has a deeper root. According to Kenneth Rochel de
Camargo, Jr., we can track this resistance at three levels. Two are signi-
cant here. e rst has to do with the “misapprehensions of the risks of
both vaccinating, which are overestimated, and not vaccinating, which
are underestimated” (2020: 2). But the second reason is even more fun-
damental in the age of the Internet. And this has to do with the anti-
establishment sensibility of anti-vaccine activism, tied to a deep distrust
of traditional science and medicine, and especially the big connection
between big pharma and big business (or big pharma as big business).
us, “Distrust of everything that concerns medicine is often associated
with the idea that only economic interests, often undisclosed, are the sole
determinants of the decisions of health specialists” (ibid.). Vaccine resis-
tance, in this sense, therefore takes on a postmodern ideology—“hostility
towards singular truths; aversion to scientic objectivity; and decreased
trust in expertise” (ibid.). To put in a broader perspective, a signicant
part of vaccine hesitation and resistance has a lot to do with an argument
about whether the state has any right to intervene in the health prole of
her citizens.
us, as the entire world continue to grapple with the pandemic, new
issues are beginning to emerge, while old ones are becoming more accen-
tuated and aggravated. What is the relationship between science and
non-science? How do the humanities feature in the search for a global
health prole for humanity? What is the nature of scientic truth? How
are such truths to be eectively communicated to the general populace?
What is the role of faith and hope in health crisis? What is the relation-
ship between scientic engagement and political negotiations? And how
do the humanities mediate the two? How does the world handle the con-
sequences of what has been called “vaccine nationalism” as well as the
ideological modulation of causes, consequences, and resolution of health
1 Introduction: Humanity and Disease Discourse
10
crises? e COVID-19 pandemic has, for instance, given the fake news
phenomenon (i.e., infodemic) a new and even more critical and danger-
ous dimension. It has not only exacerbated the distinction between what
is fake and real; it has also brought to stark perception the possible eects
of an incomplete understanding of the pandemic situation by the scien-
tic community itself. e profusion of the various conspiracy theories
thus critically undermines the legitimacy of scientic truth, as well as
generating new challenges for an eective communication management.
In other words, the separation between science and the cost of informa-
tion gaps in engaging with the populace leads to the deep crisis of manag-
ing the crucial information ow within the acceptable ambit of censor
and control.
e humanities have therefore been challenged to play a fundamental
role in looking for an all-encompassing “vaccine” for curbing and elimi-
nating a virus that has invaded the physiognomy of humanity and has
endangered global health and the future of human well-being. e
humanities are concerned with humanity in all its manifestations. ey
study human frailties and human achievements. ey also investigate the
nature of the human spirit as well as its capacity and elasticity in the face
of existential diculties. For the humanities, a pandemic becomes a mea-
sure of the human spirit in the face of an existential challenge. It therefore
stands to reason that not only this pandemic but also a post-COVID-19
human society cannot be imagined outside of the prism provided by the
humanities. Scientism’s false hope of being the only legitimate epistemic
prism into the human world has been belied by its struggle to adequately
contain the myriads of consequences, both scientic and non-scientic,
that pandemics, and especially the COVID-19, have ooaded on
humanity.
is volume explores the possible responses of the humanities to the
challenges posed specically by the COVID-19 pandemic and generally
by global health crises. Its twofold objective is to interrogate (a) the
neglect of the humanities in the overreliance on epidemiological models
(often situated within the cultural dynamics of a supposed center) in the
search for an amelioration of the eects and consequences of the
COVID-19 pandemic and (b) the reluctance of the humanities them-
selves to weigh in on the behavioral and attitudinal prescriptions that
F. Egbokhare and A. Afolayan
11
could lead to the understanding and evaluations of global health issues.
e volume samples analyses from humanities scholars and disciplines
that enunciate models, strategies, insights, methodologies, and discourses
that can enlighten our understanding of pandemics, the ongoing search
for a resolution of this crisis and the prevention of others, as well as other
issues involved in the management of global health.
References
Adler, Eric. 2020. Scientism, the Coronavirus, and the Death of the Humanities.
OUPblog, October 30. https://blog.oup.com/2020/10/scientism- the-
coronavirus- and- the- death- of- the- humanities/.
Camargo, Kenneth Rochel, Jr. 2020. Here We Go Again: e Reemergence of
Anti-vaccine Activism on the Internet. Cadernos de Saude Publica (Reports in
Public Health) 36 (2): 1–8.
Chaudhuri, Maitrayee. 2021. COVID-19 and Structural Inequalities: Some
Reections on the Practice of Sociology. Sociological Bulletin 70 (2): 252–258.
Habermas, Jurgen. 1971. Knowledge and Human Interests. Translated by Jeremy
J.Shapiro. Boston: Beacon Press.
Marcus, David D. 1976. e Carlylean Vision of ‘A Tale of Two Cities’. Studies
in the Novel 8 (1, Spring): 56–68.
Mude, William, Victor M.Oguoma, Lillian Mwanri TafadzwaNyanhanda, and
Carolyne Njue. 2021. Racial Disparities in COVID-19 Pandemic Cases,
Hospitalisations, and Deaths: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis.
Journal of Global Health 11. https://doi.org/10.7189/jogh.11.05015.
Neurath, Otto. 1973. Empiricism and Sociology. Edited by Marie Neurath and
Robert C.Cohen. Dordrecht: D.Reidel Publishing Co.
Radder, Hans. 2009. Science and Technology: Positivism and Critique. In A
Companion to the Philosophy of Technology, ed. Jan Kyrre Berg Olsen, Stig
Andur Pedersen, and Vincent F.Hendricks, 61–65. Malden, MA: Blackwell
Publishing.
Rignall, J.M. 1984. Dickens and the Catastrophic Continuum of History in A
Tale of Two Cities. ELH 51 (3, Autumn): 575–587.
Rivera, Carolina, Yu-Chieh Hsu, Fernanda Pavez Esbry, and Esuna Dugarova.
2020. Gender Inequality and the COVID-19 Crisis: A Human Development
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default/les/gendercovid_nal.xlsx.
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12
Robinson, Alan. 2004. Imagining London, 1770–1900. London: Palgrave
Macmillan.
Sellars, Wilfred. 2001. Philosophy and the Scientic Image of Man. In Analytic
Philosophy: An Anthology, ed. A.P. Martinich and David Sosa, 473–496.
Malden, MA: Blackwell Publisher.
F. Egbokhare and A. Afolayan
Part I
Humanistic Understanding
of Disease
15
2
Toward aFuller Understanding
oftheEnigma ofHealth
PeterAmato
It has been frequently observed of the Great Irish Famine of 1845–1852
that “a mold caused the blight, but political-economy caused the famine.”1
At least a million people died, and perhaps an equal number emigrated as
a result of the famine according to some estimates (Woodham-Smith
1962; Bloy 2015). Although the tiny mold Phytophthora infestans directly
killed potato plants, not humans, the tragedy of the famine illustrates
how social institutions and political-economic relations may greatly
1 I paraphrase the oft-quoted statement of John Mitchel, a contemporary observer of the famine
that, “e Almighty, indeed, sent the potato blight, but the English created the Famine” (Daly
1997: 596). According to Daly, Mitchel is regarded by historians as linking the famine directly with
British political-economic policies in Ireland (595). Bloy (2015) endorses Mitchel’s remark insofar
as successive British governments “did little to help the Irish population.” In her now classic study,
Cecil Woodham-Smith is more direct: “All this wretchedness and misery could, almost without
exception, be traced to a single source—the system under which land had come to be occupied and
owned in Ireland, a system produced by centuries of successive conquests, rebellions, conscations
and punitive legislation” (1962: 20).
P. Amato (*)
Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA, USA
e-mail: peterama@drexel.edu
© e Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023
F. Egbokhare, A. Afolayan (eds.), Global Health, Humanity and the COVID-19
Pandemic, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17429-2_2
16
magnify a biological hazard. ere are many lessons of the COVID-19
pandemic, many related to this general truth we have always known—
that no person’s health or illness is ever just a biological issue. e major
theme I take up here is how, despite knowing this, it nevertheless often
appears from how we talk about, think about, and act toward the pan-
demic and other public health issues that we nevertheless believe that it
is. In the theory and practice of medicine in the pursuit of health, we
seem convinced that the institutional conditions and relations that struc-
ture the world we share with viruses, bacteria, and each other play only a
minor role in our actual experience and knowledge of health and illness.
And this is despite the fact that we know, and have perhaps always known,
that their role is quite large. e pandemic has forced this paradox upon
us with new urgency the world round—we kinda know but are unwilling
or afraid to face up to the implications of the ways individual and social
health are not merely interwoven but mutually determining. We keep
being shown signs of how deeply everyone yearns for and deserves a
return to normalcy, despite the exposure of its mortal dysfunction.
e idea that “medicine isn’t just biology” is not new, particularly from
the standpoint of the discipline of public health, and especially with ref-
erence to the limits at which a rigorously scientic approach to health
must give way to “softer,” “alternative,” or “humanistic” approaches. But
if, on the most general level, medicine is the promotion of individual
bodily or spiritual health, simply pursuing that aim with determination
leads sooner or later to the threshold of public health whether one is
ready to cross into it or not. Yet even where the social dimensions of indi-
vidual health are forced into view, deeper-lying problems in thinking
about ourselves and how we “know” anything that characterize modern
science remain. e health sciences as a whole are responsible for an enor-
mous amount of lifesaving work, and many lives depend directly on the
expertise and energetic work of public health professionals. Nevertheless,
to a signicant degree, the public health perspective responds to some of
the biggest gaps in modern health science without challenging its under-
lying assumptions, which has the eect of deferring rather than improv-
ing our understanding of health.
e occasion for this reminder is the current global calamity the
human race nds itself in the midst of even after at least a million
P. Amato
17
deaths—about half in my country, the USA. Although much smaller
than the mold spores that spread the potato blight, the COVID-19 novel
coronavirus has attacked our entire species directly. Like the mold, it
found humans woefully unprepared. From my vantage point, the public
discussion and international debate about ghting the pandemic have
mostly been about logistics and math. How distant should people remain
in enclosed spaces? How fast can we vaccinate people? Who should be
rst? How do we measure the eectiveness of the vaccines? When will the
risk be low enough that we can open up restaurants and stop wearing
masks? When can the children go back to school? When can we get back
to normal? It is common for the news in the USA to cite the grim statistics
showing how poverty, racism, sexism, and inequality are manifest in the
COVID-19 death and illness reports. It is quite rare however for them to
facilitate any discussion of these conditions themselves as part of the
“health” equation, as fundamental to what is undermining “health.”
I am interested here in why there isn’t a lot more to talk about concern-
ing the pandemic than math and how we are even able to think about
health—in this case public health—without following to the next logical
set of concerns that are essential to it, which are broadly of a political-
economic, ethical, and humanistic nature. Why isn’t a health crisis of
these proportions as such a moral and humanitarian crisis—not simply a
matter of logistics to master via technology but a matter that makes a
claim upon us as persons to restore our own and others’ wholeness or
integrity? I am focused here on the health sciences as an institution and
the ways of thinking about health that dominate it. I want to discuss and
illuminate something about what it means to be “scientic” about human
health right now because, following Hans-Georg Gadamer’s critique, I
think there is a way we have become blind to dimensions of “health” that
we know are there, that are in plain sight, but that we refuse to recognize
and acknowledge the implications of.
Although countless physicians, nurses, healthcare workers, caregivers,
and public health authorities in municipalities, states, and countries
around the world have been truly heroic in this time of calamity, the
issues raised here help to account for some of the institutional obstacles
that have arisen to undermine their intentions and eectiveness in saving
lives and giving comfort. Many became patients and casualties of
2 Toward a Fuller Understanding of the Enigma of Health
18
COVID-19 themselves in part as the result of institutional obstacles
rooted in the historical reality of modern science and its distorted think-
ing about health and medicine. I believe the pandemic has shown how
unclear thinking and bad ideas sometimes have swift and deadly reper-
cussions. Again, this is not something we did not know, but it is the kind
of truth it takes a certain kind of care and careful work to remind our-
selves is true—and to fully work out the implications of.
With more than three million dead and counting, after one year of the
COVID-19 pandemic, and the eects of global warming making them-
selves increasingly felt worldwide, it may be more obvious than ever in
human history that a thorough-going, far-ranging critical rethinking of
major global institutions is necessary if humans are to ourish and per-
haps if we are even to survive on the planet much longer. Gadamer does
not call for such a response to “the enigma of health,” but I believe he
illuminates compellingly how modern science distorts our thinking and
confounds our hopes related to “health” and “illness.” In what follows, I
develop some themes from Gadamer’s e Enigma of Health: e Art of
Healing in a Scientic Age in order to show how his thinking can help us
emerge from the crisis and trauma the world is presently enduring with a
fuller understanding of what “health” is and greater prospects for more
people to live healthier lives in the future.
In the preface which begins Gadamer’s collection of essays entitled e
Enigma of Health: e Art of Healing in a Scientic Age, he emphasizes the
limits of science and its role in the larger whole of society. At the close of
the twentieth century, science and technology have developed “astound-
ing” technical capacities that have not been “integrate[d] into the social
and political order as a whole,” leaving the “humanitarian optimism
which animated the eighteenth century” unfullled (Gadamer 1996:
viii). We have learned from physics of limits to what can be measured in
the physical universe. In the case of health, an object whose study is
inseparable from the conditions experienced by human subjects, more
caution would seem warranted, yet science and technology have reinter-
preted the experience of health for modern humanity in ways that distort
and undermine it.
Some of the warranted caution we nevertheless hear in the way we still
talk about medical treatment. Despite the overwhelming inuence of the
P. Amato
19
modern scientic approach and the idea of expert knowledge as guiding
in matters of bodily health in particular, we call the physician’s profes-
sional activity a “practice” and consider its exercise to involve a degree of
“art” involving judgement and discretion (Gadamer 1996: 18–19). Yet,
even prior to its transformation by modern science, medicine was always
an “unusual art.” Unlike any other, the aim of the art of healing is not to
produce or make something but rather to maintain or restore a kind of
natural equilibrium. Its essence, Gadamer says, is to “re-produce” and
“re-establish” a natural state (1996: 32). is means that unlike all other
arts and modern science, the basic virtue of the art of healing is its capac-
ity to carefully listen and recognize how and when to support and assist
nature and how and when to get out of its path. e art of healing takes
place fully within processes of nature that the experts, despite their
knowledge, do not control. Nature, not human artisans or technology,
does the healing work. e art of healing is an eort of seeking to restore
natural processes which have been disrupted (1996: 34).
The Strange Art ofHealing
To characterize the moment of health to which the art of healing responds,
Gadamer oers a series of approximations using images taken directly
from literature and philosophy—demonstrating what, in a sense, has
been forgotten in and of the history of the art of healing in their eclipse
by scientic methods. e three images Gadamer presents in “Apologia
for the Art of Healing” also link his thinking on these topics to his wider
philosophical views. ey connect his thinking about the art of healing
with the central motif of dialogical engagement through which a truth is
disclosed and articulated in language. Each is focused on a dierent
aspect of the dialogical circumstance.
In the rst of these images, Gadamer explains Rilke’s idea of the deli-
cate movements of the acrobat toward and away from the point at which
balance is achieved (1996: 36). is is seen as illuminating the moment
of health as the equilibrium that emerges suddenly in the exercise of the
physician’s art. It is not achieved by making or producing something new,
or by creating a new space or time in which to balance, but substantially
2 Toward a Fuller Understanding of the Enigma of Health
20
by getting out of the way of the forces and inuences that could other-
wise knock the acrobat o the tightrope. What the physician knows is
somehow like what the acrobat in balancing does without thinking: the
forces in play cannot be and are not removed or overwritten in accom-
plishing the desired result. e knowledge that is valuable is knowing
when to let things take their course. e contrast with the usual way we
think of art and technology as engaged in step-by-step production of its
object is palpable in Gadamer’s account of the aptness of Rilke’s
description:
[T]he concentrated eort involved in producing and maintaining equilib-
rium suddenly proves itself, at the very moment when balance is attained,
to be the opposite of what it seemed to be. For if the balancing act were to
go wrong, it would not be because physical force or power was lacking or
too little was exerted, but rather because there was actually too much force
in play. But when the act works, suddenly everything seems to happen
spontaneously, lightly, and eortlessly. (Gadamer 1996: 36–7)
is almost reverse eort makes the art of healing a “strange art” that
foregrounds the idea of health as a moment at which exertion must be let
go of rather than as a product or eect created from the application of the
physician’s craft or skill. Yet “health” has been besieged for centuries now
by the development of modern health science, by which it has been radi-
cally re-described. What matters for it is the assertion of the powers and
means of control accessible to the physician through the knowledge of
cause and eect. What matters for it is the reformulation of health into
the kind of object that may make itself available to scientic method,
quantication, experiment, and calculation. Once the experience of heal-
ing has been reduced to these, what is left of the moment of health that
is not “treatable” or “operable” in terms of the scientic method is not
signicant and cannot matter any longer to the physician.
How distorting the health science approach is to the experience of
health as a moment is further illuminated with reference to one of the
most important and familiar images in Gadamer’s work, that of the
Gestaltkreis or the hermeneutical circle (1996: 38). Gadamer’s unidenti-
ed ancient text presents an image of the practice of tree-sawing as an
P. Amato
21
illustration of the character of the art of healing. “As one partner draws
the blade the other follows in concert, so that the whole sawing process
constitutes what Viktor von Weiszacker calls a Gestaltkreis, an internally
unied conguration in which the respective movements of the two tree-
cutters fuse to become a subtle rhythmic ux of movement” (Gadamer
1996: 38). e equilibrium aimed at by the art of healing is and emerges
through an integrated multilateral dialectic. ere is no need to imagine
the tree-cutters sawing away eternally to maintain the metaphor, but the
use Gadamer wants to make of the image is unmistakably both as a model
of the equilibrium of health and of the art of healing. It is an image of
health in being like the play in which the players are lost or submerged in
response and reaction to one another’s moves, in which the back and
forth we saw with Rilke’s image of the acrobat is central to the complex
reality of the experience and movement of teetering, so to speak, in and
out of health. It is also an image of the physician’s treatment: the art of
healing is like the whole movement of the tree-cutters in that the patient’s
situation and health condition in a sense envelops and submerges physi-
cian and patient in a solicitous whole in which the receptive openness,
care, and delicacy of both “tree-cutters” are essential to supporting, sus-
taining, and maintaining the movement at or near the moment of bal-
ance—the “unied…single rhythmic ux of movement” Gadamer
previously characterized as something like the calm eye of a storm. I take
this to suggest that we should see health as a dynamic and dialectical state
of being which engages the medical practitioner. e physician isn’t merely
standing at the side disinterestedly holding the acrobat’s safety net or
handing them weights to make them heavier or lighter on one side so as
to create a new balance of a new type on a new level. e physician isn’t
forcing, prescribing, or directing the tree-cutting, as the ancient text
observes/warns: should the cutters “employ violent force, then they will
utterly fail” (1996: 38).
As Gadamer would have it, the art of healing reects something real
about health, that this strange art can succeed only as a dialogical activity
that engages physician and patient in the right way because health is itself
a dynamic status: “Hence, the particular solicitude of the doctor who
must continue to respect the equilibrium which persists in spite of all
disturbance and must stay attuned to the natural process of that
2 Toward a Fuller Understanding of the Enigma of Health
22
equilibrium, just like the tree-cutter in our example” (1996: 38). And the
activity of the art of healing occurs among and between humans—unlike
the tightrope example—so it is within language and thus has the mean-
ingful aspect that moves toward mutual comprehension and the emer-
gence of the truth of a subject matter—it is a Gestaltkreis, a moment in
the emergence of a truth through a kind of dialectical movement that is
best exemplied in actual dialogue. e integration that is health now
shows itself to necessarily include the individual alongside and with oth-
ers—both in the treatment aimed at health and in being healthy.
Gadamer’s interpretation of the tree-cutting example and Rilke’s acro-
bat on the tightrope show us something about health and about health-
care. But they also show in practice how the work of humanistic rendering
allows a subject matter to be articulated and understood that starts as
something reader and writer know and do not know at the same time. In
Plato, this takes the form of Socrates as one for whom the method of suc-
cessive approximation, often through myth, allegory, and metaphor, cap-
tures a substantial aspect of our approach to truth in language. In Plato,
as in Gadamer, this activity of allowing the truth to emerge through a
kind of back and forth dialectical or dialogical work can be presented
through many images, some of them more apt for some purposes and in
relation to some experiences than others. e point is that Gadamer
wishes the reader to see both in what he says and how he says it the
marked contrast with modern science in relation to the truth about health
and about healthcare. Health is an integration that marks a kind of equi-
librium at various levels at which we might say health exists, in which
dierent aspects of our being and experience “hold together” in normally
unproblematic ways. ese include aspects of the person and their rela-
tions with other persons, and their relations with social and political
institutions. e key notion is that health and healing refer to larger
wholes to which they belong.
is integrative dimension becomes more explicit in the nal pages of
“Apologia for the Art of Healing” in which Gadamer introduces Plato
directly. e passage of Phaedrus “illuminates the predicament of the
physician who possesses this ‘science’,” i.e., the Health Science of today,
which still bears historical connection to the ancient art of healing, but
which has forced it into the mold of modern science (1996: 39). e
P. Amato
23
analogy Plato has Socrates draw between the art of rhetoric and the art of
medicine makes the point that neither can be eective at accomplishing
its goals if it is unable to understand its subject matter as belonging to a
whole from which organically its own essence derives. In the art of heal-
ing, this means diagnosis and treatment cannot be reduced to simply a
task of bringing particular symptoms in a particular case under a general
rule, as they quickly become for health science. In the context of ancient
medicine:
…all possible climatic and environmental factors were seen to make up the
concrete ontological constitution of what it is that the physician helps to
restore, namely health….e nature of the whole includes and involves the
entire life situation of the patient, and even of the physician…[T]he consti-
tution of the body passes over into the constitution of the human being as a
whole…In this sense Plato’s suggestion that the true physician, like the true
rhetorician, must take the whole of nature into view remains valid.
(Gadamer 1996: 42 emphasis added)
From Mathesis toAnamnesis
Gadamer’s Phaedrus reading suggests that anamnesis might be a valuable
concept in thinking about how we bring the nature and meaning of
health to awareness—which under normal conditions remains in con-
cealment and hidden. It also suggests an idea of diagnosis that would be
dialogical and integrative as opposed to the quantifying, externalized,
detached, and abstract logistical kind of interrogation we are forced to
endure within the regime of health science. To this view, a kind of dia-
logical anamnesis would be a way of bringing to language a previously
inarticulate sense of dis-ease or illness or disharmony. Even keeping with
Gadamer’s focus on the unconcealment of health, the hermeneutical
moment Gadamer introduces links his critique with illness through the
image of diagnosis as a process like anamnesis in which the physician
plays the role of a solicitous, attentive midwife.
Gadamer’s rendering of Plato’s “true physician” of Phaedrus makes this
image clearer, as it is this physician who performs in diagnosis an activity
2 Toward a Fuller Understanding of the Enigma of Health
24
linked to Gestaltkreis, which emphasizes receptivity, dialogue, sustenance,
and solicitude in assisting the re-emergence and restoration of equilib-
rium. e result of diagnosis gathers or recollects not something literally
“forgotten” but something that is inchoately “known” in the bodily or
spiritual sense. What can be and is brought to language in the process is
the person’s recognition of the contrast between their unthought experi-
ence of health and their current status of feeling in the problematic state
presenting as illness, anxiety, or dis-ease. Diagnosis in this sense is a fun-
damentally linguistic dialogical activity of bringing to words from within
another person the inchoate truth “known and not known” or un-
reected upon and unpacking it through the process of examination. e
physician’s art in this sense is an attentive and solicitous activity of inter-
rogative Socratic midwifery that attempts to discover something about
the patient’s condition by articulating it and bringing it to
conceptuality.
I wish to press Gadamer here in that along with the image of diagnosis
modeled on a kind of Socratic examination comes the prospect of an
interrogation/examination of history and collective experience through
narrative, artistic, and cultural forms that so often are the repository of
the experience of trauma, oppression, violation, and suering. e idea
of the Gestaltkreis as a model for the sustenance of health as an equilib-
rium and also in the particular image of the diagnosis of the “true physi-
cian” raises these prospects. Along with the gathering and collecting that
allows the discovery and articulation of what is “known/unknown” into
something new brought to language is the experienced personal, social,
and historical dimensions of suering beyond the immediate bodily
sources of acute and chronic physical and mental trauma.
e ability of diagnosis to bring the condition of the “patient” to rec-
ognition respects only the limits set by the questioning art of the physi-
cian. e old sophistical paradox that “A student is able to learn only
what they already know to look for” is used by Socrates in Meno to show
how anamnesis makes it possible to conceptualize how a large proportion
and possibly all of our nontrivial learning in life is more like working out
the implications of things we kinda know already than it is really a matter
of placing into the mind something utterly foreign to it as Meno or as
empiricism would have it. My point here is that the true physician would
P. Amato
25
not set arbitrary boundaries to this learning encounter. In it the individu-
als engaged in diagnosis would be expected to follow the logic of how
they were exposed to a deadly disease because the city was not counting
janitorial sta as essential that week and as a result did not provide them
with any personal protective equipment, until the Union threatened to
strike, but then it was too late for them, or how their chronic degenera-
tive physical condition is related to living on the streets while working
two jobs for starvation wages that oer no healthcare, etc. Our broader
social need for and implication in one another’s lives—which we take for
granted and which may be concretely what persons undergoing diagnosis
for immediate and acute symptoms are most suering the loss of, and
through which are most directly suering their diminution of health—
also may come to articulation and recognition in this process through
their telling their stories if it is not arbitrarily prevented. In other words,
Gadamer’s discussion of health here may provide the basis for a kind of
social recollection that could be fundamental to a form of institutional
critique that ows more naturally from his thinking about health than
Gadamer would probably have allowed.
e least we can say is that if Gadamer is correct about health and his
notion of health can provide the basis for a critique of current theory and
practice, then pursuing the aim of health begins with a kind of conversa-
tion that involves putting questions to ourselves and to others with whom
we are in a kind of dialogue about the most important and dicult
aspects of experience. If the unexamined life is not worth living, it also
isn’t healthy, since it takes a kind of inward-looking interrogation assisted
by maieusis to sustain and support the kind of equilibrium, balance, and
integrity we hope for. I would add that the self-critical moment necessar-
ily implies a broader outward-looking critique of the social and political-
economic circumstances in which we live, as they are organically and
logically inseparable from the health of individuals. e unexamined life-
world is not worth living in. But we may further argue that Gadamer
should accept this idea if it can be seen that this kind of collective anam-
nesis is really just what we call the humanities.
is diagnosis of the body politic is a kind of “remembering” the his-
tory of everything human including oppression, disenfranchisement, and
trauma, an activity of recovering by examining and interrogating our
2 Toward a Fuller Understanding of the Enigma of Health
26
humanity. It is the recovery of what is known/unknown in the bodies and
experience of healthy and suering persons. It is essential to human
health and requires the testimony of the arts and humanities. is is just
what Gadamer said the true physician knows, that the more carefully one
focusses on the health of one, the more we are led beyond to nd they are
a subject that belongs to a totality that is greater than the sum of its many
bodies; it leads inevitably to political-economic collectivities and forms of
life. Modern science can only say “yes” at this level. Healthcare as such
must learn how to say “no” to unhealthful forms of life. It must stop
apologizing for and marginalizing individual scientists and medical prac-
titioners who try to do so. It must signicantly increase the amount of
humanistic study the practitioners of health sciences have real access to at
every level of education. Health science must become healthcare and
declare independence from the global system of economic incentives that
puts prots in the driving seat rather than care.
is leads us back to thinking about the pandemic and the health sci-
ence response. e vaccine is not a cure for the underlying diseases the
virus has exposed. For the urgency to abolish the deadly virus is the
urgency to abolish the conditions that have made this virus so deadly. e
underlying disease of our disintegrated state, our detachment, and mutual
disinterest made the tiny virus into a global killer pandemic. And we
know this—much of the world’s people cannot avoid the reminder every
day that the richest people in the world bargain away their lives and
futures, about which they care very little. And there are many, perhaps
most of us rich who are less than completely deluded about the fact of
widespread poverty, hunger, disease, and hopelessness in the world.
Normalcy. So, these truths, if not evident to all, are in our minds and
bones already. ey are truths about which we exert ourselves insu-
ciently. is is the truly critical diagnosis that might be gleaned from the
current state of our health sciences in general as the result of the pandemic.
P. Amato
27
Science, Health Science, andtheHumanities
e idea of an integrated dialogical experience of health and healthcare
that I have developed here, with an eye toward Gadamer’s conception of
health as a kind of equilibrium, also has deeper roots in the development
and transformation of phenomenology that occurred through the philo-
sophical tradition of his immediate predecessors in phenomenology,
Husserl and Heidegger. In a sense, this notion of integrity is most directly
related to Gadamer’s idea of the humanities as a cultural tradition, which
takes Husserl’s idea of tradition a step further and closer to practice than
Husserl would. e conception of humanistic tradition reects the depths
of the linguistic dimensions phenomenology sees in history and practice.
From such a position, the powerful yet problematic situation faced by
objective-scientic discourse arises from its home within and without the
activity of speaking, which is always situated within history and language.
It struggles to remove itself but cannot do so.
Gadamer suggests that natural scientic discourse tends to obscure
these practical bases: “[T]he dismantling and reconstructing of every-
thing that is which is carried on by modern science represents simply a
particular domain of expansion and mastery…of what exists,” in pursuit
of which natural science “has and always will come up against a claim of
comprehension in the face of which it must fail—and indeed which it
should forego” (Gadamer 1986: 12). at is, modern natural science
emerges as a discourse unique in being primarily oriented toward an
existing, ongoing practical history. is is seen in the tendency of natural
science to generate—and police—the illusion of its own self-subsistence
as knowledge: “[T]here is implied in every theory of science itself the idea
of self-justication, which compels it to go beyond itself…. Hence,…phe-
nomenology undertook to elucidate the constitutive concepts of the nat-
ural experience of the world [Lebenswelt] that antecedes scientic
methodology” (1986: 162–3). As a stance toward practice, modern sci-
ence is at least disinterested and detached and always potentially subver-
sive with respect to language and its own lifeworld, within which
(nonetheless) lie its power, its justication, and also its limit or downfall.
2 Toward a Fuller Understanding of the Enigma of Health
28
Natural science arises as an abstract totalization of the world of practi-
cal engagement that, for Gadamer, it is able at best to re-arrange and
constantly re-describe. e world modern science encounters is always
already arranged through language, but it displaces language by mathe-
matics and so appears to do more than that. Science is, thus, “unthink-
ing” and “wordless” and forgets the primordial refusal of speech from
which it draws its powers. It thus speaks, asserts, and justies in a sense
outside language, upon which its power is premised (1986: 3). But this
does not mean modern science must only be seen as having negative
impacts on our humanity because we are able to reimagine scientic dis-
course in a way that would counteract the displacement of language:
Just as our total experience of the world presents a process of coming to be
at home that never comes to an end—to speak with Heidegger—even in a
world that appears ever more strange because it has been all too changed by
ourselves; so, too, the exigence for a philosophic account of things is an
unending process. In it is realized not only the conversation which each of
us conducts with ourselves in thinking but also the conversation in which
we are all caught up together and never cease to be caught up.
(Gadamer 1986: 20)
is is the humanistic tradition to which we have been referring through-
out—and it is our principal means not only of understanding ourselves,
but also it is essential if we are to understand our understanding of our
bodily, mental, and spiritual health, which includes science. In speaking
of our “dismantling and reconstructing” of the world, we return to that
conversation which recognizes and does not displace for practical exi-
gences our being within language and within nature.
Gadamer suggests we abandon the idea that scientic or any discourse
escapes language. Natural science is a peculiar conversation in need of
situating itself within a more integrated space, more realistically and
comprehensively in relation to society and language:
[T]he traditions within which we stand—and every tradition that we cre-
atively or appropriatingly pass on—oer less an objective eld for the sci-
entic mastery of a subject matter or for the extension of our domination
by knowledge of the unknown than a mediation of ourselves with our real
P. Amato
29
possibilities engulng us—with what can be and what is capable of hap-
pening to and becoming of us. (Gadamer 1986: 166–7)
Conclusions
For Gadamer, “health” is a state of being whole, a kind of balance or
integrity like an equilibrium, and this is what makes it enigmatic, in its
way: Health is the unexamined and unreective status of living being,
and in this sense, it is unproblematic and requires no reection or inter-
rogation. Yet, our experience of the world and of the humanistic tradition
shows that this balance or calm is also constantly falling away from us in
time. Our natural status is not simply to maintain equilibrium inde-
nitely but to die. Gadamer knows this, but it is important to observe that
his viewpoint here has been that of life’s enduring and thriving, and not
its precarity and vulnerability—the constant tendency of all living things
to disintegrate. If this is also a natural part of our condition, solicitude or
“letting be” is not only a potential moment of healing, calmness, and
restoration but also a real and equally natural moment in which life is
engaged in a dynamic struggle to sustain an equilibrium it will eventually
lose utterly. Bodies and minds that aren’t nourished and exercised tend to
fall out of equilibrium. It is not surprising that Gadamer would concern
himself so little with this side of the equation in developing the theme of
how health science reects a distorted notion of what it can accomplish.
Nevertheless, paying attention to it can help make his point and take it
further as I have suggested above. For our awareness of the vulnerability
and precariousness of our lives is in some ways the essential insight
expressed and retold in the world’s traditions of the arts and humanities.
To the extent that this may be right, health, far from a purely biological
issue, is more consistently “treated” over the course of one’s lifetime
through the vitality of one’s experience in connection with living tradi-
tions of culture, mythology, storytelling, conversation, literature, art,
expression, etc. Nourishment comes in many forms essential to health.
ese include provisioning of food and shelter but also the many ways
humans share, express, and acquire education, recognition, armation,
nurturance, solicitude, acceptance, inclusion, and all the ways we express
ourselves, desire and feel ourselves to be heard and understood.
2 Toward a Fuller Understanding of the Enigma of Health
30
I contend that this means Gadamer’s conception of health as a kind of
equilibrium, or what I have been calling integrity, orients us toward a
state that must not be mistaken for inertia. In life as social creatures, the
equilibrium (health) of each individual reects the vitality of their total
social environment, implicit in Gadamer’s broader idea of the humanities
as a tradition we advance historically through encounter, engagement,
criticism, and questioning. I conclude from this that authentic health
practices such as Gadamer suggests would resist the distorting tendencies
of modern health science but will only ever partially restore integrity
(health) unless they also address a patient’s larger social context in trans-
formative dialogical engagement. In this sense, many who are “healed” of
or prevented from getting COVID-19 are not thereby and to that extent
“intact” insofar as they may be more deeply entrenched in relations with
others that are “sick” even though personally and bodily, they may be
“healthy” or at least, for now, do not have the virus.
Finally, despite being currently an almost universally expressed desire,
a restorative return to pre-COVID normalcy would not be conducive to
health. ere is a sense in which this paradox can now be reformulated as
a Catch-22: the more we nd ourselves threatened by the immediate
danger of personal exposure to the disease, the more we are forced to
embrace a normalcy that exposes us to more deadly dangers. Framing it
this way may make it easier to see how escaping from the virus as an
immediate and tractable personal threat can be entrenching the more
profound and global but less tractable irrationality we the privileged may
have come to accept or deny.2
Gadamer’s equilibrium idea of health can be thought of as expressing
the central importance of normal functioning, but while this reinforces
Gadamer’s conception of health as restorative balance, it also shows its
limits. e normal is what has allowed a small controllable pest to become
a deadly global killer. e desire for (simple) restoration or return is not
so unlike the yearning of the refugee to return home despite the realities
2 In other words, at this point, the Catch-22 is “resolved” by either denying there is a dilemma at all
(doublethink) or ignoring the larger problem by declaring it to be “intractable” (quietism, cyni-
cism, etc.). A related choice between cynicism and doublethink is rationalization, well-known in
the psychological literature on cognitive dissonance, wherein I preserve my sense of being a ratio-
nal, honest person by explaining away the signicance or reality of one side of the dilemma.
P. Amato
31
that made them ee, or the false but palpable nostalgia for an abusive
family life one might feel all the more intensely the further and freer one
becomes from its source, which becomes a fetish, an ersatz totality. In
cases like these of real emotional contradiction, health is served by con-
frontation with realities less abstract than those of science, which address
us with the clarity and concreteness of human voices. All this does not
suggest that more humanistic research and study should be added on to
the existing framework of health sciences education. Rather, it recom-
mends that humanistic study and research should continually nourish an
ongoing, unending, thorough-going, all-embracing reconsideration of
who we are and who we hope to become through the work of healing,
considering that “art” in the fullest sense as requiring the diagnosis, treat-
ment, and care of our social institutions as much as of our persons, in the
full sense of integrity, while welcoming the prodigal modern science back
from its present state of alienation.
Practically, the sketch of a critique outlined here suggests not the aban-
donment of medicine and public health as reductive health sciences but
their expansion as forms of knowledge and practice under the reorienta-
tion of theory and practice toward an integrated and—dare I say—holistic
perspective. Health science must be seen as a department of health ser-
vice, or healthcare, whose aim, as Gadamer suggests, can no longer be
conceived of as the production of t working bodies and well-adjusted
minds as if commodities but, instead, as the personal and social freedom
and full social and historical ourishing of those served, to all of whom as
truth they belong.
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Gadamer, Hans-Georg. 1986. Reason in the Age of Science. Cambridge, MA: MIT.
———. 1996. e Enigma of Health. California: Stanford University Press.
Woodham-Smith, Cecil. 1962. e Great Hunger: Ireland 1845–1849. London:
Harper and Row.
2 Toward a Fuller Understanding of the Enigma of Health
33
3
Ubuntu andCOVID-19: APhilosophical
Reflection
M.S.C.Okolo
Introduction: TheNeed
foraPhilosophical Intervention
e emergence of the coronavirus disease has entered into and re(dis)
arranged every aspect of human life. e pandemic has not only raised
concerns about the extent to which hitherto-taken-for-granted human
activities (touching the eyes, nose and mouth, hugging, handshake and
visiting, among others) are no longer viable, and in some cases have
become the enemies of humans, but have also fueled discussions and
forced immediate changes in human actions and behaviour. Businesses,
schools, conferences and church activities among others are conducted
online. e new language is “Stay home and stay safe”.
ese overt issues are, however, not the only crises humanity is grap-
pling with due to the outbreak of COVID-19. ere are crises in values,
new fears, anxiety, depression, disarranged mental attitude and the need
M. S. C. Okolo (*)
Department of Communication and General Studies, Federal University of
Agriculture, Abeokuta, Nigeria
© e Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023
F. Egbokhare, A. Afolayan (eds.), Global Health, Humanity and the COVID-19
Pandemic, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17429-2_3
34
to develop the appropriate critical response that can be applied in helping
humanity come to terms with the pandemic and its post-era. It is for this
reason that this chapter takes a critical look at the concept of Ubuntu.
My interest in Ubuntu is premised on, at least, three claims: First, there
is the need to position the dening concern of our time as the recognition
that all nations of the world should contribute, should have a say in issues
of global concern. e second is that embedded in Ubuntu is a world-
view that can help humanity not to wander too far from their human-
humane- essence. e third is that Ubuntu will provide the needed anchor
if all human activities will not fall prey to a techno-centric world—a world
dened, shaped, understood, dissected, maintained, protected, valued,
sustained and driven solely by the dictates of technology.
e point is not to challenge the medical value of the various preven-
tive measures (social distancing and personal hygiene, among others)
stipulated for containing the spread of COVID-19 but to enquire into
the eectiveness of those measures for all cultures, the way these measures
are aecting the way we think and relate to others and, especially, the way
they will continue to inuence the way we think and our actions when
the pandemic is over. As such, highlighting the essential values embodied
in Ubuntu is not just to register a philosophical enquiry but to under-
score, at least, three vital points. First is to delineate Ubuntu as a funda-
mental concept that typies philosophy’s own concern with the
fundamentals of existence as captured in philosophy’s quest to imbue
humans with a sense of value to live a meaningful and purposeful life.
Second is to show how Ubuntu can open up a new and better under-
standing of reality by revealing how humans can approach a new prob-
lem. Finally, it is to highlight the crucial role Ubuntu can play to a
renewed appreciation of philosophy itself as a constant, critical explora-
tion into whatever issues that are confronting humanity. Besides, it is
dicult to discuss a novel pandemic that is redening human activities
without recourse to philosophy and the foundational role it plays in the
understanding of other disciplines and all issues pertaining to humanity.
By examining Ubuntu in connection with COVID-19 and its fallouts,
the chapter aims to show what Ubuntu can oer to the arrangement of
human interactions that can be useful in the management of the ongoing
COVID-19 crises and its post-era.
M. S. C. Okolo
35
Ubuntu
Ubuntu is derived from two Bantu words “Ubu”, which suggests the
notion of being in general, and “ntu”, the particular entity or the concrete
expression of being. Ubu and ntu, as such, provide a fusion for the ade-
quate conceptualisation of the totality of what it means to be truly human
(humane, caring, looking out for each other, protecting, nurturing, pro-
moting and sustaining one another). Ubuntu, then, represents the inter-
connectedness and interdependency of humanity. In other words, one’s
real humanity is rooted in his communion with others. Without such
union, a person can only live the life of an outcast or, at best, exist at the
peripheral of existence. To conceive any other sense and way of appre-
hending humanity, that is, a human that is atomistic and can stand alone
outside the humanity of others implies being inhuman both in the sense
of not having regards for the humanity of others and not being human
(Mkhize 2008: 40). Represented aphoristically, Ubuntu means “I am
because we are, and since we are, therefore, I am” (Mbiti 1970: 141).
Ubuntu, for Desmond Tutu (2011: 21–24), “is the essence of being
human”. According to him, the Xhosa expression Umuntu ngumuntu
ngabantu, which represents Ubuntu, could be best translated as “A person
is a person through other person”. Our existence has no relevance until it
is legitimised “through our recognition of others” and validated through
“the collective presence of all”. For this reason, “the solitary human being
is a contradiction in terms”. Ubuntu “speaks of how my humanity is
caught up and bound up inextricably with yours”. It is the opposite of
Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am” because it arms “I am because I
belong”. To be human is to “need other human beings” for this is the
quality that ultimately distinguishes people from animals—“the quality
of being human and so also humane”, so says Tutu. Fundamentally,
Ubuntu “endorses the principle or value of humanness and takes the
ontological essence of beings as the prime mover within the universe or
‘community of beings’” (Etieyibo 2017: 634). Reduced to its essence, a
person attains her wholeness through other people (Matolino 2011), not
as a rigid subject, but as a dynamic self-constitution dependent on the
otherness (Eze 2010).
3 Ubuntu and COVID-19: A Philosophical Reflection
36
It should be noted, however, that there are many dierent (and at
times opposed) denitions of what Ubuntu is (Praeg 2017: 494–495).
is chapter treats Ubuntu as a philosophical concept that premises the
value of humans to live a meaningful and purposeful life through recog-
nising, practising and sustaining the universal bond of cooperation that
unites all humanity. At a deep level, the ontological essence of beings
which Ubuntu endorses is both what denes humans or humanity and
connects them together (Etieyibo 2017: 634). Ubuntu is, therefore,
opposed to the Western conception of personhood, against the notion of
an atomistic self-sucient individual, and completely shuns any attempt
to propagate an existence that is not rooted in the life of others. It is this
communal tie, this ceaseless owing into the life of others, that give
authenticity to an individual’s existence and equips her with the necessary
wherewithal to weather life’s unending challenges: be it Biafra-Nigeria
civil war, Rwandan genocide, Zimbabwe after Mugabe, apartheid and
post-apartheid South Africa or a pandemic like COVID-19. Indeed,
Ubuntu has served as a guiding ideal in many challenging moments: it
was adopted as the political ideology that can carry the weight of dier-
ences and conicts that characterised the transition to majority rule in
Zimbabwe and South Africa. Ubuntu, then, oers a platform for human-
ity to come together, to participate and to respond to a common global
challenge as posed by COVID-19. By examining it in connection with
COVID-19 and its fallouts, the chapter aims to show what signicant
contribution Ubuntu can oer to the arrangement of human interactions
that can be useful in the management of ongoing COVID-19 crises and
a post-pandemic era.
COVID-19: ABrief Summary
e coronavirus disease 2019, also known as COVID-19, came to the
world’s attention with its emergence in Wuhan, China, in late December
2019. By the end of January 2020, it has spread to most countries of the
world, necessitating the WHO to declare it a pandemic on 11 March
2020. According to medical experts, it is highly transmissible. Its primary
mode of transmission is mostly via respiratory droplets from an infected
M. S. C. Okolo
37
person over a short distance such as when the person sneezes, coughs or
vomits. If the hands come in contact with these droplets, it can be trans-
mitted through contact with the eyes, nose or mouth. ere are also
asymptomatic patients who are able to transmit the virus. is imposes
more challenge in the ght against the disease. Although there have been
major breakthroughs in terms of the development of vaccines, the prob-
lem is still far from being over. ere are still not enough vaccines to
protect everyone. ere are still many critical questions: how eective are
the vaccines against a reoccurrence of COVID-19? Does getting vacci-
nated guarantee immunity from the disease for life? Evidence-based
answers to these questions can only be available with time, and how long
that will take is dicult to conjecture. What is known is that as of 16
March 2021, more than twelve countries, mostly in Europe, had sus-
pended the use of AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine over fears of health
issues suered by some of the recipients. Even though the World Health
Organization assures that the vaccine is safe, it has done little to alleviate
the fears.
Based on above and given the highly contagious nature of the virus,
rigorous measures are required to mitigate its spread. Among the strate-
gies include hand hygiene; social distancing; isolation; strong bans on
gatherings; closure of schools, churches and businesses; mandatory stay-
at- home orders; and lockdowns. ese have resulted in fears, anxiety and
loneliness for most people. ere is also strong emphasis on not visiting
the elderly as they are classied as belonging to the vulnerable popula-
tion. One good reason for this is that the “early death cases of COVID-19
outbreak occurred mainly in the elderly, likely due to a poor immune
system that allows for faster viral infection progression” (Tazib 2020: 5).
ese measures employed by governments to combat the spread of the
virus, especially the lockdowns, have dealt massive blows on the economy
of most nations. e resultant eect is that the attention of government
across the world is turned to reviving ailing economies caused by
COVID-19. is concern, however, leaves out the fears, anxiety and
loneliness—and issues of mental health, generally—that the pandemic
has forced on a lot of people. It is, therefore, vital that a balanced approach
that both caters for the material needs of humans and at the same time
takes care of their non-material needs, such as caring for each other,
3 Ubuntu and COVID-19: A Philosophical Reflection
38
sharing and duty among others, is embraced. With Ubuntu, the dilemma
between saving lives and reviving the economy and jobs ceases to exist.
Ubuntu resolves both issues on a common dialectic by placing them in
an interdependent relationship with each other since both concerns have
the best interest of humans at the core. It is imperative, then, that
Ubuntu’s message is championed and promoted to provide balance for
humans who need more than material results. By demonstrating our
interdependency, Ubuntu both underscores COVID-19’s essential les-
son—how interconnected we are—and promotes values that can help
combat societal distress occasioned by the pandemic and how we can get
through the crises together.
Analyses
What is the purpose of bringing Ubuntu and COVID-19 together in a
philosophical reection? COVID-19 is a new virus that has come to
redene the way humans should interact due to its highly transmissible
nature. Ubuntu, as already shown, embodies the interconnectedness and
interdependency among humans. To begin with, there is need to con-
stantly examine our life: what are the problems facing humanity, how did
they come about, what responses should address them and how can the
results be sustained? Socrates cautioned more than two millenniums ago
on the futility of the unexamined life. e need for a philosophical reec-
tion on Ubuntu and COVID-19 is to sustain the tradition of critical
enquiry into issues aecting humans and their world as well as to usher
new ways of thinking, of setting priorities and approaching life.
Let us begin by rst enquiring into the “approved” measures for com-
bating COVID-19 and how best to negotiate a ourishing post- pandemic
life. A specic example will do in this regard. One of the measures spelt
out for the prevention of COVID-19 is the “stay-at-home” order with an
additional mandate that elderly people should not be visited during the
pandemic as they are more susceptible to the virus. is may well be
medically correct. Let us, however, briey reect on an elderly person—
who in some cases is no longer able to do anything for herself—left alone
to cater for herself. What will become of such a person? In states, like
M. S. C. Okolo
39
those in North America and Europe, with proper documentation and
well-developed social welfare system, the government will know of the
existence of such a person, and given the fact that the ban on visitation is
issued by the government, there will be adequate provision made for the
protection and sustenance of such an elderly person. e reverse will be
the case in underdeveloped states, like those in Africa, without documen-
tation and poor or in most cases non-existent social welfare. In such soci-
eties, the elderly and people living with severe disabilities depend on their
families for survival. eir lives, in a sense, more than anything else, are a
testimony to the truth of the core value of entering-into another person’s
life, caring and sharing, which Ubuntu represents. What will be the fate
of an elderly person in Nigeria, for instance, in the face of messages that
promote stereotypes about the virus which allow discrimination and, in
some cases, prevent us from the truth about ourselves—an uncaring atti-
tude is easily hidden under the cover of “no visit”?
From the foregoing, while such a preventive measure can adequately
cater for an elderly European, the opposite is the case for an elderly
African. In preaching the same safety precautions and in accepting and
implementing the same preventive measures, African countries overlook
the fact that there cannot be a uniform solution to a problem. Indeed,
instead of accepting the Western solution in the handling of the elderly,
COVID-19 oers a unique opportunity for Africa to position Ubuntu as
a more viable alternative in the caring of elderly people. e subjection of
the European elderly to social welfare and other technologies of care is
not an adequate substitute for the human and familial connection as
embodied in Ubuntu. For instance, the Western attitude of consigning
the elderly to old people’s home fundamentally undermines the essence
of belonging to a family: a unit bonded in love and devotion and “bears
the primary responsibility for fullling the psychic and emotional needs
of its members” (Nolan and Lenski 2004: 278). is, however, does not
imply that African countries should not have disaster preparation in
place. is will act as a guide in knowing what preventive models to
accept and which to rework. How this issue is handled can show how the
dynamics of globalisation and localisation actually play out.
Based on the above, it is important that the response to the pandemic
does not conform only to the European understanding, interpretation
3 Ubuntu and COVID-19: A Philosophical Reflection
40
and recommendation about safety precautions because as Mogobe
Ramose (1999: 33) reminds us, “[t]he European enterprise … was a phil-
osophical urge to impose and universalize sameness …”. is will no
doubt forestall the slipping into what Ernest Wamba dia Wamba (1992:
67) refers to as “the social epistemology of domination”. is is a perni-
cious framework which, for him, Africans urgently need appropriate
philosophical paradigms which are capable of refuting and dislodging it.
is is not an unreasonable observation if we remember that “[w]e are in
a new world of cyberspace” shaped by “the breakup of the USSR, the end
of the Cold War, and the cybernetic technological revolution” in which:
Russia and China had reformed and opened up their economies. It is a new
world of convergence of the Western libertarian ideas of democracy and
free enterprise. It is a skewed and non-neutral, but metamorphosed impe-
rial philosophy of … Eurocentric conception of “reality, knowledge, and
truth” that is now masquerading as human rights, good governance,
democracy, and best practices in conict resolution among individuals and
between nations. (Dauda 2017: 478)
Indeed, the pandemic has positioned this “new world of cyberspace” to
inltrate every aspect of human activity and take over the control. e
online platform is the new face of doing business and the favourite candi-
date for future human interactions. COVID-19 is pushing humanity to
the edge where human life can be rationally controlled and ordered,
down to the very last detail. Accepting the Western solution to
COVID-19, and, especially, the subjection of almost all human activities
to the dictates of the cyber world, helps to further entrench the “social
epistemology of domination”. By positioning Zoom meetings, webinars
and Google classrooms, among others, as the best solution, African val-
ues of caring and sharing, which Ubuntu represents, are gradually eroded
and replaced with the Western concept of clinical interaction. is is a
limited approach. To reduce human experience to what science and tech-
nology can achieve is to discountenance the essence of Ubuntu and, by
extension, philosophy in human experience. is will amount to maxi-
mum blunder as both Ubuntu and philosophy help humans to make
sense of their experience and how to achieve the good life. Helen Lauer
M. S. C. Okolo
41
(2017: 541) reminds that “[f]rom a problem-solving perspective, having
many alternative approaches outclasses having only one”. e Oxford
Professor of Medical Ethics, Dominic Wilkinson, argues that “[t]here
isn’t a single right answer, it depends how you weigh up your choices. You
need to distinguish between a number of things” (University of Oxford
2020). He further cautions that “science cannot tell us what values we
should put weight on. ese are ethical decisions—not scientic ones …”.
As such, while we embrace webinars and promote teleworking from
home, we must also place these within the ambit of the home where these
take place. Reports show that domestic violence and rape incidents esca-
lated during the lockdown (Vandekerckhove 2020; Umukoro 2020).
Umukoro, in fact, reports that the lockdowns imposed by the federal and
states governments in Nigeria and in some other African countries forced
vulnerable persons to stay more closely to their tormentors. e statistics
produced by the Lagos State government-run Domestic and Gender
Violence Response Team demonstrated that domestic violence increased
by 60 per cent, sexual violence by 30 per cent and physical child abuse by
10 per cent. is is also the situation in other African countries, accord-
ing to him. Barbara Sangare, a Cote D’Ivoire gender activist, states that
gender violence has increased in her country, while Caroline Peters, a
Gender and Community Advocate in South Africa, said that violence
against women has gone up to 70 per cent in South Africa. What, then,
would be the productivity and psychological disposition of a worker who
operates from a violent-suused home? Moreover, encouraging people to
work from home using computer and other technological devices will
signicantly cut o social ties or reduce them to clinical interactions and
transactions, which, on the long run, will aect humans’ emotional
wellbeing.
In addition, dwelling in the world of cyberspace will inevitably force
people to recoil from human touch, creating many recluses, and there is
no guarantee that this suspicion of each other will not characterise the
post-pandemic era. How best can the changing societal values be man-
aged such that humanity does not lose the essence of being human?
Addressing this question is pivotal in stemming the tide of the gradual
erosion of human values. If this issue is not given the adequate attention
it deserves, the future may not be about humans but about post human.
3 Ubuntu and COVID-19: A Philosophical Reflection
42
is is why embracing the spirit of Ubuntu is urgently needed to help
restore the vital importance of losing oneself in the service of others, of
caring, of sharing, of seeing oneself in the other person. Ubuntu exposes
the lie in the dominant position of techno-scientic knowledge in con-
temporary society, which implies a belief that this particular form of
knowledge has the last say in establishing all matters of fact and in solving
problems of all kinds (Bohme 2012: 45). By embracing the spirit of
Ubuntu, the pandemic provides a unique opportunity for true intercon-
nectedness and interdependency among nations, for humanity to come
together as one: to explore what each culture has to oer, to think through
the options and to make choices that best represent the interest of human-
ity. e philosophy of Ubuntu, then, helps to highlight some important
lessons of COVID-19.
e rst is the need to enhance peoples’ critical thinking and other
relevant aspects of rigorous enquiry. Criticism is crucial because it “enables
one to reassess one’s ideas, beliefs, values, norms, etc., through clarica-
tion, argument and persuasion” (Okolo 2015: 112). is does not imply
the rejection of the issue under examination “but rational, impartial, and
articulate appraisal” that demands a serious evaluation of the ideas in
question to know whether they should be “reformed, modied or con-
served, and in applying one’s entire intellectual and imaginative intelli-
gence to the search for an answer” (Staniland 1979: 4). Indeed, citizens
“who think for themselves, rather than uncritically ingesting what their
leaders and others with power tell them, are the absolutely necessary
ingredient of a society that is to remain free” (Kahane 1995:xv). Such
disposition will help people embrace responsible behaviour and be able
to strike a balance between overreacting and underreacting due to the
challenges posed by COVID-19. is will go a long way in helping to
address, and possibly halt, pandemic-induced mental problems that may
last beyond the pandemic. To achieve this, there is need for educational
sensitisation of the general public on critical thinking. Beyond the pan-
demic, there is need to sustain this by including critical thinking in school
curriculum for all levels of education.
e second lesson is linked to the rst. is is the need to prepare
ahead for any other global crises and future pandemic. History teaches
that from time to time, humanity must face some crises. e response to
M. S. C. Okolo
43
these crises, how well they are managed and the extent of the damage
incurred usually depend largely on the preparations in place before the
crises. is can be achieved by training the general public on eective
measures to protect them and others during any pandemic and other
global challenges in advance. e public must be made to understand
why it is necessary to sustain the training received in normal times. For
instance, the measures put in place to contain COVID-19in Nigeria
would have been more easily achieved if the training and preventive mea-
sures used to contain Ebola in 2014 were sustained. Abraham Rudnick
(2020: 1) reminds us that “[s]ocieties are measured in part in relation to
how they rise to the occasion of collective crises and learn from them”.
Indeed, we “are morally obligated to plan for disaster because it aects
human life and wellbeing” (Zack 2009: 55). at is, planning is “an inte-
gral part of caring for oneself and for others to and for whom we have
prior obligations” (Zack 2009: 58). is is what Ubuntu represents.
Ubuntu helps us to better appreciate the ethical aspects of our response
and the need for certain ethical considerations to underscore our actions.
Given its concern about ethical considerations to underwrite our actions,
Ubuntu points to the need for certain things to be in place: what is the
level of preparedness to handle crises? Should a caring government wait
for crises in the health sector before funding the hospitals and other
health institutions? Should a government that understands that govern-
ment is there because the people are there wait for an outbreak like
COVID-19 before educating people on safety measures to prevent a pan-
demic? is is not to say that preparation will take care of every crisis
especially crises that belong to the category of the “unknown unknowns”
which Sam Black (1989: 31) views as “sudden calamitous events that can-
not be foreseen by anybody”. However, with adequate preparation, it
would have been easier to respond to the crisis occasioned by the pan-
demic and any future crises in what conforms to Naomi Zack’s (2009)
Save All who can be saved (SALL) model in the preparation phase. is
is a comprehensive disaster preparation that requires that preparation and
prevention, as well as response, be considered in advance. For Zack, being
“ready for a pandemic has an element of engagement consisting of being
able and willing to act, and an element of having what it takes for a
desired outcome” (60). is does not, however, take care of a pertinent
3 Ubuntu and COVID-19: A Philosophical Reflection
44
issue: what was responsible for the devastation experienced by Western
societies given their infrastructural and technological preparedness? e
message here is that infrastructural and technological preparedness is not
a be-all and end-all in crises management and, indeed, in most challenges
of life. Humans need something deeper to cushion the eects of crises
and other challenges of life. ey need the knowledge that there are oth-
ers interested in their wellbeing, people who they can share their experi-
ences with. ey need to know that they are cared for, sheltered in the
common fold that connects all humanity. ey need to feel truly human:
humane, caring, looking out for each other, protecting, nurturing,
encouraging, promoting and sustaining one another. is is what Ubuntu
represents. Ubuntu, then, is deeper than providing infrastructural and
technological gadgets or, even, rendering material assistance. It acknowl-
edges all these but extends to giving and sharing time, intelligence, expe-
rience and all our humane attributes with others.
e third lesson is anchored on the second. COVID-19 teaches that a
government that fails to prepare for crisis risks social unrest and uprising
during a crisis. e #EndSARS protest, which started in October 2020in
Nigeria, is a good example. e protest that started as a peaceful protest
by the youths against countless brutality of law enforcement ocers, par-
ticularly the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), on unarmed, innocent
civilians in Nigeria was midway hijacked by hoodlums who are mostly
unemployed. United Nations deputy Secretary-General, Amina
Mohammed, on a solidarity visit to Nigeria to underscore the organisa-
tion’s support to countries during the COVID-19 pandemic, on Monday
9 November 2020 partly blamed the hardship caused by COVID-19 for
the #EndSARS protest. Rudnick (2020) champions the view that unem-
ployment is associated with disrupted mental wellbeing and other per-
sonal and societal disruptions such as poverty and crime, among others.
Further, he warns that it is easy to have political disruption during a
pandemic, particularly in countries where the regime is not democrati-
cally robust. To forestall future occurrences like #EndSARS, African gov-
ernments, especially Nigerian government, must see planning as “a
required duty of trustees, stewards, and guardians” (Zack 2009: 58). is
entails allowing democracy to work: government that is responsible and
responsive to the needs of the people and government that is determined
M. S. C. Okolo
45
to place itself at the service of the people, in short, a care-oriented govern-
ment founded on the principles of Ubuntu.
e fourth lesson is the unpredictability of life. Following the outbreak
of the pandemic, almost all plans by individuals, groups, churches,
schools, businesses, corporations, governments and countries came to a
halt. e world looks to science for a solution, for a vaccine that will
contain the virus. Even with the production of vaccines for the treatment
of COVID-19, there are still many issues (as earlier outlined) waiting for
answers. e issues, in fact, demonstrate how impossible it is to box life
into the structured, precise and predictable connes of science.
COVID-19 is a reminder that lives and the totality of human experiences
will never submit to quantiable data, dissection and causal regimenta-
tion. Humanity will always yearn for something more: interactions and
connectivity expressed within the fold of looking out for each other, for
Ubuntu. It is important to note that there are other non-Ubuntu phi-
losophies, like communitarianism, that speak to looking out for each
other. However, communitarianism emphasises the needs of the com-
munity over those of the individual in a master-servant kind of relation-
ship. is implies the need to subordinate individual interest to the
community. Such an ideology can easily be manipulated against the indi-
vidual as witnessed under the Nazi regime. While communitarianism
called “for constant participation, it aimed to inculcate a spirit of indi-
vidual attachment to the whole and a readiness not only to obey but also
to sacrice everything for the general interest as dened by the Nazis”
(Macridis 1980: 197). Indeed, under this arrangement, the individual’s
right to think his own thoughts is taken away as the individual becomes
a “new individual imbued with communitarian and nationalist beliefs as
dictated by the leader and the party” (Macridis 1980: 197). e implica-
tion is that the intrinsic freedom of the individual is denied. From this
perspective, the looking out for each other embodied in the communitar-
ian ideology is emasculated to the point that it almost resembles Phillips
Shively’s (1997: 6) “construction of incentives”. is is a situation where
power is exercised in such a way as to “make the alternative so unattract-
ive that only one reasonable option remains”. In contradistinction,
Ubuntu invites the individual to participate in the lives of others from a
deep knowledge of being a partaker in a common humanity. It represents
3 Ubuntu and COVID-19: A Philosophical Reflection
46
the essence of humanness that is imbued with ethical consciousness
rooted in the ability of the individual to participate in the wellbeing of
others. Tutu (2011) maintains that in indigenous African society, Ubuntu
was coveted more than anything else because it is seen as the quality that
ultimately makes a person both human and humane. Ubuntu’s ability to
focus humanity on their human-humane essence sets it apart from other
philosophies and makes it an ideal candidate to provide direction on how
best to ameliorate the adverse eect of COVID-19, especially, on the
social relationship of Africans and, by extension, the world. Indeed,
COVID-19 brings to the fore the need for a sense of balance as the world
becomes more and more scientically and technologically oriented.
Gernot Bohme (2012) suggests that the dominant position of scientic
knowledge within contemporary society is leading to a decay of other
forms of knowledge and that there are types of problems and types of
human needs that scientic and technological knowledge is particularly
ill-suited to address. By embracing Ubuntu as the guide for the future, its
philosophy of sharing, inclusiveness, interconnectedness, sustainability,
caring and wellbeing will balance the clinical approach of science and
technology.
e fth lesson brought to the fore by COVID-19 is that only those
who have the key to theory can determine how society is organised and
what counts as civilisation. e truth of this becomes evident when we
consider that “[w]hat science is can only be settled by looking, among
other things, at its many and striking eects on human life” (Bohme
2012: 23). He warns that “[s]cience must be seen as an epoch-dening
phenomenon—a cultural form that has shaped a certain period of human
history and will in future likely shape the very course of natural evolu-
tion”. e world is gradually shrinking into a monoculture where techno-
logical edge, that is, the institution of cyber world, is being positioned as
the most, and gradually the only, acceptable means of human interaction.
is wave will increasingly become central to how nations relate to each
other. is situation calls for a deeper reection on Bola Dauda’s (2017:
477) discussion on “e philosophical realities of African nation-states in
a new world”. One way to approach this for him is “for African nation-
states to rethink the old paradigms [that impose the European epistemo-
logical paradigm upon Africa] and be creative in adapting the evolving
M. S. C. Okolo
47
cyberspace, global village, and knowledge economies”. For African
nation-states, it is a wake-up call to rethink their involvement in a world
that is fast been converted into a cyberspace. For this reason, there is need
to be serious about our destiny: how best to manage our resources in the
face of sustained widening economic inequality between the Global
North and the Global South, especially given the way this is arranging
the relationship between the developed and the developing nations, how
to enter equal partnership with other nations bearing in mind that with-
out mutual respect the concept of equality is a farce and how best to craft
an authentic African identity considering that “[e]very society, in order to
sustain and generate itself, will and must periodically return to the ques-
tion of what founded it, what gave it a sense of purpose, what is the
condition of its own possibility” (Praeg 2017: 497). Using Ubuntu as
guide, there is need to set goals that can be evaluated in determining the
wellbeing of humanity. Ubuntu allows that there are no nal answers and
solutions but core values that speak to whatever issues life may throw at us.
e sixth lesson is to underscore the benets of COVID-19. Dicult
as it is to associate the pandemic with gains, yet two advantages clearly
stand out. One, it exposes the oneness, unity, bond, fusion and interde-
pendence of all humanity. ere are no superior and inferior people, no
centres and peripherals. is will go a long way in helping to normalise
race relations. ese are things which Ubuntu, with its forward-thinking
approach to human relationship, has always represented. Its stand on
looking out for each other could help prevent superiority and inferiority
complexes, which create conditions for some people to victimise or
become victims to others. Ubuntu’s care-centred philosophy, which prizes
the comprehensive wellbeing of people over race and material consider-
ation, has positioned it as the best adequate response to COVID-19 chal-
lenges. e philosophy of Ubuntu encourages every individual to see in
the other individual a reection of its self. Two, the lockdown brought
about by COVID-19 highlights the urgent need for local solutions. For
instance, for once African leaders who favour medical tourism instead of
equipping the health sector of their countries were forced to accept medi-
cal treatment in their countries. Such situations help to expose the atti-
tude of most African governments towards infrastructural and human
capacity development in their country. To address this, there is need for
3 Ubuntu and COVID-19: A Philosophical Reflection
48
introspective review by the government on how best to re-order the coun-
try so as to be able to face life’s unexpected challenges. In this, Ubuntu’s
timeless and unchanging principles can be relied on for guide.
e nal lesson, which is also the dening concern of our time, is the
recognition that all nations of the world should contribute, should have
a say in issues of global concern. COVID-19 has forced humanity to see
how closely connected everyone is. For this reason, it is crucial that every-
one is involved in nding a solution. is demands a multilateral
approach that shuns a mono-cultural ownership of the solution to the
pandemic on the one hand and on the other hand favours our collective
eort in nding solutions that are both culture specic and culture
generic. Embracing Ubuntu as Africa’s contribution will help to provide
the required guide for handling the issue of how best the elderly ones
should be taken care of in Africa, where the approved measures are ill-
equipped to handle. For instance, even while maintaining social distance,
Ubuntu helps us to live within social inclusion by continuously making
meaningful dierence in other peoples’ life through nding out what
their needs are and addressing those concerns. Indeed, the pandemic
helps to highlight the pivotal role of Ubuntu as a guiding principle that
should always direct the core concerns of humanity.
Conclusion
e pandemic has thrown up many profound and dicult issues. e
preventive measures—social distancing, no hugs, no handshakes and no
visits, among others—occasioned by COVID-19 are forcing the rethink-
ing of old normal parameters for measuring the things that are truly
important. e stringent nature of the safety precaution messages involv-
ing COVID-19 is such that can easily destroy human relations. It is for
this reason that even while we grapple with a changing world, re-setting
our outlook on life and priorities, we should not lose sight of some time-
less and unchanging fundamentals such as devotion, care, duty, obliga-
tion and integrity, among others, that sustain our humanity. ese are
what Ubuntu stands for. Ubuntu is about the immersion in and the total
entering of an individual into the life of others, such that the “I” pronoun
M. S. C. Okolo
49
has its meaning only in the company of “they”. ere is no sole “I” that
can embark on any comprehensive experience without the “they” oering
one kind of support or the other. To exist, to make sense of the world, is
to do so in the company of others, in communion with them. As such,
taking lessons from Ubuntu will go a long way to cushion the eect of
isolation, fear, anxiety, panic, depression and spike in mental disorder
occasioned by COVID-19. What is needed is, perhaps, not more Zoom
meetings but more human, humane presence—more spirit of Ubuntu.
In all, the pandemic comes as an opportunity for nations to re-build
their condence, re-think their values and priorities and re-learn the val-
ues of mutual respect for each other. e eternal lesson of COVID-19 is
that no voice should supersede the other. ere are no a priori centres and
peripherals, but one humanity, united against a common enemy for the
survival and sustainability of the human race.
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M. S. C. Okolo
51
4
Limits ofScience-Based Approaches
inGlobal Health: Sociocultural
andMoral Lessons fromEbola
andCOVID-19
SamuelJ.Ujewe
Introduction
is chapter explores the limits of science-based approaches in addressing
global health emergencies and outlines the signicance of adopting socio-
cultural, socioeconomic, and ethical approaches. It uses the 2013–2016
Ebola epidemic in West Africa and the coronavirus global pandemic
(COVID-19) to underscore the limits of science-based approaches in
tackling deadly infectious disease outbreaks. Against this background, it
highlights the valuable eects of humanities measures that have been (or
are being) used to show that sociocultural and ethical approaches are
crucial to eectively address global health emergencies. Humanities, as
used in this chapter, refers to the elds of knowledge and/or expertise that
address conceptual and sociocultural aspects of human existence, experi-
ences, or global conditions:
S. J. Ujewe (*)
Global Emerging Pathogens Treatment Consortium (GET-Africa),
Lagos, Nigeria
e-mail: ujewes@mcmaster.ca
© e Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023
F. Egbokhare, A. Afolayan (eds.), Global Health, Humanity and the COVID-19
Pandemic, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17429-2_4
52
…those branches of knowledge that concern themselves with human
beings and their culture or with analytic and critical methods of inquiry
derived from an appreciation of human values and of the unique ability of
the human spirit to express itself. As a group of educational disciplines, the
humanities are distinguished in content and method from the physical and
biological sciences and, somewhat less decisively, from the social sciences.
e humanities include the study of all languages and literatures, the arts,
history, and philosophy. (Britannica 2021)
is is dierent from the commonly understood usage of humanities to
refer to the human race, collective human co-existence, or acts of benevo-
lence (Oxford 2021). e point is not to minimize the invaluable contri-
butions of science to global health but to demonstrate the need for
adopting a harmonized approach toward addressing current and future
global health emergencies.
COVID-19 raises questions regarding the suciency of science-based
approaches in addressing global health emergencies, especially those
relating to deadly infectious disease outbreaks. Despite rapid scientic
advancements and technological innovations in biomedicine, the virus
engulfed the world in phases with the most devastating health costs to-
date borne by high-income countries (HICs) (Ritchie etal. 2021), where
scientic advancements in biomedicine are most entrenched. Within one
year into the COVID-19 pandemic, several vaccines were rapidly devel-
oped and distributed around the world in a desperate eort to end the
pandemic. Yet, while some countries vaccinated most of their popula-
tionswithin a short period, others are yet to vaccinate a signicant pro-
portion of their frontline workers—especially in low- and middle-income
countries (LMICs) (Ritchie etal. 2021). Alongside the hospitalization of
acute COVID-19 cases, social measures like lockdowns and physical dis-
tancing became key strategies for ghting the virus. LMICs that could
not bear the economic costs of lockdowns were the same ones having
limited access to COVID-19 vaccines (Ritchie etal. 2021). At the same
time, some of the worst aected by COVID-19 and its allied impacts in
HICs were historically marginalized groups or populations (APM
Research Lab n.d.; CDC 2020; Williamson etal. 2020).
S. J. Ujewe
53
While science has provided advanced biomedical tools for ghting
COVID-19 and other global health crises, science-based approaches are
not sucient toward eectively securing a healthy world. Scientic mea-
sures need to be considered alongside other crucial approaches in order to
have better chances at securing global health. Recent experiences of Ebola
epidemics in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the West African
region and global experiences of COVID-19 have shown that science-
based approaches need to be bolstered by sociocultural, socioeconomic,
and ethical approaches to be successful. It has also been shown that global
health emergencies can be addressed sooner if other approaches are
deployed alongside the science based. For instance, science has shown
that wearingof face masks is eective in breaking the transmission chain
of COVID-19 (Howard etal. 2021). However, social, cultural, and ethi-
cal measures, among others, are needed to motivate the population to
wear masks, as upholding values such as rights and freedom, and com-
munal responsibility and solidarity come into erce contention in eect-
ing compliance (BBC 2020; Taylor and Asmundson 2021). e successful
approaches toward addressing global health emergencies will be ones that
adequately harmonize science-based approaches with sociocultural,
socioeconomic, and ethical approaches.
is chapter provides a brief overview of advances in science and bio-
medicine and explores the limitations of science-based approaches in the
light of recent global health emergencies, including Ebola in sub-Saharan
Africa and the COVID-19 global pandemic. Analyzing these in the light
of suciency theory and its application in global health, the chapter situ-
ates the need to include humanities-based approaches. is will ensure
that in addressing global health emergencies, social, cultural, and moral
realities of aected populations are accounted for. e chapter concludes
by proposing three humanities-based approaches that could consolidate
science-based approaches if the latter are to be eective toward addressing
global health emergencies.
4 Limits of Science-Based Approaches in Global Health…
54
Advances inScience andBiomedicine Since
theSpanish Flu
e 1918 Spanish Flu killed between 20 and 100 million persons glob-
ally by the time it ended (Dickin etal. 2020). While total deaths in the
United States wasestimated at 675,000 (Billings 1997), the death toll in
India was between 12 and 18 million ((BBC News 2020; Chhun 2021).
By contrast, as of September 2021, total COVID-19 deaths in the United
States stands 638,632, and India had total deaths of 43,895 (WHO
2021b). Diagnostic science and biomedical remedies were deployed as
valuables tools in tackling the Spanish Flupandemic and vaccines played
a major role (Billings 1997). In just over a century after the Spanish Flu,
the world is still in the grips of another u pandemic, COVID-19. e
current total global deaths due to COVID-19 stand at 4,539,723—as of
September 2021 (WHO 2021b). Between these two historical events,
intermittent deadly epidemics have occurred around the world, with the
West African Ebola being one of the most devastating (BBC 2016).
Despite Ebola’s deadly nature, it took around four decades from the
emergence of the virus for the world to come up with eective vaccines
(History of Vaccines 2021).
It is important to note that the COVID-19 globalpandemic took
place in an era where scientic and biomedical advancements are at his-
toric peak. Many infectious diseases have been successfully eradicated
from many parts of the world, and others like smallpox have been elimi-
nated globally (Strassburg 1982). A major milestone was reached inthe
global polio eradication when Africa was declared polio-free in the early
months of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 (Guglielmi 2020) . e
triumph of science and biomedicine is made more visible with COVID-19,
as the world has advanced in genomic sequencing of disease organism
and real-time data sharing that enhances prompt global research and
development of eective control measures, drugs, and vaccines. Of note
is the pace with which scientists mobilized across the globe to develop
several COVID-19 vaccines in less than one year, surpassing the tradi-
tional decade-long vaccine development timeline (Zimmer etal. 2020;
WHO 2021a). A number of these vaccines were used around the world
S. J. Ujewe
55
in a race to attain herd immunity among populations, contributing
towards ending the COVID-19 pandemic. Some of the leading vaccines
have deployed a new genetic technology in their development, including
those developed by Pzer BioNtech and Moderna (Corum and Zimmer
2020a, 2020b).
Among other things, life expectancy in HICs has heightened due to
advancements in science and biomedicine (World Bank 2021). is is
partly a reection of the successful suppression or eradication of infec-
tious diseases, but also amidst rising incidences of noncommunicable dis-
eases (Ho and Hendi 2018). By contrast, LMICs, especially in the global
south, with less advanced science and biomedicine, continue to record
relatively lower life expectancies and higher mortalities and morbidities
from infectious diseases, including malaria, tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS,
among others (Roser and Ritchie 2016). ese may also be attributable
to the relatively slow advancements in biomedicine, arguably. Yet, HICs
have been worse hit by the COVID-19 pandemic than LMICs in terms
of infection and mortality rates, as is most visible when comparing the
rates from Europe and North America with those of sub-Saharan Africa
(WHO 2021b). e unanswered questions remain: how and why did
COVID-19 emerge as a global pandemic mostly aecting HICs despite
historical advancements in science and biomedicine, and why are
COVID-19 infection and mortality rates signicantly lower in LMICs?
What is obvious is that advanced biomedicine, by itself, did not avert the
COVID-19 global pandemic.
Limits ofScience-Based Approaches
Scientic innovations have been crucial in navigating the global
COVID-19 response, starting with the rapid genome sequencing of the
virus in the early moments of the pandemic and sharing real-time data
from the originating country of the virus (Behrmann and Spiegel 2020;
Van Noorden 2021). Rapid knowledge development about the virus was
advanced through rapid scientic analysis with real-time data as the virus
spread across the globe (Guillou 2020). is informed the rapid develop-
ment of a variety of COVID-19 testing kits and vaccines, leading to the
4 Limits of Science-Based Approaches in Global Health…
56
record one-year vaccine development timeline attained by several
COVID-19 vaccines (Cui etal. 2020; Zimmer etal. 2020). e rollout
of the vaccines is being accompanied by global aggregation of data to
enable continuous analysis to determine the ecacy and safety of the vac-
cines (Mathieu etal. 2021). It is also worth noting that the now globally
normalized use of face masks was informed by scientic evidence around
the transmissibility of the virus (Howard etal. 2021).
Despite these advancements and deployment of new scientic and
biomedical innovations in tackling COVID-19, the virus spread across
the globe almost unhindered and continues to mutate. e most scien-
tically and medically advanced nations were found unprepared to deal
with the pandemic at the onset. While global COVID-19 mortalities
rates have been generally higher among older populations, severe mortali-
ties were recorded among older people living in care homes in many of
the aected countries (Amore etal. 2021). In some countries, like the
United Kingdom, COVID-19 has disproportionately aected racialized
minority groups who are already largely systemically disadvantaged in
terms of access to healthcare (Kirby 2020).
While these scientically informed measures are crucial, it has also
become evident that these alone are insucient for ending the
Covid19pandemic. Vaccine hesitancy was made manifest, as doubt and
fear surrounded the safety of the vaccines being rolled out globally (Sallam
2021). Past experiences of populations with health interventions and sig-
nicant vaccine shortage in sub-Saharan Africa raised more questions,
implanting doubts and facilitating hesitation among populations to take
the limited vaccines available (MENEZES etal. 2021). Despite the sci-
entic evidence around the use of face masks, mask resistance and anti-
mask movements persisted in North America (Stewart 2020; Shivaram
2021). e lack of broad cooperation by the UnitedStates’ public to use
face mask has been attributed to as a key factor in the spread of the dis-
ease and the rise of the Delta variant (Wilner 2021).
Finally, one of the major problems that has followed the successful
development of COVID-19 vaccines is “vaccine nationalism”—a situa-
tion whereby few-producing or rich countries amassed large supplies of
the available vaccines, when other non-producing or low-resourced coun-
tries have few or no doses (Lock 2021). For instance, as of March 2021,
S. J. Ujewe
57
78% of the 447 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines deployed globally
were administered in only ten countries, and about a quarter of the
world’s population was forecast tonot have access to the vaccines until
2022 (So and Woo 2020; Beyrer etal. 2021). And by September 2021:
41.3% of the world population [had] received at least one dose of a
COVID-19 vaccine.5.6 billion doses [had] been administered globally,
and 30.38 million [were being] administered each day. [Yet] only 1.9% of
people in low-income countries [had] received at least one dose. (Ritchie
etal. 2021)
e COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access (COVAX) Facility was devel-
oped by the World Health Organization (WHO) in conjunction with
the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunizations (GAVI) to ensure
that COVID-19 vaccines are available and accessible to non-producing
and low-resourced countries across the globe who signed up to the initia-
tive (BBC 2021; WHO 2020). e main aim of the COVAX Facility is
to ensure equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines globally, so that self-
nanced and funded countries can have access to the battery of proven
vaccines (Berkly 2020).
However, despite the unprecedented pace of the COVID-19 vaccine
development and with several vaccines being administered around the
world, it is evident that science-based approaches have been insucient
in tackling the pandemic and more humanities-based approaches are
needed to ensure an end to the pandemic globally. e growing global
health inequities and lack of trust in global health stakeholders exposed
and perpetuated by COVID-19 have also demonstrated this conclusion.
Sufficiency Theory andGlobal
Health Emergencies
e limitations of science-based approaches can be understood in terms
of suciency theory, where the primary focus of justice is to achieve a
descent minimum quality of life for the worse o populations, groups,
and persons:
4 Limits of Science-Based Approaches in Global Health…
58
…the suciency principle also holds that the duty to improve the condi-
tion of the worse o applies only until the point that the worse o rise
above some level of absolute deprivation … [as] justice requires that every-
one has enough, or a sucient amount, of what contributes to a good life,
not that everyone has an equal share. (Powers and Faden 2006, 55)
e idea of suciency and health aims to ensure that in situations where
persons or populations are relatively disadvantaged, the varied factors,
beyond their biological functioning or disease conditions, contributing
to their inability to attain a certain level of health outcome are addressed.
Hence, this approach is also concerned with the totality of the social
structures and relative income inequalities, which profoundly and perva-
sively aect the well-being of the disadvantaged populations and which
keep them below the acceptable threshold of good health (Powers and
Faden 2006).
From the humanities perspective of global health emergencies, a su-
ciency approach would require that while the pathogenic elements of a
deadly disease are being addressed through drug or vaccine development,
the social, cultural, and systemic issues that bear on the overall health of
the aected populations are equally addressed. For instance, it has been
established that the 2013–2015 Ebola epidemic in West Africa was not
only a factor of the virus but also of weak health infrastructure and poor
healthcare systems in the aected countries (Moon etal. 2015). In addi-
tion, sociocultural factors and moral experiences of aected communities
invariably contributed to the spread of the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD)
and truncated the response strategies toward ending the epidemic (Aggrey
and Shrum 2020; Mitman 2014; Le Marcis etal. 2019).
From a suciency theory outlook, scientic innovations alone would
not be enough to end the epidemic: “…a suciency approach would
[aim to] understand the background social, cultural, anthropological and
economic conditions inuencing the spread of a disease” (Ujewe and
Mungwa 2019, 175–76) and crucially seek ways to address them. In the
light of the COVID-19 pandemic, a suciency approach would require
that while global health actors are mobilizing vaccine development and
distribution, social and cultural factors that would enhance or deter the
acceptance or distribution of these great innovations are addressed. e
S. J. Ujewe
59
development of ecacious vaccines is futile if the targeted populations
reject them. is has been proven by the escalation of polio in West Africa
when populations in Northern Nigeria boycotted the mass polio immu-
nization program and set back polio eradication by years (Ujewe 2020).
e pervasive anti-vaccine, anti-lockdown, and anti-mask movements
during the COVID-19 (Stewart 2020; Dror etal. 2020) have further
shown that innovative scientic measures, including the record time vac-
cines developed, can have no real impact on the pandemic if the social,
cultural, moral, and other allied issues are not addressed. Suciency in
global health emergencies would entail relative levels of social organiza-
tion and scientic development that will be enough to address or prevent
deadly infectious disease outbreaks, epidemics, and pandemics (Ujewe
and Mungwa 2019).
Against this background, a suciency approach is crucial toward
ensuring the great innovations that have emerged, including rapid
sequencing of the virus, real-time development of test kits, and rapid vac-
cine development, make immediate impact in the ght to end the pan-
demic. For instance, the global inequities in access to personal protective
equipment (PPE) exposed in the earlier waves of the pandemic demon-
strated that some parts of the world had more, while others had little to
none. And as the use of vaccines became imminent toward ending the
pandemic and the global vaccine rollout continues, it is no longer news
that while a large proportion of the global population barely has access to
a single dose of any of the vaccines available, others are being privileged
with third doses (Ritchie et al. 2021; Lieber 2021). e suciency
approach would require that beyond simply increasing global production
of vaccines, for instance, global equity in access would be achieved that
accounts for social and cultural outlooks and moral experiences of disad-
vantaged populations across the globe. Likewise, the unprecedented pace
with which COVID-19 vaccines were developed would be required to be
similarly replicated in the global distribution and access, especially for
non-producing and poorer countries that could not compete in the race
to procure the vaccines.
4 Limits of Science-Based Approaches in Global Health…
60
Need forHumanities-Based Approaches
e Covid-19 pandemic was met with sensational resilience by advance-
ments in medicine and health technology, where the isolation and genetic
sequencing of the coronavirus were done and shared globally in real time
(Behrmann and Spiegel 2020). Epidemiological data were also collected,
analyzed, and distributed across the board in real time, allowing for close
analysis of the global situation (Guillou 2020). is has remained crucial
in detecting the new more virulent variants of COVID-19 that are
becoming the dominant strains (Abutaleb and Sun 2021). Also, there
have been rapid development of various COVID-19 vaccines, which
were done in record time, outpacing any previous vaccines ever devel-
oped in the delivery timeline—as noted above.
However, underlying socio-political and socio-ethical resistance have
been emboldened by events surrounding stringent COVID-19 measures,
which science and technology alone cannot address. For instance, various
forms of vaccine hesitancy advanced across the globe, perhaps as rapidly
as the COVID-19 vaccines were developed. Vaccine hesitancy is the situ-
ation where certain populations do not accept to use scientically vali-
dated vaccines due to experiential, moral, or other ideological reasons:
“…[it] occurs on the continuum between high vaccine demand and
complete vaccine refusal, i.e. no demand for available and oered vac-
cines” (MacDonald 2015, 4162):
Vaccine hesitancy is not a supercial issue with a universal solution. …
Rather, it is a multifaceted, deeply complex construct that may be rooted
in the moral composition that guides our daily decision making … Several
distinct values are associated with vaccine hesitancy—particularly purity,
liberty, and anti-authority. … Combined with the historical amnesia of the
consequences of vaccine preventable diseases, vaccine hesitancy becomes
easier to understand as a belief system grounded in certain moral values.
(McAteer etal. 2020, 703–4)
While there may be signicant dierences in the rates of vaccine accep-
tance or hesitancy, as noted in a systematic global review of COVID-19
vaccine hesitancy (Sallam 2021), its broad presence means that regardless
S. J. Ujewe
61
of the advancements in science to fast-track vaccine development, the
successful deployment of vaccines as a critical solution to the COVID-19
and others pandemics lies outside of the connes of science alone.
Likewise, the sustained global inequity in COVID-19 vaccine access can-
not be addressed by purely scientic approaches, as inequity is dened
and determined by several social, political, and cultural determinants,
and addressing them would require an ethically embedded framework.
Humanities approaches become crucial toward addressing the underlying
issues of liberty, purity, anti-authority, and other moral values that inu-
ence the non-acceptance of scientically validated vaccines.
Sample Humanities Approaches
toComplement Science
Eectively addressing issues like vaccine hesitancy as buttressed by socio-
cultural realities and moral experiences of populations would require
approaches that are embedded with similar frames of references. Two key
relevant approaches include community engagement, which accounts for
the sociocultural and socioeconomic realities, and addressing the moral
experiences of populations. ese approaches have been previously dem-
onstrated as having great potentials to ensure acceptance of health inter-
vention measures among hesitant populations.
Community Engagement
Community engagement has emerged as one of the most promising
strategies toward gaining trust in responding to public health emergen-
cies. Its deployment has proved to be a valuable resource in addressing
epidemics, as shown by the associated gains in the conduct of research in
aected communities during the Ebola epidemic in West Africa (Afolabi
et al. 2021). Community engagement is an emerging process ethics
approach that requires community members to be consulted in an open
and collaborative manner throughout the course of research or health
intervention processes, from planning through implementation to
4 Limits of Science-Based Approaches in Global Health…
62
eventual feedback on the outcomes, and in a culturally sensitive manner
(Folayan etal. 2016; Kombe etal. 2019). People’s reactions or opposition
to early emergency response plans and eorts imposed by governments
and other response agencies demand a responsibility to build a network
of relationships with various communities and enter into various forms
of negotiations with the aected populations (Le Marcis etal. 2019).
ese forms of dialogue ensure that the concerns and perspectives of
aected communities are accounted for in developing and implementing
emergency response strategies. For instance, following a series of opposi-
tions to Ebola response in Guinea, the World Health Organization
(WHO) facilitated a community mediation process that led to reconcili-
ation and enabled community mobilization and empowerment, consti-
tuting a joint eort to end the epidemic (Le Marcis et al. 2019). In
Liberia, community liaisons, as nominated by community members,
were chosen to lead the Ebola task forces, in order to legitimize Ebola
response strategies; in Sierra Leone, where local chiefs were losing legiti-
macy, community youths were variously involved in the consultations,
paving ways for acceptance of emergency response initiatives (Le Marcis
etal. 2019). Openness, reexivity, and accountability have been high-
lighted as crucial elements to successful community engagement for
emergency response during the West African Ebola epidemic (Ryan etal.
2019). ese are valuable attributes that can enhance the acceptability of
scientic evidence and advancements in medicine during health emer-
gencies and maximize their impact in the restoration of health and
normalcy.
Additionally, the need for open-ended consultations and cultural
appreciation of aected communities was pointed out by local research-
ers and consortia, as a crucial aspect of engagement. In the early stages of
clinical trials on the use of convalescent plasma to treat Ebola, the Global
Emerging Pathogens Treatment Consortium (GET-Africa), for instance,
pointed to the need for community engagement and patient advocacy in
a culturally appropriate manner (F.Kombe etal. 2016). It placed weight
on a special protection of the Ebola survivors’ network, in order to avoid
potential exploitation of community engagement by researchers. To
ensure robust involvement of communities and avoid undue inducement
and exploitation in Ebola research, community engagement was
S. J. Ujewe
63
positioned as a strategy to increase community education on Ebola and
reduce the risk of therapeutic misconceptions; address myths and mis-
conceptions about Ebola and vaccines that engender distrust; and facili-
tate negotiations for post-trial access to potential Ebola therapies and
vaccines, given the historical exclusion of trial communities from access-
ing the Hepatitis B vaccine (Molyneux and Geissler Molyneux 2008;
Folayan etal. 2016; Franco etal. 2012). is is not to say that commu-
nity engagement is the perfect approach for addressing health emergen-
cies but that its attributes would provide a viable platform to ensure the
success of scientic measure, like testing and innovative vaccines.
Addressing Moral Experiences ofCommunities
Underpinning community engagement are the moral experiences of
communities in relation to interventions and research during health
emergencies. is leads to the need to address moral residue in, and
through, health research and interventions (Ujewe 2020). Moral residue
in the context of global health research and intervention refers to:
…the moral experience following events or situations where health inter-
ventions or research carried out amongst communities, population groups
or regions leave traces of harm or exploitation that engender feelings of
guilt, remorse, or regret, anger, frustration, anxiety or self-blame among
those aected or global health actors. e urgency to meet one healthcare
need could result in another equivalent or even worse problem, for which
the aected population also needs urgent intervention, but which remains
unaddressed. (Ujewe 2020, 4)
Public oppositions and non-compliance to Ebola response initiatives
during the West African epidemic, for instance, were linked to historical
experiences of the aected populations with exploitative research and
other engagements and/or knowledge of communities in other parts of
sub-Saharan Africa that had had these experiences. For instance,ethno-
graphic studies show that local resistance in Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone,
and Ghana were informed by a number of factors related to history and
international political economy (Le Marcis et al. 2019; Aggrey and
4 Limits of Science-Based Approaches in Global Health…
64
Shrum 2020; Tangwa etal. 2018), ranging from legacies of the transat-
lantic slave trade and colonialism to economic structures built around
international extractive industries and aid dependencies (Benton and
Dionne 2015). ese historical experiences were re-inscribed in the
nature of emergency responses under the WHO’s Public Health
Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) declaration (WHO
2014). For instance:
In each of the three countries, humanitarian interventions or clinical trials
were largely run through national institutions with direct ties to former
colonial powers—France intervened in Guinea, the UK in Sierra Leone,
and US organisations were the rst in Liberia. (Le Marcis etal. 2019)
Explanations to the emergency response oppositions and other challenges
encountered in the three countries are deemed to be associated to these
political congurations, rather than on culture alone, as was often implied
(Chandler etal. 2015).
e opposition to Ebola vaccine trials in Ghana was based on a mix-
ture of knowledge and experience of previous exploitative medical
research and the role of politics in advancing such agendas, in addition to
the history of colonialism and the slave trade (Aggrey and Shrum 2020;
Tangwa etal. 2018). In a more recent cultural memory was the dubious
meningitis vaccine trial in Nigeria in 1996 by Pzer, which instigated the
halting of a mass polio eradication campaign in 2003 (Ujewe 2020). is
background, combined with insucient public information provided to
the public about the scheduled Ebola vaccine trials, led to a wariness in
the Ghanaian population that the trials were being undertaken in secret
in their communities. e wariness was strengthened by the public
uncertainties surrounding the specic nature of the clinical trials with
fears linked to suspicions that the trial vaccines could bring Ebola to
Ghana (Kummervold etal. 2017).
Underlying these reactions was the political context in which the vac-
cine trials were attempted, which was linked to the design and imple-
mentation of the vaccine trials (Aggrey and Shrum 2020). Politicians
charged with the responsibility of reviewing the trial protocols and pro-
viding oversights were suspected to havehad vested personal interests in
S. J. Ujewe
65
the research and were accused of non-declaration of conict of interest by
the public (Tangwa etal. 2018). ese accusations led to a total collapse
of the Ghana arm for Ebola vaccine trials, which may have provided
greater gains toward the future eradication of the virus, if the clinical tri-
als had been successful.
In the light of the outlook of moral residue in global health and con-
sidering their applications for science in COVID-19 response, it is
imperative to address relevant underlying socio-ethical issues to ensure
the eectiveness of scientic innovations. is kind of harmonized
approach will provide avenues for greater success in the global search for
an eective solution to future pandemic.
Conclusion: Toward aHarmonized Science
andHumanities Approach
It may be inconceivable to overcome global health emergencies like Ebola
and COVID-19 without the substantive contributions of science in iso-
lating and sequencing viruses, tracing the epidemiological pathways, and
developing cures and vaccines. Yet, these scientic achievements remain
mute unless they are accepted and/or utilized by human communities
across the globe. For instance, it is not sucient to simply develop a
COVID-19 vaccine that is 98% ecacious; theactual eectiveness of the
vaccine is ultimately determined by the conviction of populations around
the world to accept to be immunized with it. Vaccine hesitancy and anti-
vaxxers’ beliefs are conceptualized against moral outlooks like human
rights and trust that cannot be resolved by science, but which must be
addressed for vaccines to even gain marginal success. Specic ethical tools
are needed to address these kinds of underlying vaccine issues and achieve
success of scientic innovation in tackling global health emergencies.
As a way forward, harmonized science and humanities approaches are
needed. ese will include context-relevant application of science, build-
ing trust and respect, and addressing inequities, among others. Science
and its medical advancements are without use if they fail to address spe-
cic health conditions around the globe. For instance, during the rst
4 Limits of Science-Based Approaches in Global Health…
66
wave of COVID-19, lockdowns were recommended globally in the light
of the scientic evidence that they would slow and help to eradicate the
virus. However, while these measures were largely sustainable in high-
income countries (HICs) in Europe, North America, and Austral-Asia,
they were barely eective in LMICs like sub-Saharan African countries
(Eyawo etal. 2021). A scientically based lockdown that is informed by
the social, economic, and cultural realities of the LMICs would achieve
greater benet for global health.
Likewise, there is a history of medical atrocities, especially in the trials
of new drugs, that stalls trust in science and its health benets for mar-
ginalized populations across the globe. ese are aspects that cannot sim-
ply be wished away by rapid advancements in science and medicine. And
new advances in medicine cannot have impact where these historical bur-
dens persist. Humanities approaches like community engagement and
addressing moral residue can be used to resolve these burdens and pave a
path for the impact of scientic innovationson the health of populations
globally.
Finally, various forms and levels of inequities persist across the globe,
which scientic advancements in medicine help to perpetuate. ecase
of theglobal COVID-19 vaccine distribution is a testament to this eect.
For instance, while most HICs have vaccinated most of their eligible
populations, LMICs have yet to achieve signicantmilestones in vacci-
nating their high-risk populations (Mirza and Rauhala 2021; Ritchie
etal. 2021). e key underlying factor is the global inequity in access to
the COVID-19 vaccines. COVID-19 may not end until proportionate
vaccination rates are achieved in all parts of the globe. Science alone can-
not address this problem. Scientic innovations and humanities
approaches underpinned by ethical agility and political will can provide a
clear pathway out of this and otherglobal healthcrisis. In short, a har-
mony of science and humanities measure is a prerequisite for ending
global health emergencies.
S. J. Ujewe
67
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5
The Vaccination
MandateDebateRevisited
PeterAloysiusIkhane
Introductory Remarks
For clarity, the vaccination debate centres on whether, and in what condi-
tion, individuals may justiably exempt themselves (or refuse) to be vac-
cinated, given that vaccination is a means to prevent, especially, the
spread of communicable diseases. With the outbreak of COVID-19 and
the rollout of vaccines that was expected to follow (or has followed), the
debate has again received some heightened attention. Before taking up a
discussion of the debate, beginning with the epistemics of the debate, let
me rst present a scenario that grounds my eventual analysis of the ratio-
nale for which vaccination may be refused.
In April of 2020, a month-plus into the country’s lockdown as part of
government’s measures to curtail the spread of the coronavirus
(COVID-19) that was hitting hard in other parts of the world and was
speedily nding its way to countries on the African continent, Nigerians
P. A. Ikhane (*)
Department of Philosophy, University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria
© e Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023
F. Egbokhare, A. Afolayan (eds.), Global Health, Humanity and the COVID-19
Pandemic, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17429-2_5
76
woke up to the troubling news of a proposed bill, “Control of Infectious
Disease, 2020”, being sponsored by the Speaker of Nigeria’s House of
Representative. e troubling aspect of the news was that part of the
proposed bill contained statements intended to give the Nigerian state
the powers to impose determined nes and jail term on any citizen who
refuses vaccination that it believed would help in curbing the spread of
infectious diseases in the country, including COVID-19, perhaps when
the vaccine(s) become available. For a little more emphasis, the bill,
which was proposed as a replacement of the “Quarantine Act”, sought to
impose a penalty of between N200,000 and N5,000,000 as well as a jail
term for violators, as against the N500:00 ne that the Quarantine Act
imposed. While the Speaker of the House claimed that the proposed bill
was intended to develop what is in existence (i.e., the Quarantine Act)
towards strengthening the management of Nigeria’s public health system,
many human rights advocates, as well as some members of the Federal
House of Representative itself, questioned the sincerity of the proposed
bill, wondering why it was quickly taken through the rst and second
readings, with no plans for public hearing. Indeed, “[m]any human rights
advocates, as well as a member of the Federal House of Representative, …
called the bill ‘draconian’ and if passed, could further stie human rights
freedom in Nigeria” (Olurounbi 2020).
Part of the responses that greeted the state’s attempt to pass the bill was
the question of whether the state had the prerogative to enact law(s) that
would impose vaccination on citizens and punish them if they refused to
comply.1 Nigerians wondered whether the state could so regulate the
choices of individuals in such matters as the freedom to choose to be vac-
cinated or not on the claims that it was its duty to ensure the safety of all
in society: “don’t people have the right and freedom to determine how
their health care should be handled?” they asked. e Nigerian experi-
ence of the state’s intent to legislate (and impose penalties where
1 I would like to state here that there are ethical concerns raised by the use of punitive/incarceration
measures to address public health issues, such as mandating vaccination. Indeed, several authors
have examined some of these ethical concerns related to the use of punitive/incarceration measures
to deal with public health problems. e focus of the chapter however is not to turn attention to
these; rather, it examines an instance that may legitimately question the state’s “right” to act in
certain ways, albeit, in the context of the vaccination mandate debate.
P. A. Ikhane
77
necessary) on the vaccination of her citizens, and the citizen’s outcry
against that intent and its proposed execution, echoes the vaccination
debate. It does so by resonating with the claims of the state that it bears
the burden of ensuring that individuals are able to achieve their good
and, so, can mandate vaccination and the counter-claims of citizens that
they each have the right to determine how their health care would be
managed.2
In the light of the foregoing, the epistemics of the vaccination debate
refers to the rationale that is assumed to ground the claims of the state
and the counter-claims of citizens. Whereas the rationale of the state’s
claim relates to the obligation that accrues to it from the “social contract”
it entered with the citizen, and which legitimises its government, that of
the citizen turns on the rights to freedom of choice. Evident, then, in the
Nigerian experience, is the supposition by the state that on the grounds
of its obligations to ensure an enabling condition for individuals to
achieve their good, it could mandate vaccination. In the same vein, the
citizen may be read to have assumed that they have right to determine
their choices, rather than being compelled to accept certain choices. is
is what hassupposedly informed the sort of response that they put up
against the state’s attempt to so legislate on vaccination. Aside this, the
Nigerian experience also reveals grounds on which the rationale of the
state intent may be put to question. at is, the basis on which the citi-
zens responded to the state’s intent to legislate on compulsory vaccina-
tion provides ample reasons for examining the epistemics of the claims of
the vaccination debate.
In the literature, however, proponents of these claims have provided
more nuanced dimensions to the arguments for and against mandating
2 e literature on the vaccination debate sometimes classies vaccines into those that are “medi-
cally necessary” and those that are “practically necessary”. Vaccines that are “medically necessary”
are those that are the only known viable defenses against diseases taking hold in a community, while
those that are “practically necessary” are those to which there are alternatives, but which alternatives
are, in practice, not used by a signicant number of people. I am more interested in vaccines that
are “medically necessary”.
5 The Vaccination Mandate Debate Revisited
78
vaccination than I have presented here. In broad terms, supporters3 of the
view that the state can mandate vaccination in certain instances such as
with COVID-19 argue that since empirical observations have shown that
as more and more individuals are allowed to refuse the vaccination by
choosing what they suppose is in their individual interests, there is the
likelihood that the collective public health will weaken as herd or com-
munity immunity diminishes. us, they argue further, the rational thing
to do is, at least, to get a higher percentage of the population vaccinated.
To this end, the state may be described as acting according to what
Garrett Hardin refers to as the “tragedy of the commons”, by employing
various legal measures to mandate individuals to be vaccinated.
Counter-arguments in support of citizens’ freedom of choice to accept
vaccination or otherwise insist that the individual’s right to self-
determination provides sucient grounds for citizens to refrain from vac-
cination.4 e proponents ground their argument for individual
self-determination on the science of vaccination,5 which has shown that
vaccination does not work in similar ways for everyone. ere are, indeed,
pertinent questions regarding the eciency and ecacy of vaccines and
their use in minimising and eliminating the spread of infectious diseases.6
Supporters of this view also raise issues relating to bodily deformation,
3 Proponents of this view provide argument in defense of dierent extent to which such mandate
that be enforced. Roland Pierik (2018), for instance, provides an unqualied defense, while Jessica
Flanigan (2014) and Alberto Giubilini (2020) provide qualied or limited defense for mandating
vaccination.
4 For extensive discussions of this, see Leask etal. (2010); Moran etal. (2006); Omer etal. (2009);
Wolfe and Sharp (2002).
5 I take the science of vaccination to concern the systematic research and knowledge that goes into
the production of vaccines as well as its use in eliminating infectious diseases. is science grew
from inoculation, which was the initial method of immunization that involved the use of smallpox
material transferred from the arm of an infected sick person to that of a healthy person to induce a
milder form of the illness. Much of the initial challenges with vaccination were associated with
inoculation which investigations showed inadvertently contributed to the spread of smallpox and
other bloodborne diseases. My comments here are drawn from a reading of the science of the his-
tory vaccination as a means to prevent the spread of communicable diseases. See, for instance,
Colgrove (2005: 168).
6 It is pertinent to however note that since the beginning of the use of vaccination, rather than
inoculation, in the nineteenth century, the science has grown, reducing the occurrence of the risks
of other contagions that were associated with it at its inception. is has been found to be particu-
larly the case since “the use of vaccine made from glycerinated calf’s lymph began to replace arm-
to- arm transfer of disease material in the 1860s …”
P. A. Ikhane
79
such as swollen and abscessed arm, arising from vaccination (Colgrove
2005: 168; Malone and Hinman 2007).
In the Nigerian experience, however, there is a twist that necessitates
and drives my concerns with the debate. is may be aptly described as
the challenge of political distrust in relation to gaps in health information-
sharing on the part of the state. An instance of this may be seen in the
events that led to the altercation between the US/EU and Chinese gov-
ernments regarding the failure of the Chinese government to send timely
warning to the global community, perhaps through the WHO, regarding
the infectious rate of the COVID-19 (Colgrove 2005).7 It is indeed the
handling of vital information at the early beginnings of the COVID-19,
particularly in China, that has generated many uncertainties. For exam-
ple, a research carried out by the PEW Research Centre reveals that two-
thirds of Americans (64%) say that China has done a bad job dealing
with the coronavirus outbreak. Around three-quarters (78%) place a fair
amount of the blame for the global spread of the coronavirus on the
Chinese government’s initial handling of the COVID-19 outbreak in
Wuhan (Silver etal. 2020). Furthermore, Beijing’s reluctance to agree to
an independent inquiry, after many months of negotiations for the WHO
to have access to the city, also created room for political distrust. e
point here is that the manner in which governments across the world
have handled information and information-sharing regarding COVID-19
has left many, both in the more and less developed worlds, questioning
the sincerity of governments to ensure their good.
In brief, political distrust describes the condition of the lack or absence
of citizens’ condence in government regarding its sincerity to ensure
their good; it may be empirically determined by taking the ratio of citi-
zens’ evaluation of government performance in relation to their expecta-
tions of how government ought to perform (Hetherington 1998;
Hetherington and Husser 2012). In relation to this and the context of the
7 An interesting reporting that looks back at how the Chinese government tried to silence social
media report of the outbreak of a deadly SARs-like virus done by BBC’s Kerry Allen and Zhaoyin
Feng may be read here: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-55355401. ey report of
how the country’s government censors worked harder than ever to suppress negative online infor-
mation and how the citizens managed to break through the Great Firewall.
5 The Vaccination Mandate Debate Revisited
80
paper, political distrust relates to citizens’ misgivings that government has
its best interest in mandating vaccination.
From the foregoing, the fundamental concern that I examine in the
chapter is whether the state, given its duty to ensure and bring about the
conditions to enable individuals achieve their good in the society, still
holds the right to mandate vaccination in the context of the challenge of
political distrust? It is obvious, here, that I have assumed the following:
(1) that the state holds a certain right to mandate vaccination and (2) that
such right may be put to question on, say, the basis of the condition I
allude to in the second part of the paper. I take (1) to be my argument for
the government’s default position regarding the vaccination debate and
(2) to be a limitation to what I present in (1), and, hence, the reason for
my examining the debate.8
In the default condition, I suppose that there is sucient empirical
record about the ecacy of vaccination, such as records about increase in
herd immunity and evidence of the eradication of disease, as recently
demonstrated with the case of polio in Nigeria and Africa.9 e default
position also assumes the absence of any signicant situations that may
result in political distrust, such as gaps in information-sharing. With
respect to (2), I draw on the notion of political distrust as regards
information- sharing in the time of a health pandemic. I intend, in this
regard, to examine the terms of the vaccination debate not by essentially
questioning the science of vaccination but showing that information
asymmetry, between the state and the citizen that results from the state’s
preferences, provides persuasive grounds that challenge the state’s legiti-
mate use of law to enforce vaccination.10 In addressing my focus in the
rst section of the chapter, I will elaborate on the epistemics of the vac-
cination debate. is is to enable me to identify what I take to be the
default position. On the assumption that I succeed with showing that in
8 My response to (1) can be read as a reiteration of the 1905 US Supreme Court decision that
established the constitutionality of state compulsory vaccination laws when such laws are consid-
ered necessary for the public health and safety. See Walloch (2015): 187–214. Suolk Woodbridge
(2008): 1820–1841. https://doi.org/10.7722/j.ctt18kr6pf.15.
9 Nigeria was recently declared polio-free; as the last country in Africa to be so declared, the entire
continent was declared free of wide polio. is is a feat that is attributable to vaccination.
10 I do not so much as question the science of vaccination because it is obvious that it has developed
much as compared to its early beginnings before the use of glycerinated calf’s lymph.
P. A. Ikhane
81
the default condition, the state has the obligation to ensure the safety and
wellbeing of all in society, and, hence, that it holds the prerogative to
mandate vaccination, I however argue that the exercise of such preroga-
tive may be limited by the condition necessitated by political distrust.
The Vaccination MandateDebate
In the vaccination debate, two strongly opposed camps may be identi-
ed, with a third camp taking a rather moderate position. For clarity, let
us refer to those who support the view that government has the right to
enforce vaccination as “vaccination advocates (VAs)”, those who aver that
individuals enjoy the right to self-determination in such matters and may
decide to opt against vaccination as “individual rights advocates” (IRAs)
and the group of theorists who take a moderate position as “moderation-
ists of vaccination” (MOVs). Following from this, the contending claims
of the debate may be stated thus: while VAs assert that vaccination repre-
sents the more sustainable answer to curbing the impact or spread of
infectious diseases, and so push for making vaccination mandatory, IRAs
argue that vaccination need not be made mandatory as this goes too far
to intrude on individual’s right to self-determination.
In support for their position, VAs see vaccines and vaccinations as pub-
lic good. A testament to this is the declaration by the Centres for Disease
Control and Prevention (CDC) in the United States that vaccines are one
of the ten great public health achievements of the twentieth century
(Malone and Hinman 2007: 338). On the contrary, the IRAs suppose
that in peculiar situations, experience shows that the use of vaccination
can have various side eects that may aect the wellbeing of individuals,
leading them to conclude that this may result in the invasion of the
capacity of individuals to the pursuit of their life’s goals.11 e MOVs, for
their part, canvas for some form of exemption that allows individuals to
stay away from vaccination. ey however propose that such exemptions,
11 For an extended reading on the debate, see Cole and Swendiman (2014) and Malone and
Hinman (2007): 262–284.
5 The Vaccination Mandate Debate Revisited
82
which are to be a form of government’s regulation, may be made dicult
to get through government’s legislation.
Furthermore, the conict between the claims of the IRAs and VAs,
which has been well documented in the literature, may be illustrated
with, say, the work of Garrett Hardin. In “e Tragedy of the Commons,”
Hardin makes analogous allusion to the decrease in the community’s
interest in maximising food production in a common cattle pasture
because each individual member of the community is allowed, without
restrictions or measures of control, to continue to pursue their own indi-
vidual interests for more benets by adding additional numbers of cattle
to an already saturated common cattle pasture. Hardin notes that when
such is permitted to go on, the consequence of an inevitable ruin of the
common pasture for cattle grazing is similar to the herd or community
immunity that vaccination is meant to procure, unless some measures are
put in place to ensure individuals get vaccination as against permitting
the pursuit of individual interests. Indeed, VAs claim that “a community
free of an infectious disease because of a high vaccination rate can be
viewed as a common” (Malone and Hinman 2007: 339).
From the foregoing, the terms of the vaccination debate, in relation to
the issue at stake, may be normatively stated thus: which ought to have
prior status between the pursuit of the conditions for individuals to attain
their good in society through vaccination that ensures herd immunity, on
the one hand, and the assertion of individual autonomy given the uncer-
tainties associated with the science of vaccination, on the other? e
terms of the debate, so understood, generate some dilemma in choice-
making regarding mandating vaccination or whether the choice to make
such mandate violates the rights of individuals. Malone and Hinman
aptly capture this seeming impasse:
As disease rates drop, the risks associated with the vaccine come even more
to the fore, providing further incentive to avoid immunization. us, when
an individual … chooses to go unimmunized, it only minimally increases
the risk of illness for that individual, while conferring on that person the
benet of avoiding the risk of vaccine-induced side eects. At the same
time, however, this action weakens the herd eect protection for the entire
community. As more and more individuals choose to do what is in the
P. A. Ikhane
83
‘best’ individual interest, the common eventually fails as herd immunity
disappears and disease outbreak occurs. To avoid this ‘tragedy of the com-
mons’, legal requirements have been imposed by communities (in recent
times, by states) to mandate particular vaccinations. (Malone and Hinman
2007: 339)
e dilemma alluded in the statement above may be illustrated in this
way: suppose that someone, x, leaves in a community, C, and x alone
remains unvaccinated for a certain infectious disease. e argument of
IRAs is that if x has decided to stay away from being vaccinated on the
grounds of personal choice or exercise of individual’ right to self-
determination, it would amount to an infringement on x’s personal pref-
erences to force or legally bound x to get vaccination on the argument of
the pursuit of either the common or collective good of all in C by provid-
ing the enabling conditions for individuals to attain their good, since the
herd immunity of C, which is part of the collective good in this instance,
is high and it is only x who is left unvaccinated. Even if it is supposed
further that if an infectious disease nds its way into C, and because x is
unvaccinated, x is prone to be infected, a situation that may aect the
herd immunity of C, IRAs could still respond that x’s choice against vac-
cination does not put to jeopardy C’s herd immunity. Part of statement
quoted from Malone and Hinman that “when an individual … chooses
to go unimmunized, it only minimally increases the risk of illness for that
individual, while conferring on that person the benet of avoiding the
risk of vaccine-induced side eects” further shows that when the herd
immunity is high, individuals may justiably pursue their interests in
choosing to stay away from vaccination on the grounds that it has been
shown that the risk of vaccination is signicantly high. And if such per-
sons can be exempted, what is the warrant to mandate individuals, par-
ticularly when the herd immunity is high and when there is the risk of
side eect?12
12 I express many thanks to the reviewer and the editors who drew my attention to the implication
of my argument here. It was noted that my claim here is cogent because I am arguing with regard
to just one individual. What happens if there are more than an individual, say a million, who refuse
to refuse to be vaccinated? Does the size of the unvaccinated change the terms of the debate? My
response to this is that if the size of the numbers refusing to be vaccinated threatens the herd immu-
nity, it will very well aect the debate as drawn from the statement of Malone and Hinman.
5 The Vaccination Mandate Debate Revisited
84
But the question that remains unanswered concerns how the high lev-
els of the herd immunity are to be attained if individuals are not made to
see the benets of vaccination and sometimes compelled to be vaccinated,
when the need arises. If, on a dierent approach, we assume that there are
other members of C that are not able to get vaccination for one health
condition or another, in reply to the earlier assertions of IRAs, VAs may
argue that x’s choice to remain unvaccinated puts the health of these oth-
ers in danger and, so, aects the herd immunity of C.And because the
latter condition of there being individuals that are not able to get vaccina-
tion and so be immune to particular infectious diseases is the more apt
description of most human communities, VAs argue that there is the
need for legal regulation to enforce vaccination, if the need arises.
Whereas my submission with respect to the debate as examined so far
aligns with the claims of VAs, my argument is nuanced by what I refer to
as the default condition. In this vein, my submission is that barring any
condition created by government that may have consequences for achiev-
ing its obligation to ensure the common or collective good of all in soci-
ety, the government or state retains the right to enforce vaccination, if the
need arises. is is because I take the state’s right that derives from its
obligation to procure the collective good of all in society to be grounded
on the “social contract” that exists between the state and the citizen. My
assertion here is that if the state has not created the grounds for individu-
als to raise questions about the sincerity of its pursuit of the collective
good of all, there are no justiable bases on which individuals can place
premium on the exercise of their individual rights to stay away from vac-
cination, if there are no medical grounds for doing so. In the light of this,
and as long as the “minimal terms” of the contract are in place, the state
retains the right to pursue the attainment of the collective good of all in
society.13 As an extension of the ground for my submission, I take the sort
of “social contract” between the state and the citizen to be aptly denoted
13 I assume here an ideal rendition of the “social contract”, without paying much attention to the
situation of realpolitiking, which calls into focus how the social contract has always been circum-
vented by racial and sexist underpinning. Works such as e Racial Contract by Charles W.Mills
and e Sexual Contract by Carole Pateman are key in this regard. My reason for this is to be able
to identify what may be taken as the minimal requirement of the state in being part of that con-
tract, which is essential for my analysis in the chapter.
P. A. Ikhane
85
by the notion of commutative justice. As a matter of commutative jus-
tice, which is “understood as the principle to give each person that to
which he or she is entitled” (Koslowski 2001), I take the state’s right as
grounded on reciprocal plus-sum relation with citizens that entitles it, as
a “just due”, to mandate vaccination as a duty on the part of citizens
towards ensuring the safety of society. In this sense of the state’s right, I
refer to this as the “entitlement sense” of right, as it places emphasis on
the state’s moral faculty to exact its “just dues” from citizens. In this sense
of entitlement, “just dues” imply that right is a proper object of justice;
and as such, if someone has the right to exact certain just dues, someone
else has the “duty” to render such just dues (Bittle 1950: 274–275).
Revisitingthe Vaccination MandateDebate
My revisitingthe vaccination mandatedebate turns on theepistemics of
the debate with particular attention on the condition I provided as
grounds for why the right to mandate vaccination held by the state, in
relation to fullling its duty/obligation of ensuring the wellbeing of all in
society, may be questioned. For clarity, I argued in the preceding section
of this chapter that in the debate between VAs and IRAs, the state enjoyed
the prerogative to enforce the vaccination of individuals, barring the pres-
ence of any condition resulting from the state’s activities that necessitates
political distrust. As such, my analysis, in what I referred to as the default
situation, is that the state possesses such right and can compel, by legisla-
tion, its citizens to present themselves for vaccination.14 But when state
action genuinely warrants or generates grounds to politically distrust the
state’s intent to bring about the collective good of its citizens, the state’s
retainership of such right can be put to question.
Let me explicate what I mean by “genuinely warrant”. ere are
recorded instances where the state’s actions have not aligned with its
stated goal to actualise the good of all in society. In instances as these, a
14 My claim here is made even with the awareness that vaccination may result in adverse side eects
for some individuals. e medicine of vaccination realises and provides for the exemption of per-
sons in certain conditions. Moreover, in making this supposition, I take it that it is enough to have
a higher percentage of the populace vaccinated to achieve herd immunity.
5 The Vaccination Mandate Debate Revisited
86
case for the state’s action genuinely warranting individuals or citizens to
doubt or distrust the intents of the state can be made. A case that can be
made here refers to the political distrust resulting from the state’s fail-
ure—as seen with the attempt to pass the “Control of Infectious Disease,
2020” bill without provision for public hearing—in information- sharing,
particularly in relation to matters of health care. e failure of the
Nigerian state, in this regard, supervenes on the nature of the workings of
the state and government in postcolonial Nigeria. To be sure, the work-
ings of the state are inected by its postcolonial and modern realities,
which include biting poverty, an unrelenting neo-colonialism, high levels
of illiteracy, a nascent democracy and a clipping occurrence of fraud.15
ese realities also include the tensions of modernity and development,
mismanagement and corruption, political apathy, violence and ethnic
and religious rivalries (Falola 2021). ese realities coupled with how
they inect on the state’s action circumscribe the understanding of rights
or commutative justice between the state and the people. And in the light
of these, serious questions have been raised regarding the moral limits of
the state’s power in various contexts. is can be seen in the case, stated
above, of the attempt of the legislative arm of the state to pass a bill crimi-
nalising refusal of vaccination without consideration for the extent of
consultations it has to engage in before such is done. Particularly worri-
some is that this was a time where there were no vaccines that had been
found for COVID-19, and people were refusing to take the vaccines,
hence, the need for such hurried passage of the bill. Of immediate con-
cern to my analysis, however, is the state’s mismanagement of informa-
tion regarding COVID-19. Rather than concerning itself with addressing
and dousing the fears and worry emanating from the many conicting
and discouraging information going around, particularly on the Internet
regarding the emergence and spread of the virus, the state bothered itself
with hurriedly passing a bill that criminalises refusal of a vaccine/vaccines
that was/were yet to see the light of day.
15 Authors such as Peter P. Ekeh (1975): 91–112; Achille Mbembe (2001); Adeshina Afolayan
(2012). Ekeh, for instance, argues that the experiences of colonialism in Africa have led to the
emergence of a unique historical conguration in colonial Africa: the existence of two publics
instead of one public, as in the West. He further asserts that many of Africa’s political problems are
due to relationships between the two publics.
P. A. Ikhane
87
To push my case here, let me state that information is a public good.16
As a public good, information is a social commodity and cannot be taken
simply as a private property; this indicates how it is to be handled. at
information is a social commodity is seen in the way people seek it as
means to achieve some overall or ultimate good for their lives. In the light
of this, it could be asserted that in the way our social condition inects
our private world, information is at the centre of this. As a public good,
information can lift the collective life of a community. And as informa-
tion is a public good, it can be viewed a right; and, in my consideration
of information-sharing, this is where I suppose it derives its being a right
for individuals as citizens of a state. In relating citizens’ right to the right
or correct information, reference cannot but be made to the duties or
obligation of the state to provide the same, in the context of our consid-
eration of the information. at is, as we make reference to the rights of
individuals, in this regard, we equally make allusion to the duty of the
state to ensure the same. It is, indeed, the balance of rights (whether of
the state or of individuals), on the one hand, and duties (again, of the
state or individuals), on the other, that results in justice in the commuta-
tive sense.
Every right in one person involves a corresponding duty in others to
respect this right and not to violate it. And as rights are meant to achieve
certain ends in society, the purpose of rights is the establishment and
maintenance of social order among humans. In this vein, rights and
duties are understood to always go together as a consequence of the law’s
attempt to institute justice in society. at is, citizens have the right to be
provided with the “right” information. e “right” information is to be
viewed not as just the correct information—which is a key dening fea-
ture of the right information—but also the timely information. To put it
simply, the right information is the correct information that is timely.
Citizens have a right to this, more so “in the time of a health pandemic”.
For me, “in the time of a health pandemic” signies the time when the
most signicant value is life, that is, the value of being alive. In such time,
other values such as economic gains, political advancement and even
16 Information, which may be taken as a cognate concept of knowledge, meets the requirements of
what public goods are. See Razzolini (2003): 782–784.
5 The Vaccination Mandate Debate Revisited
88
educational growth become, in economic terms, the opportunity costs or
forgone alternatives to the value of keeping alive. But in the time of the
current health pandemic of COVID-19, the state (not only in Nigeria
but in the global space) seems to have failed in this realisation, a failure
that necessitated political distrust. Indeed, a characterisation of how the
state has handled information and information-sharing with its citizens
in the times of the current health pandemic can be likened to protection-
ist attitudes in trade; states in the comity of nations in the global space
have been protectionists about information and information-sharing,
such that information that is a supposed public good became a political
tool to gain certain state advantages. It is in the light of this that I argue
that the state’s right to legislate on mandating vaccination, like it intended
to do in Nigeria, can be put to question and shown not to meet the
demands of commutative justice. Indeed, my argument in the preceding
section that the state’s right derives from commutative justice, which
itself is a reection of the “social contract” between the state and the citi-
zens, comes to play in support of individuals arming the pursuit of
their interests when there is a genuine warrant that the state has failed
to do so.
In concluding this section of the chapter, let me address myself to
some possible rejoinders to the argument I have made in the section. To
begin, from my argument that political distrust arising from gaps in
information-sharing provides some ground on which the state’s preroga-
tive to enforce vaccination, if the need arises, may be questioned, it would
seem that I have inadvertently canvassed for the exercise of the rights to
self-determination by individuals who may choose to refrain from vacci-
nation when such situations arise. is is, perhaps, on the suggestion that
as the major contending camps in the debate are VAs and IRAs, it would
seem implied that when the argument in favour of VAs is awed, then the
position of IRAs prevails. And since I have provided grounds for why the
claims of VAs may not be sustained, then I have equally provided evi-
dence that make the claims of IRAs plausible. While this is a possible
reading of my argument, I suppose that the inference—from my argu-
ment to the assumption that the position of IRAs prevails—is not a nec-
essary one. at is, I do not take my argument to necessitate the position
P. A. Ikhane
89
that when the claims of VAs are shown to be defective, then the opposite
claim of IRAs becomes credible.
For one, the issue at core of this debate is not “white or black”, that
when one position in the debate is rejected, the other side is unintention-
ally accepted; there are other possible outcomes that may be arrived at
when one side of the major contending position is shown to be inconsis-
tent. Also, I take herd or community immunity to be some public good
that ought to be striven for; and if the exercise of individual rights in
choosing to refrain from vaccination would put this to jeopardy, then the
exercise of such rights should be regulated. Indeed, in relation to my
analysis, a possible outcome is that in showing that there are possible
limitations to the state’s entitlement to enforce vaccination in instances
like when the state’s actions lead to the emergence of political distrust, I
have also indicated that the state not only has the obligation to ensure the
enabling conditions for individuals to attain their good of all in society—
an obligation from which its prerogative to enforce vaccination derives—
it also has the added obligation “to show” that it is pursuing the good of
all in society. What the state may therefore do when such scenario of
political distrust poses challenges for the exercise of its right is to seek
ways to redress the events that may have resulted in the emergence of
such political distrust.
But the question may however be raised regarding how to determine
when the state is no longer in the pursuit of the collective good. Put dif-
ferently, it may be asked how to determine if government’s intentions are
sincere: that is, when the government is not just deceiving, but withhold-
ing relevant information. is is because (political) sincerity “is perfectly
compatible with people keeping secrets, withholding information, or
more broadly, being entitle to privacy” (Loriaux 2017: 1). ough,
addressing this would stretch the essay beyond its focus, in brief, it may
be signicant to state that experts in the eld employ such methods as
thematic content analysis (TCA). is method develops from the knowl-
edge of how easy speech may be manipulated and, hence, the need to
device a truth detector. It “consists of a fairly large—and expandable—
number of coding systems for analysing nonobvious aspects of verbal
behaviour. TCA coding systems do not rely on analysing manifest con-
tent; they look at underlying characteristics that are less easy to
5 The Vaccination Mandate Debate Revisited
90
manipulate, as least until politician becomes familiar with the system”
(Suedfeld etal. 2007: 60). Along with this, it suces to say here that the
possibility of political distrust, which is dierent from how it may be
determined, provides enough grounds for the analysis that has been done
in the essay. Moreover, political distrust extends beyond just the with-
holding of information; there is, at least, the added question of the intent
behind withholding information. As regards the concern of the essay, my
reference to gaps in information-sharing alludes to, among others, gov-
ernment’s withholding of vital information that should bring about the
collective good of all.
Concluding Remarks
My analysis has followed a path from rst defending the state’s obligation
to ensure the collective good of all in society as a right that permits it to,
if the need arises, mandate vaccination so as to curb the spread of infec-
tious diseases, to showing that such right may however be limited on
certain grounds. e ground indicated in the chapter, however, concerns
the state’s action about health relating to the use of vaccination, which
has resulted in some doubts about the state’s sincerity in the pursuit of
the collective good. In the former instance, the question was whether the
government had the right bequeathed to it by its duty to ensure the good
of society to legislate in such matters that bother on individuals being
vaccinated; and in the latter instance, the question was whether the state,
as a result of its duty to ensure and bring about the collective good of all
in society, still holds the right to mandate its citizen to be vaccinated even
in the context of the challenge of political distrust. My analysis was driven
by the assumption that government has the duty (hence, right) to ensure
the collective good. is is for the sake of the good of all. is is even
more so in the time of a health pandemic, when government is expected
to ensure the safety and wellbeing of all its citizens. In this case, it is ten-
able to argue that government’s duty holds prior to individual rights to
self-determination. But when there is inkling that the state is no longer
after the pursuit of the common or collective good, such right of the state
may be questioned.
P. A. Ikhane
91
What I did in the rst section of the essay then was to uphold the posi-
tion that in the vaccination debate between supporters of the state’s use
of some legal means to enforce vaccination and advocates of the exercise
of individual rights in choosing to refrain from vaccination, the former’s
claims take priority over that of the latter on the grounds that the “social
contract” that exists between the state and citizens, which in turn gives
the state the obligation to ensure the collective good of all in society,
privileges the state with the right to enforce vaccination when the need
arises if this becomes a means to achieve the collective good in this
instance. Again, I referred to the right of the state in this regard as deriv-
ing from commutative justice that allows the state to mandate vaccina-
tion as a reciprocal response on the part of individuals in guaranteeing
that it is able to ensure the collective good of all in society. In brief, my
argument included (1) the state’s duty to ensure and bring about the col-
lective good of all in society; (2) from (1) the state’s right to mandate its
citizens to be vaccinated; and (3) from (2) the citizen’s corresponding
duty, over their right to self-determination, not to reject vaccination. In
the second section of this chapter, I drew on the notion of commutative
justice (earlier employed to defend the state’s right) that emphasises recip-
rocal and equitable exchange among entities to show that the condition
generated by political distrust in relation to health information-sharing is
a limiting one for the state’s exercise of its prerogative to mandate vacci-
nation, which itself derives from its obligation to ensure the collective
good of society. e claim here is that when the state fails in its duty to
citizens, it relinquishes whatever prerogative it has in such contexts.
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5 The Vaccination Mandate Debate Revisited
Part II
Critical Framing of the Pandemic
in Africa
97
6
An African Perspective ontheEthics
andPolitics ofForeign Medical Aid
inaPandemic
AdeoluOluwaseyiOyekan
andAdemolaKazeemFayemi
Introduction
Early in January 2020, the world became aware of the spread of COVID
SARS 2, a strain of coronavirus, in the Chinese city of Wuhan. About
two months later, not only had it became obvious that the virus was con-
tagious, but the spread had also gone across the world enough for the
World Health Organization (WHO) to declare it a pandemic (WHO
2020). While the gures of infection and mortality resulting from
COVID-19 virus have continued to rise across the world, amid second,
third waves and beyond, several topical issues have already arisen and are
emerging that warrant scholarly considerations.
A. O. Oyekan (*)
Identities and Social Cohesion in Africa (ISCIA), Nelson Mandela University,
Port Elizabeth, South Africa
A. K. Fayemi
Institute of African and Diaspora Studies, University of Lagos, Lagos, Nigeria
e-mail: kfayemi@unilag.edu.ng
© e Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023
F. Egbokhare, A. Afolayan (eds.), Global Health, Humanity and the COVID-19
Pandemic, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17429-2_6
98
One of the fundamental issues that has arisen is how China conducted
itself in terms of handling the outbreak. ere are so many reasons to
believe that the Chinese government made eorts to suppress informa-
tion about the outbreak of the virus, including the arrest of a doctor who
rst made its contagious nature public. e doctor himself eventually
became infected and died of the virus (Hegarty 2020). e opacity of the
Chinese government, it is believed in many quarters, made it dicult for
the rest of the world to at least prepare eectively for the mitigation of the
virus as it eventually became a pandemic.
It is within this context that one must situate the subsequent actions of
the Chinese government and the reactions it has elicited across the world.
While China has deployed enormous human resources around the globe
in terms of healthcare workers, as well as medical materials such as masks,
ventilators, and personal protective equipment (PPE), in what can be
partly described as pandemic philanthropy, the gesture has been received
with mixed feelings. In Nigeria, where there is a notable shortage of test
kits and other resources, there has been a vehement opposition to the
eorts of government to leverage on Chinese expertise and generosity in
combating the epidemic (Ayitogo 2020; Shaban 2020). For instance,
reputable professional bodies such as the Nigeria Medical Association
(NMA), National Association of Resident Doctors (NARD), and the
Nigerian Union of Journalists (NUJ) were at the vanguard of a campaign
that led to the drastic scaling down of the level of intervention contem-
plated in government circles (see NARD Press Release 2020; NMA Press
Release 2020).
is development, no doubt, generated issues that are of political and
ethical interests. Questions have been raised, for instance, on whether
China ought to be trusted to provide medical assistance when the extent
of its cover-up of the virus remains unknown. ere are also questions on
whether China is using pandemic philanthropy to buy leverage as a
superpower to vitiate eorts holding it accountable for the negligence
and concealment that have resulted today in the deaths of thousands of
COVID-19 victims across the world. One question that is of more inter-
est to this chapter is: Was Nigeria right to accept foreign medical aid
from China?
A. O. Oyekan and A. K. Fayemi
99
In a bid to register its displeasure with China on the one hand and
assert its sovereignty on the other, ought Nigerian government reject or
accept medical philanthropy from China? A moral conundrum ensues
here—choosing between accepting foreign medical aid from China to
bridge to some degree the shortage in the resources needed to contain
and manage the virus, when such will likely save lives in Nigeria, and opt-
ing for a rejection of pandemic philanthropy from China despite being
needed for the timely and ecient management of the public health cri-
ses posed by COVID-19in Nigeria. In other words, should the overrid-
ing desire for accountability take precedence over accessing the kind of
assistance needed in the immediate, even when the same is likely to whit-
tle down the capacity to demand accountability from China and deter
future re-occurrence? To what extent does China’s pandemic philan-
thropy extenuate its culpability as a nation whose avoidable choices have
led to the spread of the pandemic and its consequences? Under what
moral considerations can assistance be accessed without compromising
the needed latitude to demand accountability from an erring superpower?
ese questions are fundamental to a better understanding of the ethics
and politics of foreign medical aid in a pandemic.
is chapter provides a fundamental evaluation of the ethics and poli-
tics of foreign medical aid in COVID-19 management in Nigeria using
insights from the principles of African ethic of communion. e choice
of this framework is informed by the dearth of literature evaluating pan-
demic philanthropy in general from an African ethical perspective and in
particular an absence of literature on the African ethical values relevant to
evaluating the act and politics of foreign medical aid from China to
Nigeria in the wake of COVID-19. is chapter lls this gap as it consid-
ers important understanding, from an African perspective, the values
both at play and absent in choosing foreign medics as a complementary
strategy in tackling the challenges of COVID-19in Nigeria.
e chapter is organized into ve sections. e rst section briey
traces the historical evolution of the outbreak of the virus in China, and
the spread across the world, to such a point that it became a pandemic.
e second section is an overview of Nigeria’s healthcare system in rela-
tion to its level of preparedness for managing a health crisis of the present
magnitude. e third section examines the nature of Chinese medical
6 An African Perspective on the Ethics and Politics of Foreign…
100
philanthropy. Section four is an exploration of an African moral theory
and an application of its principles of relationality, equity, and harmony
to the act of COVID-19 foreign medical aid from China to Nigeria. e
core position defended in this section is that while the values of transpar-
ency, trust, relationality, consultation, dialogues, and harmony are lack-
ing in the decision-making process that brought the Chinese foreign
medics’ aid to Nigeria, the act in itself is morally justied. is chapter
contends that a viable ethics of pandemic philanthropy can be considered
morally acceptable, in such a way that prioritizes the safety of lives and
preserves the collective and individual integrity of a recipient third-world
nation, from a culpable superpower. In light of an African ethic of com-
munion, the chapter concludes in the fth section with what developing
nations like Nigeria ought to do to be better prepared for not only future
pandemics but also the obligations that lie on other nations, China inclu-
sive, that are part of the global health ecology, for collective survival.
The Virus: FromOutbreak toPandemic
COVID-19 is a highly transmittable and pathogenic viral infection
caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome. e virus responsible for the
disease is Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) (Shereen etal. 2020). It derived
its name based on phylogenomic analysis of the genomic data of 2019-
nCoV, which showed that the 2019-nCoV is a zoonotic, enveloped
single- stranded virus that is most closely related to severe respiratory syn-
drome (SARS)-like CoV sequences isolated in bats during 2015 to 2017
(Guo et al. 2020). is strongly suggests that the bats’ CoV and the
human 2019-nCoV share a recent common origin. Both epidemics
emerged in China, in a region with high dietary consumption of wildlife,
and occurred during cold dry winter seasons.
e new coronavirus was rst isolated from traders at the South China
seafood market, commonly referred to as “wet markets” in Wuhan, China
(Lau etal. 2020). is market also sells wild animals or mammals, sus-
pected to be the likely intermediate hosts of 2019-nCoV, after their origi-
nation from bat hosts. It seems much probable from several accounts that
the intermediate hosts (wild mammals) were sold to the seafood market
A. O. Oyekan and A. K. Fayemi
101
in Wuhan, from where the virus began to spread. In December 2019,
patients with viral pneumonia due to microbial agent were reported in
Wuhan (Lu etal. 2020), with a number of them having a history of expo-
sure to the seafood market in Wuhan, suspected to be the infection
source. As other patients who had not been to the market itself but to its
vicinity reported their illnesses, preliminary pointers to human-to-human
transmission of the virus emerged and were eventually armed by evi-
dence of clusters of infected family members and medical workers (Chan
etal. 2020). Within one month, the virus had spread throughout China
during the Chinese New Year—a period when there is a high level of
human mobility, social gathering, and festivity (Adhikari etal. 2020).
The Context ofPhilanthropy inChina
Philanthropy is dened by Payton (1988: 7) as “voluntary action for the
public good.” Or, as Van Til argues, philanthropy is the act of “voluntary
giving and receiving of time and money aimed (however imperfectly)
toward the needs of charity and the interests of all in a better quality of
life” (Til 1990: 1). is denition lays emphasis on the autonomy of
choice by both the benefactor and the beneciary, and the ultimate objec-
tive of improving the lives of the latter, even if there are reasons to con-
sider the act as imperfect. Perhaps one of the most popular denitions of
philanthropy is Lester Salamon’s (Salamon and Anheier 1992) concep-
tion, which holds it as the private giving of time or valuables (money,
security, property) for public purposes.
Historically, philanthropy has been a part of traditional Chinese soci-
ety, as it is much compatible with Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism
(Baocheng and Mengsha 2017). Upon the institutionalization of social-
ism in the 1950s, however, the control and distribution of resources
became centralized, with the State having the primary responsibility of
providing amenities to all citizens regardless of class. According to the
Chinese Encyclopedia, philanthropy is performed “through sympathy,
pity, or religious belief, sending money or material goods to those in
6 An African Perspective on the Ethics and Politics of Foreign…
102
need, or provide other practical aid to social programs … with a heavy
religious and superstitious hue, its aim is to do good things for good
press. … [F]or a small number of people it is only a kind of temporary
passive relief. … [T]he social consequences are still disputed” (quoted
from Baocheng and Mengsha 2017: 34). In the 1990s, however, as China
began to open up more, its disposition toward philanthropy evolved
more toward accommodation (Baocheng and Mengsha 2017). Today,
not only is China more open toward philanthropy within; it has embraced
external philanthropy as a state policy.
After containing the spread of the virus through a lockdown of Wuhan
and a mass contact tracing operation driven by high level of surveillance,
China began to send medical assistance in the form of kits and personnel
to aected countries where the virus continued to spread in a way that
overwhelmed the healthcare systems. Some of the beneciaries of China’s
pandemic philanthropy include Italy, Serbia, Iran, Venezuela, Iraq, and
the Philippines, among others. According to Wang Yi, the State Councilor
and Minister of Chinese Foreign Aairs (2020), the two motivating rea-
sons for the assistance of pandemic-stressed countries are rst to show
gratitude for the assistance received when the infection became an epi-
demic in China and second to demonstrate its commitment to “interna-
tional humanitarianism and to implement the vision of a community
with a shared future for mankind.”
Chinese philanthropy has been two-pronged, coming from both the
government and the private sector. Jack Ma, Alibaba’s founder, has not
only contributed about $14 million through his foundation to develop a
COVID-19 vaccine, but he has also donated millions of masks and test
kits to Japan, all 54 African countries, Europe, Latin America, Russia,
and other parts of Asia. In all, Chinese donors and foundations have
contributed close to a billion dollars, about a fth of the estimated $4.3
billion of worldwide donations raised as of April 2, 2020, to deal with
COVID-19 and its many repercussions (e Conversation 2020).
A. O. Oyekan and A. K. Fayemi
103
China andthePolitics
ofPandemic Philanthropy
e above-stated objective of Republic of China’s pandemic philanthropy
notwithstanding the State’s reasons for pandemic philanthropy have been
met with skepticism, rejection, and outright condemnations in some
quarters. China’s supply of protective masks to some countries suering
severe shortage especially for frontline health workers is qualied as “mask
diplomacy” by several critics (Alton 2020; Seaman 2020; MERICS
2020). China has been accused of using its assistance to pursue the twin
goal of seeking political goodwill on the one hand and attaining global
leadership role on the other. e goodwill being sought is meant to
deect responsibilities and accountability arising from references to
China as the source of the virus, while as a second objective, it seeks to
consolidate its own position as the dominant superpower. ese alleged
objectives are regarded as unethical and opportunistic on the part of
China, which at the outbreak of the virus in Wuhan had enjoyed an out-
pour of assistance from Western countries, even going as far as requesting
that such philanthropic gestures be downplayed out of respect for its own
dignity and sensitivity. China’s publicized philanthropy across dierent
parts of the world appears thus to have failed the test of reciprocity of
moderation and altruism as undergirding principles (Seaman 2020).
ere are two popular narratives about China’s alleged complicity. e
rst is that China deliberately engineered the virus and spread it across
the world to create a devastation and disruption that would change the
current global order in its favor. is allegation, while farfetched and
unsubstantiated, has gained traction as one of the most propagated con-
spiracy theories about the pandemic. Senior American ocials, including
former President Donald Trump, have made comments that give cre-
dence to this belief (Singh et al. 2020). e second allegation is that
China is culpable for the outbreak of the pandemic, not because it engi-
neered the virus but because it suppressed vital information that could
have helped the rest of the world take more proactive measures in good
time. is allegation is predicated on information that emerged later that
China had arrested a doctor who rst raised alarm about the contagious
6 An African Perspective on the Ethics and Politics of Foreign…
104
nature of the virus and had suppressed information even as its transmis-
sion escalated. e whistleblower subsequently died of the virus
(Hegarty 2020).
In relation to Africa, the foray of China into the continent since the
1950s, which has accelerated over the last two decades, has continued to
generate diverse reactions in scholarly and policymaking circles. As the
continent sought aid as well as alternative funding partnership for devel-
opmental projects, criticism of the Bretton Woods institutions over some
of their austere lending policies had made possible a pivot toward China.
Still, Sino-African relations have not ceased to be an issue for serious
debates. After some respite, the interest dwindled but was revived when
the West in the 1990s decided to ostracize China yet again on issues
bothering on human rights abuses (Hirono and Suzuki 2014: 444).
While some works have analyzed the Sino-African relationship from the
perspective of dependency and exploitation, others have tried to argue for
a more nuanced view that accommodates African agency (Berhe and
Hongwu 2013; Mohan and Lampert 2013; Ayabei 2017).
At the outset, Chinese relations with Africa have been motivated by
the need to mitigate the isolations of the 1950s and 1960s, by associating
with emerging African states seeking to break from imperialism. is
relation is undergirded by the stated principles of non-interference and
respect for state sovereignty, often presented as a contrast to the overbear-
ing disposition of Western countries that continue to treat Africa as a
colony even after independence. Chinese investment in Africa is reported
to have grown to about 15 trillion dollars between 2005 and 2019
(Smith 2020).
In Nigeria, Chinese investments continue to spread sectorally, from
manufacturing to Fintech, hospitality, construction, and, more recently,
transportation. ese investments are estimated to be worth about 20
billion dollars and still rising (Odutola 2019), amid accusations in some
quarters that local industries are being crowded out with local labor out-
sourced to Chinese. It is within this context that the announcement by
the government of Nigeria that Chinese medical assistance will be arriv-
ing the country to cope with the pandemic ignited a huge opposition.
e Federal Government together with the China Railway Construction
Corp (CRCC), which had initially said the Chinese medics were coming
A. O. Oyekan and A. K. Fayemi
105
to help, subsequently backtracked, saying they would only be coming to
attend to the needs of some Chinese expatriates working in Nigeria
(Nan 2020).
e Nigerian Medical Association (NMA), the National Association
of Resident Doctors (NARD), and the Nigerian Union of Journalists
(NUJ) were the three opposition groups with the most strident objec-
tions. e NMA, in a release expressing its disappointment on the gov-
ernment’s decision to seek Chinese assistance, claimed among others that:
1. e Federal Government is … inviting the Chinese who from avail-
able accounts are not out of the woods themselves. e spike in cases
and the death toll from COVID -19in Italy coincided with the arrival
of the Chinese in the guise of oering assistance.
2. e Government did not take into consideration the extant laws regu-
lating the practice of medicine in Nigeria as enshrined in the Medical
and Dental Council Act. is is one such circumstance where the
Medical and Dental Council of Nigerian should be consulted to grant
necessary approvals to foreigners to interact with Nigerian patients.
3. e Association is aware of a large pool of general medical and special-
ist practitioners who are either unemployed or underemployed that
can be engaged instead of bringing foreigners who, aside from national
security concerns, may not be conversant with the cultures, terrains
and peculiar challenges Nigeria will denitely present.
4. e Association believes that the invitation is ill-timed and of no over-
bearing signicance considering that whatever experiences the Chinese
have can be shared by digital technology through conferencing.
5. It is a great disservice to the morale of the long-suering frontline
health workforce if the Government goes ahead to invite these Chinese
doctors. e invitation demeans their sacrices so far in this pandemic.
6. e government is expected to rescind the decision, employ more
Nigerian doctors, and also provide kits and protective equipment. e
Association would consider the withdrawal of the services of its mem-
bers from attending to COVID 19 patients should the government go
ahead with the invitation of the Chinese medics. (NMA 2020)
6 An African Perspective on the Ethics and Politics of Foreign…
106
e position of the NMA was strengthened by that of NARD
which stated:
We nd it rather curious that our government would contemplate to throw
open her international borders to Chinese nationals having watched how
similar action in Italy proved socio-economically suicidal. … e crafty
Chinese scientists should be the last group of friends to trust at this time,
given how unreliably and covertly they have managed the information
around the pandemic beginning from the data around its origin, character-
istics, and other virulence features to help the nations yet to experience the
surge to be better prepared. … We should not lose sight of the fact that
conspiracy theories have it that COVID-19 is a possible tool for both
sociopolitical and economic manipulation and domination. (NARD 2020)
e NUJ issued a release which went further to predicate its objections
on the possible linkage between the coronavirus and 5G technology,
hence the danger in trusting Chinese philanthropy (Iftikhar 2020).
From the above, it is evident that oppositions to Chinese philanthropy
were triggered by remote and immediate factors bothering on pre-
COVID suspicions of expansionism and exploitation and perceived cul-
pability in the spread of the virus, whether on account of poor decisions
or deliberate acts of sabotage. us, while a Chinese delegation and med-
ical materials eventually arrived the country on April 8, 2020, it was
obvious they would not be allowed to oer their expertise or assistance in
the country’s pandemic response. By the time they arrived, their mission
had been modied to be the treatment of Chinese workers in Nigeria,
especially those who work with CCECC (A Chinese construction rm
with huge footprints across Nigeria). Evidently, the coming of the Chinese
medics in spite of the hostile reaction to the gesture was a face-saving
eort on the part of the Nigerian and Chinese governments to ensure
that Nigerian medics do not carry out their threats while saving China
the embarrassment of having its oer of assistance turned down.
Meanwhile, the pandemic continues to spread as Nigeria appears to be
reaching the peak because of community transition.
A. O. Oyekan and A. K. Fayemi
107
Healthcare inNigeria andtheDearth
ofInfrastructures
e healthcare system in Nigeria has undergone a tremendous evolution
in the last ve decades, in terms of policies and initiatives, “but without
the desirable quality of health care delivery to advance the health of
Nigerians” (Asakitikpi 2019: 1). Healthcare in Nigeria is among the
poorest, coming at the low level of 142 out of 195 countries in terms of
access and quality (Fullman etal. 2018). With an average life expectancy
of 52 years in Nigeria, compared to other African countries such as Ghana
(61 years) and South Africa (57 years), more than 90% of the Nigerian
population live without health insurance (Medic West Africa 2019). It is
no surprise, therefore, that the prevalence of infectious diseases is high in
Nigeria. “Nigeria ranks poorly on the incidence of tuberculosis (128 out
of 138 countries) and the prevalence of HIV (123 out of 138 countries).
On under-ve child mortality, there are 89 deaths per 1,000 live births, a
level far above the target of 64 deaths per 1,000 live births set in the UN
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)” (Medic West Africa 2019: 2).
Besides tuberculosis and HIV, Nigeria has in the past suered several
severe infectious diseases including cholera, Ebola, and Lassa fever and
continues to lack public healthcare facilities to monitor and control the
disease outbreak with no exception to the current SARS COVID-19 pan-
demic. e public healthcare system in Nigeria is poorly managed with
inadequate resources and equipment for quality primary and specialty
care needed for most serious health issues such as cancer, maternal care,
bone marrow, eye surgeries, maternal and infant mortality, and other
infectious diseases.
e continuous decline in the healthcare sector despite the rich econ-
omy and resources is greatly disturbing. e state of healthcare is due to
several factors and challenges. ere is a severe lack of human resource as
the doctor-patient ratio is 1:3,500 (Igoni 2020), which is signicantly
low when compared with the World Health Organization’s recommended
doctor-patient ratio of 1:600. Many Nigerian medical professionals, in
search of greener pastures, choose not to work in Nigeria’s public health
centers due to poor remuneration and welfare; rather, they prefer to seek
6 An African Perspective on the Ethics and Politics of Foreign…
108
employment in the Global North with standard medical facilities, stable
income, good working environments, and attractive living conditions.
e consequence of this is a shortage of skilled health professionals in the
country’s health sector. Also, the lack of adequate and enabling infra-
structures such as stable electricity supply and state-of-the-art hospitals
and infectious disease isolation centers makes the country healthcare sys-
tem more vulnerable in the wake of unplanned epidemics and pandem-
ics. More fundamental is the poor clinical governance of meagre funding
and shortage of medical resources, drugs, and supplies provided by the
government in managing the primary, secondary, and tertiary healthcare
in Nigeria. Ultimately, such clinical maladministration opens patients to
risks, especially when hospitals are incapable of providing patients with
basic medication and optimal care. Poor clinical governance, which
makes irregular and non-remuneration of health workers pronounced in
Nigeria, shows a healthcare system in crisis. Largely, funding of the
Nigerian health sector is a fundamental problem yet to be given deserved
attention.
Nigeria’s budgetary allocation for health is far below the Abuja
Declaration that insists on the allocation of at least 15% of annual
national budget toward improving the public health sector in dierent
African states (Olalere and Gatome-Munyua 2020). Little wonder then
that there is an alarming rate of medical tourism from Nigeria to other
parts of the world for “kidney transplants, open heart or cardiac surgeries,
neurosurgeries, cosmetic surgeries, orthopedic surgeries, eye surgeries
and other health conditions, and even delivering babies” (Medic West
Africa 2019: 10). Political leaders who are supposed to develop the
national health sector also seek medical treatment outside the country,
spending millions of the state resources on medical tourism leaving the
public health centers in severe conditions at the detriment of the poor
masses who cannot aord the cost of medical care at private health
centers.
From the COVID-19 pandemic, it is evident that over the years, there
have been no infrastructures and resources set in place to monitor, track,
or counter the spread of infectious disease outbreak. Isolation centers and
molecular laboratories are just being created when the pandemic is hit-
ting hard. Unequivocally, the level of preparedness for the appropriate
A. O. Oyekan and A. K. Fayemi
109
management of a health crisis of the COVID-19 magnitude was poor.
Just like many existential issues aecting Nigerians that the government
plays so much politics with, there is so much crisis of trust and lack of
imagination in the government’s preparedness for and management of
the COVID-19 pandemic. An important question to raise and address at
this point is: Is the decision to opt for medical aid from China a moral
right or wrong? e next section addresses this concern.
Toward anAfrican Moral Theory
ofPandemic Philanthropy
e ethics of pandemic philanthropy is usually discussed from the domi-
nant Western views (Singer 2010, 2015; Illingworth etal. 2011) with a
near-complete absence of perspectives from African ethics. To provide
varying perspectives that may foster understanding of philanthropy across
diverse contexts, and especially during pandemics such as the COVID-19,
this chapter would be using a specic interpretation of an African ethic of
communion. Some theoretical grounding in support of the duty to
engage in philanthropy includes eective altruism defended by Peter
Singer (2015) and positive deontology articulated by Immanuel Kant
(2005). Based on a commitment to utilitarian framework, eective altru-
ism focuses on helping to reduce or prevent suering in areas of the world
with worst hit through scientic and calculated philanthropy. Positive
deontological thinking holds that “we all, in virtue of our shared human-
ity, have a moral duty to aid others in great need…” (Malm etal. 2008).
e humanity formula that requires respect for others as moral equals,
and not any other special relationship, is the ground for duty-based obli-
gations of philanthropy.
To the extent that these perspectives have their strengths and short-
comings, the primary concern of this chapter is not the evaluation of
eective altruism and deontologism. It is not to even compare these per-
spectives in relation to the Afro-communal option. Rather, this chapter is
motivated by the urgent need to develop an African moral theory of pan-
demic philanthropy in order to add to the theoretical ethical diversity of
6 An African Perspective on the Ethics and Politics of Foreign…
110
understanding aid while also applying such constructed perspective to
the context of medical aid from China, or any other nation for that mat-
ter, to Nigeria in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. To be able to
achieve this task, it is apt to provide a brief exposition of what an African
ethic of communion entails.
e phrase “an African ethic of communion” is traceable to addeus
Metz’s (2017, 2018, 2020) reading and interpretation of characteristic
ethics dominant in the African space, most signicantly, in the South of
the Sahara. Roughly, ethic of communion is a philosophic reection on
and articulation of the dominant characterization of living morally well
commonly found among the black Africans where emphasis is on com-
munion. Communion is understood as values deriving from accepting
“fellowship,” “harmony,” and “cohesion” as the ultimate moral paradigm
and focus of human relationships. “Metz traces his African ethical theory
to the ubuntu understanding of the traditional African worldview”
(Samuel and Fayemi 2020: 3), which places emphasis on communal rela-
tionships as the basis of self and societal organization. Metz identies two
interpretations of a typical relationship of communion that instructs
moral thinking and judgment among Africans South of the Sahara—
shared identity and solidarity. According to him:
On the one hand, there is considering oneself part of the whole, being
close, sharing a way of life, belonging and experiencing oneself as bound up
with others [shared identity]. On the other hand, there is achieving the
good of all, being sympathetic, acting for the common good, serving others
(in one’s community) and being committed to the good of others (in one’s
society) [solidarity]. (Metz 2020: 9)
e point in the above is that communal and harmonious relationship is
anchored on distinct and overlapping notions of identity that involves
sharing a way of life and caring for others’ quality of life in ways that show
solidarity with one another. To the extent that relationship is important in
African moral worldview, in Metz’s reconstruction of such worldview, his
emphasis is not on “the relationship in itself as a basic value but rather on
an individual’s natural capacity for it”. (Metz 2018: 53)
A. O. Oyekan and A. K. Fayemi
111
According to Fayemi, “a communal relationship is an interpersonal
connection governed by norms based on harmonious, relational, interde-
pendent, and cooperative values of existence” (Fayemi 2020: 12). To
identify with others is to have the psychological belongingness of mem-
bership of a group. Concomitant to such disposition is sharing one’s life-
world through cooperative behavior. To exhibit solidarity is to act in ways
that evince the common good through “mutual concern for the welfare
of others” (Masolo 2010: 240). Solidarity in this sense is thus dened by
actions and positive dispositions “oriented towards other people’s good,
including an empathetic awareness of their condition and a sympathetic
emotional reaction to this awareness. e actions are those likely to be
objectively benecial, that is, to meet others’ biological and social needs,
and not merely to promote their pleasure or desire satisfaction” (Metz
2020: 10).
Necessary conjunction of identity and solidarity, therefore, entails a
cooperative enterprise and behavioral actions between or among moral
agents. Regarding communion as a cooperative and mutual relationship,
Masolo (2010: 115) makes the point that the moral values involved
include “being transparent about the terms of interaction, allowing oth-
ers to make voluntary choices, acting on the basis of trust, adopting com-
mon goals, and, at the extreme end, choosing for the reason that ‘this is
who we are’.” In deducing moral principles of actions from the African
understanding of relationship, it is reasonable to infer that “any action
that undermines harmonious relations is wrong, while actions that respect
communion are considered right prima facie” (Fayemi 2020: 13). As
communal beings, we have obligations to honor persons in a relationship
of communion. It is instructive to quote Metz on what respecting rela-
tionship entails:
Respecting or honouring a person insofar as she can be [a] party to a com-
munal relationship with us in the rst instance means communing with
her, rather than ignoring her, let alone subordinating and harming her,
which are the discordant or anti-social opposites of communion. Hence,
insofar as the capacity to commune has a dignity, sometimes honouring it
will include actions that seek to promote the capacity, i.e. creating more
6 An African Perspective on the Ethics and Politics of Foreign…
112
people, as well as its actualization, fostering communion with them.
(Metz 2020: 11)
In light of the foregoing expose of an African ethic of communion, espe-
cially with its emphasis on other-regarding virtues, it seems reasonable to
deduce that there are aspects of it that qualify it as a potential candidate
for constructing an African moral theory of pandemic philanthropy and
for evaluating the China model of philanthropism during COVID-19in
Nigeria.
Consider the nature of philanthropy, which entails empathy, doing
good for the sake of others, and acting in benecent ways that are not
driven by self-interest. is understanding of philanthropy is connected
to an African ethic of communion. Core values of an Afro-ethic of com-
munion are foundational to a cogent framing of the ethic of pandemic
philanthropy. In a pandemic, everyone is vulnerable, and the virtues of
“might,” “rights,” and “oppression” are less forceful. Moral values of “gen-
erosity, kindness, compassion, benevolence, respectfulness, concern for
others” (Gyekye 1992: 109); “charity, politeness, benevolence” (Masolo
2010: 251); and “a sense of togetherness, participating on a cooperative
basis, engaging in mutual aid and doing so out of sympathy and for one
another’s sake” (Metz 2020: 12) are incredible credentials for framing an
ethic of philanthropy in general and pandemic philanthropy in particular.
e ethic of philanthropy is about providing moral justication for the
obligations that relational beings and entities have toward reducing suf-
fering and protecting the most vulnerable during and post-pandemic.
Afro-communion ethic is an “other-regarding” orientation that empha-
sizes relationships of humans in general as a community deserving coop-
eration and respect for collective survival. As a prescriptive ideal,
Afro-communion ethic is not oblivious of the warranted partialism
undergirding diplomatic relations in international politics where actions
are weighed and taken on the maxim of “what is most benecial to home-
land.” To the extent that existential realities in global politics reect such
partialism, Afro-communion ethic is premised on a subtle principle of
precedence that holds that universal human nature of communion and
the capacity to be part of a relationship of communion tend to have a
substantially greater moral impact and obligations than the political
A. O. Oyekan and A. K. Fayemi
113
realism of interests and opportunism that denes relations in interna-
tional circles. us, Afro-communion ethic entails common identity of
vulnerabilities and solidarity toward collective curtailment of a pandemic.
Understood in this sense, Afro-communion ethic of pandemic philan-
thropy is a sympathetic impartially driven aid to a fellow human in need
of help owing to their worst-o existential condition when compared
relative to the aider’s situation. In a situation like a pandemic where the
spread of disease is beyond boundaries and places of origin, an ethic of
pandemic philanthropy insists that both the aider and the aided are vul-
nerable, except that the resources at the disposal of the aider are consider-
ably better to those of the aided. Afro-communion philanthropy ethic,
therefore, involves a non-symmetrical relational term where the aided
may or may not have the capacity to reciprocate the philanthropic gestures
of the aider at present or in the future.
Central to pandemic philanthropy in Afro-communal framing is the
treatment of others (the aided) in ways that respect the dignity of all par-
ties as relational beings. Respecting relationship that would foster har-
mony in philanthropy entails that calculated opportunism in the form of
commercial returns or nancial bargaining of prot and losses from the
act of philanthropy would be a moral wrong. In the light of African ethic
of communion, a philanthropic act, whether triggered by a pandemic or
not, would qualify as morally allowed when it is intended and reasonably
executed in ways that promote harmonious relations and respect com-
munion between the aider and the aided. Afro-communal ethic of pan-
demic philanthropy is about mobilizing available resources that would
not bring greater harm to the aider in the interest of the aided that is
helplessly in need in order to save highly vulnerable lives in a pandemic.
In the context of the China-Nigeria bilateral relationship pre- and dur-
ing the COVID-19 pandemic, the question is: to what extent can it be
argued that the emergency medic philanthropy by China to Nigeria
reects an action done out of the principles of relationality, friendliness,
equity, and harmony denitive of the Afro-ethic of communion? To what
extent can Afro-ethic of communion explicated above be instructive in
the assessment of whether or not an asymmetry of power does imperil or
substitute the well-being and sovereignty of Nigeria in the face of a pan-
demic aid? Carefully assessed, not every act of supposed philanthropy
6 An African Perspective on the Ethics and Politics of Foreign…
114
would unequivocally qualify as morally right within the prism of Afro-
communion ethic of philanthropy insofar as the core values elemental to
the theory are undermined. In the recent China-Nigeria context, the val-
ues of transparency, trust, relationality, consultation, dialogues, and har-
mony were lacking in the decision-making process that eventuated the
pandemic philanthropy of medics and medical supplies to curtail the
spread of COVID-19 in Nigeria. Notice that Afro-communion ethic
places emphasis not only on the intention of philanthropy but also on the
process of carrying out the act. In this regard, it is one thing for the act in
itself to be morally justied, prima facie, that it is done out of the impulse
of promoting harmonious relations between the two sovereign states; yet
it is another for the process involved in the culmination of the foreign aid
decision to be corrupted or vitiated in ways capable of creating dishar-
mony among stakeholders.
e act of supporting Nigeria with medics of dierent specializations
can be considered morally acceptable where the intention is primarily
that of securing the lives of Nigerians exposed to danger on account of
the inadequacies of the country’s medical capacity and preserving the col-
lective and individual integrity of a recipient third-world nation from
COVID-19. To the extent that unpacking the underlying intention of
such state policy by China is herculean, history of Sino-Africa relations
seems to backstop the assumption of an imperialistic expansionism in
Africa. Even if such an assumption, among others, is farfetched, the pro-
cess leading to the decision rendered the action morally questionable.
What appeared to have worsened the crisis of condence and trust is the
fact that the Chinese oer was announced and defended by the Minister
of Health alongside the Secretary to the Federal Government, who
chaired the Presidential Taskforce on COVID-19. ese government
ocials, unlike the Director of the Nigerian Centre for Diseases Control
(NCDC), are seen more as politicians rather than as medical experts. e
impression created with the disregard for the scientic and medical com-
munity in Nigeria, therefore, is that the idea of medical philanthropy was
exclusively political and devoid of expert input as to what was needed the
most and in what area. is was further interpreted as not only disparag-
ing the professional competence of Nigerian medics but also an attempt
to sacrice Nigeria’s integrity by creating a window for China whose
A. O. Oyekan and A. K. Fayemi
115
supposed altruism which is under intense global scrutiny as an image
laundering and instrumental gesture.
As earlier noted, government has since modied its position to claim
that the Chinese medics were only coming to attend to the need of
Chinese expatriates in Nigeria. Post the arrival of Chinese expatriates,
their whereabouts and the true nature of their mission were a subject of
growing discussion on social media and in the public space. China’s
eorts at combating the virus within its territory has been criticized as
discriminatory against blacks in general and Nigerians in particular, with
reports of dehumanizing and humiliating measures including forced
evictions and denial of essential services even in public places (Aljazeera
2020). e Nigerian government’s opacity and inconsistency have cre-
ated a situation that increases public distrust and presented the political
class as captives of Chinese expansionist agenda.
In a desperate bid to force the government into a retreat and correct
what it perceives as an undesirable outcome of power asymmetry, the
medical community in Nigeria resorted to unfounded allegations against
China, suggesting not only that it was responsible for the virus but that
its medical personnel had been using pandemic assistance to spread the
virus. It claimed, without evidence, that Chinese doctors were responsi-
ble for the rise in death tolls in Italy, as an instance (NARD Press Release
2020). e allegations further fueled the conspiracy theories about the
origin and purpose of the virus, which had gained considerable accep-
tance within the populace. Such a dangerous tactic equally negates the
idea of African communal ethic, as it involves the use of manipulation
and populism by the very experts whose opinions ought to guide the
public’s response to the pandemic. e Nigerian medical community in
negation of this ethic has prioritized its own professional integrity, not
only at the expense of whatever expertise and experience the Chinese
medics could have provided as complements to Nigeria’s eort but also at
the expense of truth and scientic facts.
e implication of the current situation is that China’s medical philan-
thropy, which at a time like this ought to have been of immense benet
to Nigeria, became enmeshed in the politics of hegemony and resistance
at a time when hospitals are in dire shortage of test kits and experienced
hands in pandemic management. On the other hand, the possibly
6 An African Perspective on the Ethics and Politics of Foreign…
116
anticipated improvement in the image of China on account of the phil-
anthropic eort has achieved the opposite result of pitting a considerable
section of Nigerians, including the medical community, against it. is
could have been avoided if the principles of respect, harmony, openness,
and regard for others, as features of Afro-communal ethics, had under-
girded the gesture between the powerful donor and the developing recipi-
ent nation.
Conclusion
is chapter concludes that developing nations like Nigeria ought to be
better prepared for future pandemics to avoid being potential preys of
dark philanthropy during a pandemic. Also, developed states and the
global community have obligations to promote collective survival of lives
through pandemic philanthropy and other initiatives that can reduce suf-
fering of the most vulnerable in the global health ecology. Such altruistic
eorts, when oered within the ethical framework of relationality, and
underpinned by values of generosity, kindness, compassion, benevolence,
respectfulness, concern for others, charity, and politeness, are likely to
result in mutually benetting outcomes for the aider and the aided.
While domination and exploitation are perceived rightly or wrongly as
the primary motivation for altruistic gestures between unequal parties,
the moral and utilitarian benets of such philanthropic eorts are at the
risk of being lost, while the challenge which motivated the eort, as in
the case of COVID 19, deteriorates.
ough the science of mitigating the current pandemic continues to
unfold, it seems apparent that the interconnectedness of the world, as
well as the impact the virus has had globally, makes it a challenge that can
best be confronted in solidarity, unity, and cohesion. is requires the
coming together of all stakeholders, including the powerful nations of
the world, with resources and ideas on how to address the health, eco-
nomic, political, and social challenges arising from the pandemic. Such
cohesion and solidarity are best forged with transparency, respect, open-
ness, and generosity, best encapsulated in Afro-communal ethic of pan-
demic philanthropy.
A. O. Oyekan and A. K. Fayemi
117
One potential criticism of the African ethic of communion in ground-
ing philanthropism in general, and pandemic philanthropy in particular,
is how to address the clash of values and objectives between the aider and
the aided in the context of intercultural and international philanthropy.
e possibility of super-imposing the values of the aider (China, for
instance) on the aided (Nigeria in this specic context) is high, given that
the aider is the source of the philanthropy. An ensuing paradox that an
African ethic of communion introduces in the context of pandemic phi-
lanthropy is that of investing the values of the aided on the aider. One
way to address this is to argue that avoiding the exposure of the more
vulnerable to the weighty burdens of the pandemic, to which the coun-
tries in the global south are more susceptible, is possible, given that the
normative values underpinning philanthropic gestures are not at variance
with those of transparency, respect, and generosity, which undergird
Afro-communal ethics.
Acknowledgments e contribution of Adeolu Oyekan to this work is based
on the research supported by the National Research Foundation of South Africa
(Grant Number 99188, SARChI Chair in Identities and Social Cohesion in
Africa, Nelson Mandela University). Opinions, ndings, conclusions, and rec-
ommendations expressed in this work are those of the author’s alone, and the
NRF accepts no liability whatsoever in this regard.
e contribution of Ademola K.Fayemi to this work is based on part of the
outcome of research conducted within the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence
at the University of Lagos-ACC, funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
(DFG, German Research Foundation) under Germany Excellence Strategy—
EXC 2052/1—390713894.
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7
Disease Discourses, African Knowledge
Systems, andCOVID-19 inSenegal
KarenS.Barton, JieunLee, andIvanJ.Ramírez
Introduction
Too often discussions surrounding best practices in global public health
exclude or altogether ignore geographies of Africa south of the Sahara. is
is especially true for the discourse surrounding severe acute respiratory syn-
drome coronavirus 2, known commonly as COVID-19 (SARS- CoV- 2).
Some African states—including Senegal—have made impressive strides in
coronavirus management by harnessing the power of science and
K. S. Barton (*) • J. Lee
Department of Geography, GIS, and Sustainability, Greeley, CO, USA
e-mail: karen.barton@unco.edu
I. J. Ramírez
Department of Health and Behavioral Sciences, University of Colorado,
Denver, CO, USA
e-mail: ivan.ramirez@ucdenver.edu
© e Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023
F. Egbokhare, A. Afolayan (eds.), Global Health, Humanity and the COVID-19
Pandemic, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17429-2_7
124
community-based response systems.1 Yet Africa’s COVID success stories
have been largely downplayed by a global media that amplies coronavirus
triumphs in developed countries over those of emerging states. Much of this
oversight is rooted in prevailing misconceptions of Africa “the diseased con-
tinent” in which sub-Sahara is seen as a breeding ground for emerging
pathogens (Afolayan 2020). Certainly the continent’s tropical climate is
responsible for creating some physical geographies that are conducive to
infectious diseases. Pathogens such as malaria, dengue, and Ebola are
endemic across portions of Africa, and their diusion can be exacerbated by
poor infrastructure, malnutrition, high population densities, and limited
access to health care. But these narratives fail to account for the diversity of
infectious conditions that exist between and within African states. Such lan-
guage (Campbell 2020; Fink 2020) ignores spatial nuances in favor of gross
generalizations while reifying the disease-disaster tropes about the continent.
Our growing ability to harness spatial quantitative data on coronavirus
case counts can shed critical light on recent public health failures (United
States) and successes (Senegal) around the world, causing us to reevaluate
the administrative winners and losers in this global battle. In particular,
the process of accurately relaying disease information has been deftly
facilitated by mapping technologies such as geographic information sys-
tems (GIS), which allow us to disseminate stories in visually engaging
and digestible ways. A vast majority of the globe, for instance, is reliant
upon the geospatial data of the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource
Center, whose GIS maps of the pandemic received 1 billion hits as early
as April (GIS Lounge 2020). ese maps provide ongoing evidence that
Senegal’s low case count relative to other developed states is both
exemplary and impressive. To be fair, hallmark research by Monmonmeier
(1991) has shown us that despite their immense value, some maps lie and
that they must do so. Yet Monmonmeier’s work also suggests that rather
than dismiss all cartographies, we should evaluate them critically, employ-
ing a healthy skepticism given how easy they are to manipulate
1 Rwanda enlisted anti-epidemic robots, contact tracing, and an early lockdown system in response
to the COVID-19 pandemic, which has resulted in some of the lowest case counts and deaths in
the world. Ghana also has similarly low COVID-19 death counts. is is due in part to an exten-
sive system of contact tracing, the use of community health workers and volunteers, and innovative
new techniques such as “pool testing” where multiple blood samples are analyzed and then followed
up as individual tests only if a positive result is found.
K. S. Barton etal.
125
(Monmonmeier 1991, 10). His concerns with maps stem in part from
colonial era policies which served to carve up the African continent in
ways that were both capricious and haphazard.
For West Africa, specically, portions of what were once the Mali
Kingdom were parceled out between the British (e Gambia) and the
French (Senegal), literally dividing communities in half. Yet, whereas
Senegal’s origin story was a product of colonial cartography, today’s corona-
virus maps can serve to amplify Senegal’s successes instead of its subjugation
(Barton 2020a). us, it is possible to be skeptical of maps while also utiliz-
ing them to explain important geographical phenomena. Scholars can
simultaneously ground-truth mapping data in conjunction with qualitative
materials on health, disease, and its diusion by using a mixed methods
approach to disease studies. at said, this chapter draws from both the
growing corpus of coronavirus GIS data and qualitative research on
Senegal’s pathogen management to address its unique handling of
COVID-19. A deeper dive into the work of Dakar’s Center for Infectious
Diseases and Pasteur Institutes will illustrate whether Senegal’s successes are
a collective, multicausal by-product of the country’s (1) rapid response plan
and existing community health systems; (2) widespread public support for
social distancing; (3) enduring treatment of elderly populations; and (4)
geographical position along the tropical belt. eoretically, we also oer a
framework that this global crisis has forced us to interrogate (Ihekweazu
and Agogo 2020). at is, what if—in the case of pandemic manage-
ment—some African solutions are just better ones? Using maps and quali-
tative data, this work underscores the ways in which public health experts
can (and should) draw from the indigenous expertise of African nations in
managing and responding to pandemics like COVID-19.
Field Context: Geography ofHealth
andResources inSenegal
at Senegal—a small West African nation once carved up by colonial
powers—can be held up as a model of coronavirus containment success
is particularly impressive and ironic given its geographic location, exist-
ing health resource base, and capital limitations. First, it straddles what
7 Disease Discourses, African Knowledge Systems…
126
the Pew Foundation objectively terms the “religious fault zone” of the
African Sahel where, despite national conicts, Senegal’s diverse faith-
based communities converge and coalesce (Barton 2020b). Senegal is
often recognized for its exceptionalism due to the country’s relative politi-
cal stability; it stands in sharp contrast to adjacent states like Mali and
Guinea-Conakry where internal conict is rife (Pew Forum 2010).
Certainly, the Mouvement des Forces Démocratiques de Casamance
(MFDC)—an ongoing separatist struggle based in the south—has chal-
lenged Senegal’s peaceful coexistence, but villages and communities have
generally learned to adapt and coalesce (Ojeda 2012).
Second, with a population of roughly 16 million people, the country
possesses a relatively fragile health-care system, scarcity of hospital beds,
and about seven physicians per 100,000 people (World Bank 2020).
Although Senegal launched an ambitious hospital reform program in
1998 that included a large injection of government funds, many of these
institutions were soon close to bankruptcy (Lemière etal. 2012). Equity
of access to hospital care, particularly for the poorest, had also deterio-
rated, which is problematic given that a large number of individuals live
below the poverty line (World Bank 2020). is fragile health landscape
has also been exacerbated by long-standing gender norms across Senegal,
particularly in the semi-arid north of Saint Louis, where women have
been largely excluded from local politics, civil society, and local health
committees for many decades (Foley 2001; Paul et al. 2020). Yet
Senegalese people make do, and despite these systematic and systemic
roadblocks, the government has tackled COVID-19 aggressively and
thus far eectively. By February 2021, one year into the pandemic, this
densely populated country had reported only 35,000 coronavirus cases
and 896 deaths, and yet it still has not been adequately recognized for its
best practices (Johns Hopkins University 2021). Figure7.1 provides a
geographical view of COVID-19 case counts and incidence for Senegal’s
fourteen districts as of January 2021. Note that some rural districts in the
east have been relatively unaected by the coronavirus pandemic, a spa-
tial process that will be addressed at a later point in this chapter.
K. S. Barton etal.
127
Fig. 7.1 Senegal’s COVID-19 cases by regions; COVID incidence per 1000
7 Disease Discourses, African Knowledge Systems…
128
Rapid Response Systems andRepurposing
Community Teams
Senegal’s 2020 coronavirus narrative, not surprisingly, is rooted in its
colonial era connections to France. While Egypt boasted the rst corona-
virus case to strike the African continent, Senegal recorded the second,
when a Frenchman living in Dakar returned from holiday with fever and
was ultimately quarantined for the duration in Fann Hospital. Like other
African states, Senegal took rigorous measures from the outset to slow the
spread, and by mid-March, some 25 out of 54 African countries had put
in place sweeping restrictions to manage the crisis, ones that far outpaced
the glacial sequence of restrictions that unfolded in the United States
(CGD 2020). South Africa, Kenya, Mauritania, and Rwanda were also
among the list of countries that swiftly set in motion travel restrictions
and closed local schools. But the American administration would take
several weeks to institute widespread policies to safeguard its citizens. On
March 24, 2020, just two weeks after many businesses and schools were
shuttered, then-President Donald Trump announced his plan to reopen
the country by April 12, citing that the “cure cannot be worse than the
problem itself” (Al Jazeera 2020). In contrast, Senegal’s COVID policies
set the bar not just for the speed at which it responded but for its philo-
sophical approach to the pandemic, in which village and community
needs trumped capitalism. e following section lays out these details of
Senegal’s rapid response in the wake of COVID-19 while highlighting its
cultural roots in indigenous West African health systems.
Coronavirus was not the rst crisis to aect Senegal in the twenty-rst
century, as previous pandemics would ultimately serve as cautionary tales
for other pathogens that lay ahead on the horizon. Undeniably, Senegal’s
particular handling of the Ebola virus laid the foundations for its imminent
management of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic (UNAIDS 2020; US
Embassy 2020). Senegal is no stranger to the challenge of halting the spread
of infectious diseases within its borders despite high case fatalities across the
other parts of the subcontinent. Dr. Moussa Seydi, Head of Infectious
Diseases at the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Fann, worked alongside
a team of specialists to treat the country’s only Ebola patient in 2014. is
gure was critical, given that between 2015 and 2016, more than 11,000
K. S. Barton etal.
129
people died from Ebola, the majority of whom were Africans, yet Senegal
was largely unscathed (WHO 2020). Discovered in 1976 near the Ebola
River in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ebola is both
contagious and deadly, and Senegal’s rst case was conrmed when a man
who had been in contact with an Ebola patient traveled by road from
Guinea to Dakar. e Senegalese government responded immediately,
aided in part by existing health institutions such as the world-class Pasteur
Institute and Laboratory enabling the state to test quickly and reliably for
viral hemorrhagic fevers using contact tracing. A separate center was desig-
nated for Ebola, which freed up the health system to deliver routine ser-
vices. Public information campaigns were engaged, and this lessened public
anxiety and encouraged health cooperation with control measures. e
author had the privilege of touring the Center for Infectious Disease facili-
ties in Dakar, and this visit made clear that despite limited capital, Senegalese
disease experts had marshalled all resources to help slow the spread (Seydi,
personal communication 2018). In many ways, the Ebola outbreak across
Africa would serve as a dress rehearsal for Senegal’s encounter with corona-
virus in 2020. e state would prove that it could meticulously organize a
response through sound science, quick action, strong communication, and
innovation, despite the events that were unfolding in adjacent states. at
the Health Ministry was able to quickly repurpose Ebola and polio response
teams as coronavirus unfolded provided the jump start ocials needed to
drastically slow the pathogen’s spread.
One of the most striking features of Senegal’s 2020 pandemic response
plan was its ability to conduct rapid testing in order to step up COVID-19
diagnoses despite the nation’s limited supply of health resources (Bensaid
and Grine 2014). During the rst few months of the crisis, three major
strategies anchored the state’s eorts to bolster COVID testing:
1. Senegal delivered testing results within one day once samples were
received by medical laboratories, and these labs operated 24 hours per
day using an automated process, which ensured safety of front line
health-care workers.
2. e health ministry developed digital platforms through which health
workers received results from surveillance teams; many of these exem-
7 Disease Discourses, African Knowledge Systems…
130
Fig. 7.2 Map of Senegal and The Gambia. (Source: Jieun Lee)
plary teams went on to train sta in other countries on proper COVID
protocols (CGD 2020).
3. e rapid response system was decentralized to accommodate Senegal’s
districts (Fig.7.2) so that communities from Saint Louis to Ziguinchor
would have local and equitable access to tests. It’s worth noting that
support from the World Health Organization and Islamic Development
Bank helped fund decentralized lab tests, a decision that would cut
down on transportation delays and allow for speedier results. is last
strategic initiative was particularly important given Senegal’s haphaz-
ard geography, an artifact of French colonial rule.
Transportation between dierent regions of the country is made di-
cult due to the presence of e Gambia, a semi-enclave which carto-
graphically slices the nation in half. e Aline Sitoe Diatta ferry (and
before that, the Joola)—which runs between Dakar and Ziguinchor—has
K. S. Barton etal.
131
served to create new maritime linkages around e Gambia, but the pan-
demic led to the suspension of these onboard operations (Barton 2020a).
Social distancing is near impossible aboard the ferry line due to its popu-
larity across the region.
Senegal would soon build upon these early COVID successes by
speeding up turnaround time for coronavirus tests, and by April, results
were available to patients in eight hours or less. ese achievements were
extraordinary, given that testing was also made free to the Senegalese
public and available to all, regardless of nancial means (Magome 2020).
By May 2020, the Pasteur Institute was actively collaborating with the
UK-based company, Mologic, to manufacture diagnostic kits that could
produce COVID-19 results within ten minutes for $1 USD; they esti-
mated that 500–1000 tests could be analyzed within one day and up to
four million per year (Yeung 2020). Pasteur Institute’s Director, Amadou
Sall, argued that for researchers at the DiaTropix infectious disease testing
facility—an in-house program of Pasteur Institute—highly equipped
laboratories were not actually as critical as many thought. Instead, Sall
argued that decentralized systems incorporating “pocket-sized tests”
which were not designed to turn a prot were the most important devel-
opment for not only COVID-19 but future pandemics (Harrisburg
2020). at Dakar’s Pasteur Institute was only one of two laboratories
across Africa equipped to test for coronavirus early on in the pandemic
surely played a role in shaping Senegal’s aggressive COVID testing plan.
It also did not take long before medics at Fann Hospital were able to
monitor patients using cameras in order to minimize contact with them
and help slow the spread (BBC 2020).
Yet while Senegal harnessed sound science and technology in develop-
ing its rapid response plan, the country was also emboldened by age-old
approaches to health, a process that is rooted in Senegalese religious and
community-based cultural beliefs (Honda et al. 2019). For example,
health ocials made a pledge early on in the pandemic to earmark a hos-
pital or clinic bed not only for every patient but for the patients’ contacts
as well. Each newly diagnosed individual—no matter how mild or severe
the case—was provided a hospital bed or health center where they stay
isolated and observed. is was an ambitious and audacious goal, given
the paucity of hospital and clinic beds as noted earlier on in this chapter
7 Disease Discourses, African Knowledge Systems…
132
(World Bank 2020). But the strategy of a bed for every case, no matter
how mild the systems, helped stop the spread of the virus in a country
where most Senegalese live in large family compounds, making it impos-
sible to self-isolate (WHO 2020). While the “one-bed” pledge was moti-
vated by a desire to prevent diusion of the virus, it also underscores the
value that Senegalese place on individual human lives. Every time a coro-
navirus death is announced in Senegal, the Ministry adds a personal note
to the record: “Senegal registered its 13th death from COVID-19
Tuesday, May 5, 2020. e death was a 94-year-old man. e Minister of
Health and Social Action oers its condolences to his family” (NPR
2020). Senegal’s response to the coronavirus, then, is notable not only for
its thoroughness but for its humanity, a process that is unseen in other
parts of the world where the pandemic has inltrated. In Kuwait, for
example, nearly 360,000 immigrant guest workers were shipped home in
the wake of COVID, while Senegal made no plans to eject either migrants
or expatriates (Dudley 2020). Instead, Senegal succeeded in staving o
what could have been disastrous levels of spatial diusion using the power
of science and culture. Yet it was not alone in its ability to detect the dis-
ease quickly. By April 2020, a total of 43 countries on the African conti-
nent could diagnose COVID-19 eectively.
Young Demographic andCare forElderly
A second argument employed to explain Africa’s relatively lower
COVID-19 infection rates is ascribed to the continent’s youthful demog-
raphy in which the median age is 18 (Desjardins 2019). By contrast, both
Asia and South America boast median ages of 31, with statistics for North
America and Europe shifting even higher given reduced birth rates in
those regions. e World Bank estimates indicate that by 2100 Africa
will contain 50% of the world’s children aged zero to four years. is
represents an opportunity for growth and innovation but also presents
challenges given the region’s limited natural resources (World Bank
2020). Senegal is likewise a youthful country and sits roughly at the pop-
ulation mean for Africa, at 18.5 years of age. Personal eld observations
in the country conrm that Senegal is young, vibrant, and dynamic; but
K. S. Barton etal.
133
some analysts use this singular fact to explain why Senegalese have man-
aged to thrive despite the incursion of the most deadly, global pandemic
of the century.
is section unpacks the explanatory power of Senegal’s “youthful-
ness” as a rationale for low COVID-19 infections and death totals in line
with the theoretical premise of this chapter. We argue that invoking a
youthful population alone to explain lower case counts is reductionist
and does not present a comprehensive analysis of the sociocultural con-
text of events on ground in West Africa. Indeed, epidemiological research
shows that the majority of COVID deaths target those 80 years and older,
and youth—without preexisting conditions—are generally at a distinct
advantage with lower infection rates. But it is reckless to conclude that
African states stumbled upon their pandemic successes based solely on
demographics (or even environmental circumstances, which we shall
later address). Such deterministic arguments are reminiscent of Diamond’s
(1998) research on the success and failure of civilizations. In his hallmark
analysis, he argues that certain populations were historically at a distinct
advantage due to their geographical position on the planet. But in terms
of COVID-19, there are other spatial and cultural processes operating in
conjunction with existing population dynamics, which help elucidate
Senegal’s low case counts relative to developed parts of the world.
Amplifying the complex cultural processes that contributed to Senegal’s
pandemic narrative is critical in order to fully articulate the forgotten
nuances of COVID-19 histories and geographies. To accomplish that, we
must focus on not only the role of the country’s youth cohort but also its
elderly demographic and their relative importance or “place” within
larger society.
One promising argument deployed to understand Senegal’s relatively
lower COVID-19 rates is the country’s remarkable lack of nursing homes
in contrast to other parts of the world such as the United States. e
Kaiser Family Foundation (2019) reported a total of 1,246,079 nursing
facility residents across the United States, clustered predominantly in
densely populated states such as NewYork, Pennsylvania, Texas, Illinois,
California, and Ohio (Kaiser Family Foundation 2019). e Center for
Disease Control and Prevention (2020) conrmed that the coronavirus
pandemic disproportionately impacted the elderly in these nursing home
7 Disease Discourses, African Knowledge Systems…
134
facilities, where signicantly higher rates of severe illness and death were
reported (CDC 2021). By the end of June 2020—only three months
into the pandemic—at least 54,000 residents and workers had died from
COVID-19in nursing homes and long-term care (LTC) facilities in the
United States. Some 264,000 people were infected across 9912 sites, and
those numbers would rise substantially in the months that followed
(Hochman 2020). Hochman (2020) highlighted the ways in which nurs-
ing homes bore the brunt of the pandemic using one stunning statistic:
residents of LTC facilities constitute less than 1% of the US population,
yet 43% of all COVID-19 deaths occurred in those sites. Lack of ade-
quate PPE, slow response plans, and poor social distancing were cited as
key causes for the disproportionate impact on America’s elderly. But these
types of practical explications focus largely on material or physical mani-
festations of health alone while ignoring other social determinants. ey
overlook epistemological questions such as how geographical spaces for
the elderly are constructed apart from society rather than within it and
how, in turn, that form of spatial clustering of seniors contributes to
death rates. In short, some societies “place” elderly in communities far
removed from immediate families where care is outsourced, while states
like Senegal regard seniors as venerable and important lifelong members
of extended families and compounds. In sum, Senegal’s human geogra-
phy of geriatrics is as dierent from the United States as its physical cli-
mate, landforms, or biomes.
In fairness, Senegal’s elderly population is relatively small compared to
the United States and comprises approximately 4.7% of the country’s
predominantly younger demographic (Johns Hopkins 2021). But this
does not negate the fact that state health policies combined with
community- level respect for the elderly have led to unique gerontological
geographies that fueled Senegal’s COVID-19 triumphs (Fig. 7.3). In
2006, then President Abdoulaye Wade instituted measures to guarantee
free access to health care for senior citizens as part of the “Sésame Plan”
(Silver Eco 2016). e initiative ensured that not only would seniors liv-
ing in urban centers (i.e., Dakar) have access to sophisticated health care
but that elderly cohorts in rural sectors would be equally served. In 2006,
Senegal boasted only eight geriatricians in a population of nearly 16 mil-
lion, but new eorts to recognize and support so-called gray power are
K. S. Barton etal.
135
Fig. 7.3 Percentage of elderly per region (>60)
underway and are evolving (Honda etal. 2019). Yet a dominant focus on
new state-of-the-art medical initiatives for the elderly overlooks the
enduring cultural systems already in place to help support aging popula-
tions (Ka etal. 2019). Extended family compounds in Senegal—in con-
trast to traditional, Western style nursing homes—have promoted
mobility, social interaction, and engagement for centuries. is is par-
ticularly important in the face of a global pandemic, where extended
family compounds can serve as safe spaces for vulnerable populations,
allowing seniors to social distance within their own family bubbles.
Islam has also played an important yet undervalued role in Senegal’s
pandemic success story, given the dominance of the faith across large
parts of West Africa. Senegal is 94% Muslim, rooted in the Sunni Maliki
school of jurisprudence with Su inuences, and for a millennium, it has
maintained a strong and important presence in the country (Pew Forum
2010). Religion pervades nearly every aspect of Senegalese society and is
7 Disease Discourses, African Knowledge Systems…
136
both a product and practice of everyday life; in terms of the built envi-
ronment, mosques of all scales are found in both rural and urban sectors
of the state. e Pew’s Forum sub-Saharan Africa study (2010) conrms
this fact; some 98% of those interviewed in Senegal say that religion plays
a “very important” role in their lives, the highest percentage for all 19
SSA states included in Pew’s comprehensive study. Mali and Tanzania, at
93%, fell closely behind in survey results (Pew Forum 2010).
Recent work by Bensaid and Grine (2014) provides a good under-
standing of how Islamic religious beliefs, laws, and spiritual practices
shape attitudes toward not only old age but the position of elderly within
society and space. e topic of the elderly is present in the body of
Muslim literature, particularly in the works of Qur’anic exegesis, hadith,
law, and manners in general (Ngom 2016). In his al-Adab al Mufrad, for
instance, Bukhari (d. 870) devotes three chapters to the theme of the
elderly; notably the Chapter of the Old Person, “bab al kabir”; Chapter
of the Virtue of the Old Person, “bab fadl al-kabir”; and Chapter of
Priority of the Old Person as rst in both speech and question, “bab
yubda’ al-akbar bi al-kalam wa al-su’al” (Bensaid and Grine 2014, 142).
Islam exhibits a deep appreciation for a life that is long and full of righ-
teousness and moral goodness (16). For Sus, old age provides the indi-
vidual with the opportunity for self-purication and reform while also
emphasizing the signicance of the social role they occupy within the
community at large. at elderly individuals were aorded critical, equi-
table care at the onset of the pandemic is a product of these key cultural-
religious tenets of Islam. In short, these sociocultural and religious beliefs
about the elderly, in particular, and humanity, in general, have also con-
tributed to the country’s resounding success in the face of COVID-19.
is socioreligious dimension helps us understand that Senegal’s low case
count is more than an accidental by-product of its youthful population.
Widespread Support forSocial Distancing
Senegal’s science-driven measures to promote public health during the
pandemic were met with widespread public support for mask wearing
and social distancing, in contrast to what was seen in some parts of the
K. S. Barton etal.
137
world. To achieve such wholesale community support, the state enlisted
local artists and painters to assist with national messaging or propaganda
early on in the crisis. Beginning as early as April 2020, stunning grati
was emblazoned on the walls of Cheikh Anta Diop University and the
Faculty of Medicine Hospital in Dakar, reminding citizens to follow rec-
ommended health guidelines (UNAIDS 2020). is grati uses the
power of public imagery and universal semiotics to promote community
health. Organized by the RBS Crew collective, artists painted sketches of
people handwashing, mask wearing, or “sleeving their sneezes” or just
simple images of hand sanitizers. Religious ocials, including the popu-
lar Mouride Muslim Brotherhood, also marshalled eorts to promote
public health, utilizing public
displays and billboards to encourage mask usage (Fig.7.4). is is
essential given the inuence that the Su and religious orders have across
the state, whether it be in urban centers or rural locales. Clearly, Senegal
was proud of its ability to harness social capital to combat coronavirus
despite having limited capital resources compared to other developed
states. Le Poste, Senegal’s founding philatelic institution, would even
scramble to create a COVID-19 postage stamp in 2020 to memorialize
Fig. 7.4 Sleeve Your Sneeze Graffiti
7 Disease Discourses, African Knowledge Systems…
138
Fig. 7.5 Combat coronavirus postage stamp. (Le Poste 2020)
the pandemic and pay homage to those who fought valiantly to control
its diusion (Fig.7.5). e “Combat Coronavirus” stamp series features
an array of masked humans encircling the planet that at rst glance
resembles the virus itself. e inscription (hommage du personnel de santé)
pays tribute to the frontline health workers toiling in villages across the
state. e engraving shows how Senegal amplies the hard work of its
own health institutions while simultaneously recognizing its spatial con-
nections with the rest of the world.
Perhaps the most important data illustrating the extent of public sup-
port for coronavirus health policies was that of Partnership for Evidence-
Based COVID-19 Response, which drew on ndings from a poll of
24,000 adults in 18 African countries (PERC 2020). Among other social
determinants, the data revealed that Africans in general showed immense
public support for COVID-19 state-mandated health measures. Most
interviewees in the study reported either “completely adhering” or
“mostly adhering” to washing hands, avoiding handshakes, wearing
masks in public, avoiding places of worship, public gatherings, and reduc-
ing shopping trips (PERC 2020). Some 85% of Senegalese specically
K. S. Barton etal.
139
complied with mask wearing in public according to the PERC study. Yet
we argue that these impressive results should also be considered in the
context of the cultural conditions in which such pandemic-related sacri-
ces are made. Avoiding handshakes or public gatherings in a state as
socially and community oriented as West Africa is a remarkable achieve-
ment compared to nations where daily social interactions are not as
embedded or commonplace in everyday life. e typical Senegalese greet-
ing—in which protracted conversations or handshakes require prolonged
human contact—play a critical and necessary role in society, but such
protocols were largely set aside for the sake of controlling the pandemic.
Pilgrimage toTouba in2020
e 2020 Magal religious festival—in which pilgrims across West Africa
ock to the city of Touba—provides further evidence that Senegal man-
aged the pandemic through widespread public support for COVID-19
measures. is is especially noteworthy given the intense spatial interac-
tion of pilgrimages and the ways in which they challenge social distanc-
ing goals (Barton 2020b). Magal is a Wolof word derived from the verb
“mag,” which means “important” or to be old”, and the Magal pilgrimage
is important because of its connection to Shayk Amadou Bamba, founder
of the Mouride Brotherhood, a major sect of Su Islam (Ngom 2016).
Founded in 1887 and completed in 1963, the Great Mosque of the city
shrine was constructed on Bamba’s burial site, and today Touba is one of
the larger metropolitan sectors of Senegal. With a capacity of 7000 peo-
ple, the mosque is the destination for the Grand Magal of Touba and is
one of the largest religious events in Islam (Ngom 2016). As recently as
2017, some three million adherents participated in this annual pilgrimage
to Touba, and it was unpredictable whether pilgrims would travel to the
city on October 5–6in light of the 2020 pandemic. Magal is both a cer-
emony and a festival in which the faithful visit mausoleums of important
Mouride leaders but also the city’s marketplace, so social interactions are
both frequent and intensive (Hoang etal. 2019). In short, Magal is both
a religious and a spatial process, one that was neither banned nor encour-
aged in Senegal during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, though some
7 Disease Discourses, African Knowledge Systems…
140
local health ocials would soon advise against traveling to Touba (Gautret
etal. 2020).
In October 2020, the New York Times article published a piece argu-
ing, without evidence, that “most people (in Senegal) were going ahead
(with Magal) despite the risk” (Maclean 2020; Gautret etal. 2020). But
the truth is that only a minority of pilgrims (tens of thousands, versus
millions) decided to make the journey to Touba, the vast majority choos-
ing to celebrate Magal in their own extended family compounds or com-
munities instead. Many West Africans spend a lifetime saving nancial
resources to travel to Touba, and so opting out of this religious festival
was likely a dicult personal and family choice (Fisch 2020). But because
of these dicult decisions across the region, new COVID-19 case counts
did not spike in the two weeks following Magal as the global media had
predicted in its hyperbolic press pieces (see Fig.7.6). Recent research by
Sokhna etal. (2021a) similarly concludes that there was no signicant
increase of COVID-19 case counts in Senegal following the 2020 Magal
pilgrimage. While no studies have been conducted as to why potential
Fig. 7.6 October new case counts for Senegal post-Magal. (Source: JHU CSSE
COVID-19)
K. S. Barton etal.
141
pilgrims chose to worship “in place” rather than visit Touba, the substan-
tial drop in attendance suggests the pandemic was likely the root cause.
Part of this can be attributed to the principles of interdependence and
collectivism which dominate Senegal in contrast to other more individu-
alistic societies such as the United States (Gleason 2003). e Senegalese
collectivist worldview is motivated primarily by opportunities to help
and be helped by other people in their social networks, and this dimen-
sion is crucial for understanding how Senegal managed to excel in its
management of COVID-19.
One point of contrast to Magal is that of the Sturgis, South Dakota,
motorcycle rally in the United States; while not a religious pilgrimage, it
drew an overwhelming 490,000 bikers during the pandemic in 2020, an
attendance dip of only 7.5% from the prior year (Bonnet 2020). us,
the largest clusters of coronavirus in Senegal were not linked to the Touba
pilgrimage but instead aligned with other disease scenarios around the
globe; in other words, districts with high rates of urbanization reported
high incidence of the infection. Incidence maps illustrate, for example,
how administrative districts such as Dakar, ies, and Saint Louis—the
most densely populated, urbanized regions in the country—have been hit
hardest by the coronavirus (Fig.7.7). In contrast to predictions made by
global media, new COVID-19 case counts plummeted in the weeks fol-
lowing the Grand Magal pilgrimage, and by the end of October, the
Health Ministry was reporting less than 15 new cases per day (Fig.7.6).
e NYT media report suggesting that religious ocials would mandate
that pilgrims travel to Magal in the midst of a pandemic was wholly inac-
curate. Borders were proactively closed to non-nationals wishing to travel
to Touba from beyond Senegal, and religious leaders formed an integral
part of national health initiatives to control the spread of coronavirus
(Sokhna etal. 2021b). e sky did not “fall” in Senegal, as was predicted,
despite media attempts to perpetuate long-standing disease narratives
related to Africa. Senegal instead took on a unique leadership role in
managing the global pandemic though it was seldom included in the
pantheon of states who were credited for crushing coronavirus and its
diusion.
7 Disease Discourses, African Knowledge Systems…
142
Fig. 7.7 Urbanization rates in Senegal
Environmental Conditions
One nal explanation harnessed by the media to explain the low level of
COVID-19 case counts across Senegal, in particular, and Africa, in gen-
eral, relative to other world regions, is that of climate. Six months into
the coronavirus pandemic, the BBC cited a study in which temperature,
humidity, and latitude were analyzed in order to estimate potential spread
and seasonality of coronavirus (Soy 2020). e study concluded that
with spatial modeling it was possible to estimate an area of high risk of
substantial community transmission of COVID-19 (Jamshidi et al.
2020). News outlets quickly applied this research to the African context,
arguing that owing to its dominant position along the tropical belt, where
temperatures and higher relative humidity are higher, COVID case
counts would be signicantly reduced (BBC 2020). e example of
K. S. Barton etal.
143
South Africa—which contains half of the continent’s coronavirus cases
and straddles cooler latitudinal regimes—was employed to support this
environmental argument. Yet despite its high latitudinal position,
Köppen-Geiger maps reveal that South Africa actually contains a total of
13 dierent climate zones, from desert to humid subtropical, thus defy-
ing the BBC’s environmental deterministic explanatory positions on
coronavirus (BBC 2020). New data has also conrmed the ways in which
warmer, more humid locales like Brazil and Florida, which fall partly
within Köppen’s tropical climate regime, actually showed higher trans-
mission rates and case counts (Auler etal. 2020; Johns Hopkins 2021).
e truth is that the link between climate and COVID-19 is funda-
mentally complicated (Zaitchik etal. 2020). Weather inuences the envi-
ronment in which the coronavirus must survive before infecting a new
host, but it also inuences human behavior, which shifts the virus from
one host to another. Recent research (Jamshidi etal. 2020) adds clarity to
weather’s role in COVID-19 infections, suggesting that temperature and
humidity do not play a signicant role in the coronavirus spread (World
Meteorological Organization 2020). Taking trips and spending time
away from home were the top two contributing factors to COVID-19
growth, with a relative importance of about 34% and 26%, respectively.
e next two important factors were population and urban density, with
a relative importance of about 23% and 13%, respectively (Jamshidi
etal. 2020). at the media chose to harness environmentally determin-
istic arguments such as climate to explain Senegal’s strong track record
with COVID-19 was not surprising given the long-standing tropes about
the continent. As we have shown in this chapter, however, Senegal did
not stumble upon its success in managing this global pandemic; rather it
relied upon age-old community-based structures in conjunction with
rapid response systems to combat COVID’s incursion into West Africa.
Moving Forward
While we have illustrated Senegal’s important strides in managing
COVID-19, further steps should be considered in order to ensure human
safety and move toward achieving sustainable development goals. As
7 Disease Discourses, African Knowledge Systems…
144
noted earlier, early measures such as rapid response systems were critical
in ensuring Senegal’s pandemic successes, but bolstered screening and
early detection measures can allow the country to better manage the
ongoing pandemic (in World Economic Forum 2021). For example,
early on in the outbreak, all of Senegal’s detected cases were found follow-
ing individual medical appointments at health facilities, known com-
monly as “passive” detection. An active health monitoring and diagnostic
system would therefore allow Senegalese health ocials to seek out dis-
ease incidence rather than stumble upon it. Furthermore, only a portion
of COVID-19 recorded cases were geocoded2 (see Figs. 7.1, 7.3, 7.7),
which prevents a more nuanced understanding of the pandemic’s spatial
distribution across Senegal. is murky view of rural- urban disparities in
Senegal can subsequently aect the ecacy of health screening, monitor-
ing, and vaccine distribution.
at President Sall declared a State of Emergency (February 3, 2021)
following pandemic’s second wave underscores Senegal’s need to focus on
COVID-19 impacts in more populated urban centers. e map in
Fig.7.7 highlights the way in which Senegal’s large urban sectors were hit
hardest as evidenced by the high incidence of disease in Dakar, ies, and
Saint Louis. is disparity is a function of a long-standing urban core-
rural periphery structure where high population densities continue to
place pressure on existing health and community resources. Yet while the
highest incidence of COVID-19 is in cities, the rural south (Casamance)
still requires equitable health and medical attention, given its ongoing
marginalization from the urban north. Senegalese ocials should con-
tinue to collaborate with outreach workers in these rural outposts to pro-
vide necessary resources to aid them in the ongoing pandemic. is
collaboration might involve an active vaccination plan that leverages
global support—such as the COVAX initiative led by the WHO and
CEPI Gavi Alliance—in order to ensure equal access to health resources
across the country.
Despite Senegal’s robust policies to eradicate poverty and inequalities,
the pandemic also has threatened to reverse national eorts to reduce
2 A description of a location—such as a pair of coordinates, an address, or a name of a place—to a
location on the earth’s surface.
K. S. Barton etal.
145
gender equality in line with United Nations’ goals. Recent reports show
that rural women have long suered economic setbacks, due in part to
their participation in the informal sector and the insecure income that
accompanies these activities (Diagana 2020). But with the adoption of
the COVID-19 lockdown and restriction measures, women became
increasingly responsible for family duties, thus exacerbating existing gen-
der disparities (Ba 2020). A recent study (Dione etal. 2021) revealed
how Senegalese women and adolescent girls have suered from food
shortages (65%) and limited spatial mobility due to basic travel restric-
tions (85%) in the wake of the pandemic; in fact, women in rural areas
(Kolda) were impacted more than those living in urban areas (Kaolack).
erefore, while the government has provided pandemic assistance to
disadvantaged households across Senegal, more policies are needed to
protect rural women and girls from economic insecurity and dispropor-
tionate care burdens.
Conclusion
e main conclusion we glean from this work is that Africa’s problems
require African solutions, or solutions designed with Africans in mind.
is is particularly applicable in the case example of Senegal’s manage-
ment of COVID-19 from its outset in 2020 (World Health Organization
2019, 2020; Magome 2020). We suggest that developed world regions
can borrow from health initiatives generated in emerging African states
like Senegal, where ocials aggressively quashed the diusion of the
coronavirus pathogen by harnessing sound science, technology, respect
for elderly, and repurposing rapid response teams from earlier pandemics
like the Ebola (Akindele etal. 2020). Senegal has clearly made impressive
strides in pandemic management—with a total of 561 deaths despite a
national population of 16 million—yet it has been largely downplayed by
media institutions that tend to amplify coronavirus narratives in devel-
oped states over that of developing ones. We argue that this oversight is
fundamentally rooted in widespread characterizations of Africa, the “dis-
eased continent” in which areas south of the Sahara are seen as breeding
grounds for new pathogens rather than hearths for health-based
7 Disease Discourses, African Knowledge Systems…
146
innovations (World Meteorological Organization 2020). When Senegal’s
COVID-related successes are in fact acknowledged by the media, they are
often justied by demographic or deterministic variables such as climate
and environment. e subtext of this dominant discourse is that African
states somehow stumbled upon their successes rather than self-generated
their solutions. e reality is that Senegal authored its unique, community-
based approach in managing the coronavirus pathogen by heavily priori-
tizing people over prot. eir achievements should be amplied along
with other states like New Zealand in the pantheon of countries that
eectively managed the COVID-19 crisis in 2020. Coronavirus contin-
ues to be an emerging, rapidly evolving situation, but regardless of what
unfolds, this will not negate the fact that we have much to learn from
Senegal’s early management of the pandemic.
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8
Enulebo: Ethical Imperative ofYorùbá
Thought onEating forCOVID-19-
Related Crises
AdewaleO.Owoseni
Introduction
e ongoing COVID-19 pandemic around the world reiterates again the
downside of the human-Other relationship. is is due to the insensitive
subjugation of the Other in vulnerable position or status, including non-
human animals. ese animals are oftentimes the subject of indiscrimi-
nate objectication as mere utility/tools in the course of human
engagement with them. And this results in far-reaching consequences
that demand expedient resolution; otherwise, the threat of human extinc-
tion looms. We speak here of the stark reality of indiscriminate engage-
ment of animals as source of food, experimental tool for laboratory tests,
and object of use in industrial and agricultural complex, among others,
which have led to certain consequences like extinction of rare species/
A. O. Owoseni (*)
Department of Philosophy, University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria
Center for the Advancement of Scholarship (CAS), University of Pretoria,
Pretoria, South Africa
© e Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023
F. Egbokhare, A. Afolayan (eds.), Global Health, Humanity and the COVID-19
Pandemic, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17429-2_8
152
habitat, eco-biodiversity crises, and changes that demand practical initia-
tive as well as management.
e pervasive reality of the COVID-19 pandemic emerged out of the
pursuit of human survival through feeding on pangolins, a situation that
seems, in recent times, to have earned China (where the practice of eating
pangolins is prominent) the label of a “contagious” nation. e extent of
the widespread of COVID-19 infection has also implicated the charge of
conspiracy from China to the far-reaching ends of the USA, WHO, and
other prominent international agencies(Wang X etal. 2021b). is has
fueled the prevalence of distrust, suspicion of ill intention, unreliability,
as well as blame game along the corridors of international polity. While
strategic eorts and literature have been generated to re-humanize the
world through various strategies to mitigate the wide spread of COVID-19
to ensure the safety of the human race, ethical reections from indige-
nous contexts that could also proer complementary eorts are yet to be
given critical consideration. Leveraging on this gap, this discourse ges-
tures in that direction through a critical analysis of the Yorùbá indigenous
conception of eating to further mitigate the far-reaching eects of
COVID-19-related crises in terms of suspicion, distrust, unreliability,
and blame game, among others.
In light of this, the chapter is divided into three sections. e rst sec-
tion examines the polemics of human and animal relations in lieu of
COVID-19, with specic reference to the philosophical debate sur-
rounding the idea of eating as a pattern of human relations with animals.
e second section extends this background of philosophical debate to
the context of eating as an ordinary and extraordinary norm of sacrice
within Yorùbá thought. Also, it explores other Yorùbá beliefs about the
signicance of “eating” (as sacrice) to enhance a balanced and harmoni-
ous existential state of aairs. Section three focuses on the ethical impli-
cation of indigenous Yorùbá thought on eating to the ongoing COVID-19
pandemic; also, the need to incorporate its heuristic value within the
global order toward the mitigation of the undesirable consequences of
COVID-19-related crises is thus emphasized.
A. O. Owoseni
153
The Goat asaScapegoat: COVID-19
andthePhenomenon ofEating
Ewúrẹ jẹ ẹran-ilé tó máa ń ji ìyà púpo nítorí àìgboràn rẹ.
(e goat is a domestic animal that deserves beating due to its disobedi-
ent nature.)
e foregoing expression is an opening line of a popular Yorùbá nurs-
ery rhyme that is often deployed to teach little children about the conse-
quences of disobedience and recalcitrance. While the heuristic essence of
deploying the metaphor of the goat as a scapegoat is commendable for
the enhancement of good behavioral tendency in children, its devise of
animals (through the signicance of the goat) as the embodied victim of
disobedience legitimizes the trend of indiscriminate humans’ attitudinal
disposition that shapes humanengagement with animals. In other words,
human framing of animals as object for enacting the moral signicance
of human sociality extends to biological, physical, and metaphysical
rationale of human relationship with animals. In this sense, the sociocul-
tural conferment of entitlement to beat the goat (since it embodies some
attributes, subject to human standards) similarly foregrounds the reason
for framing animals as veritable source of food or nutrients, tools for
experimentation, and vector of diseases, among other possible range of
human engagement with animals.
Such situation seems to suggest that the valuation of animals and their
essence is subject to human discretion and for the purpose of furthering
human existence and well-being. is position is exclusively anthropo-
centric and hence toxic for its non-consideration of nonhuman well-
being within the environment. And this is even despite the fact that it
could be projected through the prism of weak anthropocentrism1 in
mainstream Western philosophy (Norton 1982). In Christos Lynteris
(2019), we nd a signicant argument corroborating the human framing
of animals as “epidemic villains,” especially within the context of the
global incidence of the COVID-19 pandemic. Lynteris’s argument turns
1 Weak anthropocentrism expounds the idea that human values are the foundation of nonhuman
and environmental values.
8 Enule bo : Ethical Imperative of Yorùbá Thought…
154
critical attention to the implication of the biopolitics of blaming nonhu-
man animals as vectors or host of the disease through which the human
race is confronted with the threat of extinction. Besides the undercurrent
of bio-political dynamics of the global pandemic, the socioeconomic fac-
tor of global contestations of states like the USA and China as well as
international agencies like WHO cannot be underrated (NYtimes 2020;
World Health 2020; Brooking Institutions 2020).
Lynteris’s contention further demonstrates the need to re-consider the
bio-political blame game charge against animals in light of their subdued
agency as object of consumption for the satiation of human nutritional
needs as well. It follows that the process of consumption or eating
becomes a value-based phenomenon that demands critical engagement
in lieu of the consequences of humans’ will to survive. is implies that
it is not enough to reduce the cause of the COVID-19 pandemic to the
animal vector of the viral disease without antecedently reecting on the
point of entanglement between the agency of human and animal. It is
dicult to deny that the agency of animals becomes subdued at the
moment they are commodied as source of food or nutrient for human
consumption, while the agency of human lives becomes active through
the process of consuming or eating the animals. Generally, it is believed
that pangolins, consumed in Wuhan, China (the source of the spread of
the disease) is one of the major reservoirs of COVID-19. Eating, within
this context, therefore raises the philosophical issue around the moral
justication of humans feeding on the nonhuman Other, especially ani-
mals and plants. Alastair Norcross’s (2004: 229–245) narrates the experi-
ence of Fred who, because of the loss of his taste buds due to a terrible
accident, set up a basement laboratory that enabled him to process the
cocanemone present in brains of piglets in ways that allowed him to
regain his taste for mousse chocolate.
is story provides the justication for the human legitimization of
eating (in order to attain a pleasurable gustatory experience) that involves
horric inictions of pains on animals. is justication for eating drives
the practice of factory farming and industrial production of animals as
utility “patients” for the satiation of human desires, needs, and ultimately
survival. While human need to eat in order to survive is not underrated
by Norcross, overreliance on feeding on animals over other sources of
A. O. Owoseni
155
nutrient is contended. is implies that the nullication of the human
practice of eating animals is not tantamount to the privation of human
well-being. Within the eld of animal ethics, such reasoning is strength-
ened by the arguments that disapprove human treatment of animals as
marginal objects due to certain criteria of capacities. Such arguments are
referred to as argument from marginal cases.
Arguments from marginal cases spur the controversy of whether it is
equally reasonable or otherwise, to indiscriminately instrumentalize
humans, especially those in persistent vegetative state, the senile, or the
infants, in similar ways that animals are used. is is because the senile,
vegetative, and infant are lacking in moral responsibility, obligations,
rationality, and consciousness. In other words, if the argument for the
consumption of animals is founded on human exceptionalism justied
by their capacities for rationality, functional cognitive capacity, moral
responsibility, or agency, among others, over animals, then it follows that
the consumption of humans in marginal conditions also makes moral
sense. Scholars like Carl Cohen (1986), Mary Anne Warren (1987), and
David Schmidtz (1998) disapprove of this analogous justication of
treating humans (in this context, eating humans) in marginal conditions
the same way we would treat or relate with animals. Warren (1987: 483)
opines that there are indeed “powerful practical and emotional reasons
for protecting non-rational human being, reasons which are absent in the
case of nonhuman animals.” For Cohen, the failure of the arguments
from marginal cases lies in the fact that:
It mistakenly treats an essential feature of humanity as though it were a
screen for sorting humans. e capacity for moral judgement that distin-
guishes humans from animals is not a test to be admonished to human
beings one by one. Persons who are unable, because of some disability to
perform the full moral functions natural to human beings, are certainly not
for that reason rejected from the moral community. … What humans
retain when disabled, animals have never had. (Cohen 1986: 461)
us, for Cohen, Warren, and others, being a human in marginal states
or condition is not a sucient reason for advancing the argument for eat-
ing humans in the same way we eat animals. In other words, according to
8 Enule bo : Ethical Imperative of Yorùbá Thought…
156
Schmidtz (1998: 61), humans and animals are “relevantly dierent
types.” For Jeremy Bentham (2000) and Peter Singer (1975), acknowl-
edging the capacity commonly shared by humans and animals is cogent
for gauging human treatment of animals prior to the consideration of the
relevant dierences between them. Both scholars argued that the shared
experience of sentiency or capacity to feel pain is a sucient criterion for
the moral consideration of humans and animals. If this argument holds,
then we have what it takes to mitigate the indiscriminate abuse and kill-
ing of animals for food, as well as subjection of animals to intense harm
situation of factory farming, experimental laboratory, and other forms of
engagement, which objectify animals.
Bentham and Singer’s radical argument for elevating the status of
animal to that of subject has received serious critical attention in envi-
ronmental ethics and critical animal studies. But this will not detain us
here. e crucial point that brought us to this discourse is worth reiter-
ating. is is the point that human consumption or eating of animals is
a pattern of human relationship (as Self) with animals (as an inclusive
Other), and there are extant arguments in Western philosophical dis-
course that proer arguments for or against the moral justication of
eating animals. It takes little reection to argue that the incidence of
COVID-19 becomes inevitable given the logic of the human-centered
understanding of eating the Other. is eating dynamics must contend,
inevitably again, with the fact that the Other sometimes serve as hosts
to various viruses waiting to nd more suitable hosts. e viral occupa-
tion of the body or the environment of the hosts, in most cases, poses a
threat to the host’s survival. e instance of the mortality rate of human
persons due to COVID-19 has manifested such threat. Such situation
demands aggregating plausible insights from diverse epistemologies
and ethics for mitigating the various crises generated by the pandemic.
Given this understanding, since the debate regarding the moral justi-
cation of human utility of animals is indeed prominent and inexhaust-
ible in Western philosophy, it seems not out of place to counteract with
alternative readings deriving from “subaltern” indigenous worldviews
regarding the phenomenon of eating (as one of the way in which human
utilizes animals), which has far-reaching implication for the realization
A. O. Owoseni
157
of harmonious human well-being and state of co-existence. In light of
this, the next section considers the example of Yorùbá indigenous
notion of eating as an alternative reading to moderate COVID-19-
related crises.
Ẹnulẹbo: “Eating” inYorùbá Thought
Literature on the cultural phenomenon of eating among the Yorùbá is
very rare. e available materials that are proximate to the discourse are
concerned with food culture, food taboos, and food taxonomy, among
others (Oso 1977; Ogundele 2007; Allen 2014). While intellectual
reection on these proximate issues is prominent, critical consideration
of the dialectics of eating within the same culture is less advanced. e
expediency of subjecting eating to critical attention stems fundamen-
tally from its general manifestation as a human-centered activity that
often commodies nonhuman entities (plants and animals) as target-
object to be eaten. e indigenous Yorùbá of Southwest Nigeria, like
most people across the world, are also conditioned by the universal
human necessity of eating to enhance the integrity of their health and
survival. Literature exists pertaining to what the Yorùbá eat, their culi-
nary practices, and preferences that are subject to many factors which
include sociocultural, geographical, topographical, and climatic
conditions.2
A philosophical reection derives from a meta-ethical conceptual anal-
ysis of the popular indigenous Yorùbá notion of Ẹnulẹbo. Taken from
two root words—ẹnu (mouth) and ẹbo (sacrice)—Ẹnulẹbo becomes a
conceptual assemblage that literally translates as the “mouth is sacrice.”
Ifá, the Yorùbá divinatory and literary corpus, provides a further under-
standing of the cultural perception of the relationship between eating,
the mouth, and sacrice that Ẹnulẹbo signies. According to the fth
verse of Ọwonrín Méjì in Odù Ifá (a chapter in Ifa):
2 See Ogunsanya, A.O. 2015. “Changing Pattern in Feeding, Dressing and naming among Yoruba
of South-Western Nigeria since 1960. Nigerian Journal of Social Studies Vol. XVIII (2).
8 Enule bo : Ethical Imperative of Yorùbá Thought…
158
Ẹnu nií jẹ Olúbobotiribo baba ẹbo e mouth is Olubobotiribo,
father of sacrice
N
jẹ kín là mbo ní’ Fẹ What do we worship in Ife?
Ẹnuu won eir mouth
Ẹnuu won la mbo ní’ Fẹ It is their mouth we worship at Ife
Ẹnuu won eir mouth.
Mo fún gbá I did this
Mo fáwo I did that
Enuu won eir mouth
Ẹnu won kó mo le rí mi bájà eir mouth cannot embattle me
Ẹnuu won eir mouth
Mo wálé I arrived home
Mo wánà I sojourned
Ẹnuu won eir mouth
Ènuu won kó má le rí mi bájà eir mouth cannot embattle me
Ẹnuu won eir mouth
From the Odù, there are two conceivable senses of Ẹnulẹbo—the literal
and the meta-literal. Literally, Ẹnulẹbo refers to the activity of the mouth
as the major channel of consumption which determines the human state
of health. is also implies that since the mouth is the recipient of food
contents, then the latter invariably becomes “the sacrice ingredient” for
the mouth. And, the quotidian necessity of eating to survive implies not
only that the mouth accepts food as its daily sacrice but also that there
is an obligation to be mindful of what to oer the mouth as sacrice in
the survival equation. e expression ẹnuu won là mbo ní’Fẹ (it is their
mouth we worship at Ifẹ) in the Odù aptly reiterates this Yorùbá point of
view. is also means that in this perspective, the mouth becomes a cen-
ter of “worship” since it accepts food as daily sacrice. Such conception
also seems to foreground a meta-literal interpretation of the mouth.
At the meta-literal level, the representation of the mouth extends to
the moderation of utterances. us, the invocation of ẹnuu won là mbo
ní’Fẹ speaks to the prudential instinct to exercise moderation in utter-
ances that could otherwise underminepeaceful coexistence or generate
disharmony in interpersonal relationships. e belief is that anyone who
takes this invocation serious and moderate the mouth in interpersonal
A. O. Owoseni
159
interaction or engagement receives certitude of safety from ill intentions
from vicious forces or persons. e assurance of such safety is what the
Odù conveyed in the line ẹnu won ò lè rí mi bájà, mo wálé, mo wánà …
ẹnu won (their mouth cannot embattle me, I arrived home, I sojourned …
their mouth). e virulence of an untamed mouth therefore becomes the
harbinger of chaos in social bonding that should be tamed. Both the lit-
eral and the meta-literal conception of the mouth therefore converge
around the signicance of human well-being and the role of the mouth
in mediating it.
However, there is another correlative conception of ẹnulẹbo in Yorùbá
thought that is not limited to the heuristic value of eating as an avenue to
individual, relational, and social well-being. In this sense, ẹnulẹbo signi-
es a convergent point of interdependent relationship among humans
and between humans and extra-human forces. is point of interdepen-
dent relationship is signaled through that act of invitation to eat by a
host/supplicant and the acceptance of such invitation by the “target”
recipient, which may be humans or extra-human forces. is implies that
the practice of invitation and acceptance to eat constitutes a continuum
from the realms of humans (i.e., human-to-human relations) to the realm
beyond the humans. In this context, eating becomes a communion or
what Ann Allen refers to as “communal eating.”3 is is aptly captured in
the Yorùbá lyrical chant:
A gbé orí ilẹ a jẹ eku o We lived on the land, and ate rat together
A gbé orí ilẹ, a jẹ ẹja We lived on the land, and ate sh together
A gbé orí ilẹ, a jẹ ìgbín We lived on the land, and ate snail together
Àsẹ di owo ilẹ e force of our witness is the Land
A joo mu4 On which we communed together.
3 See Allen, A. 2015. “Food and Culture: Continuity and Change in the Yoruba of West Africa and
their Diasporas.” In S.Magliveras and C.Gallin (eds) Odysseys of Plates and Palates: Food, Society
and Sociality. Oxford, United Kingdom: Inter-Disciplinary Press.
4 is is culled from Personal Communication with Ifa Priest Olaleye, October 22, 2021. Olaleye
is a researcher and scholar of Yoruba religious studies at the Department of Religious Study,
University of Ibadan, Nigeria.
8 Enule bo : Ethical Imperative of Yorùbá Thought…
160
As communion, eating generates vertical (human and gods/deities
realm) and horizontal (human realm) bonding. When the Yorùbá say,
ẹyẹlé kìí bónílé jẹ, kó bá oníilé mu, kó wá di ojo ikú, kó yẹrí—“the dove
never dine and wine with the owner of the house and then on the day of
death, attempt to ee/escape”—they gesture at a sense of delity to care
about one another within the context of the shared eating qua commu-
nion. is shared sense of delity to care for one another yields the state
of a balanced self or group/communal fullment. e notion of
Akẹbodorun (the conveyor of sacricial oerings to “heaven”) aptly cap-
tures the Yorùbá understanding of such balanced sense of self or com-
munal fullment. Akẹbodorun in Yorùbá thought is the frame of reference
for the interdependency of all agents (human/nonhuman, host/receiver)
involved in the shared eating (i.e., the process of invitation and accep-
tance to eat), which is propelled by delity to care for one another that
results into bonding toward a common goal/survival (symbolized by
“heaven”). e Odù Ifá about Alásán, Orí, and Òrìsà recounts the impli-
cation of the non-acknowledgement of the implicit sense of delity
derived from bonding through eating together:
Ifá ní ‘ta ni ó tó bá Alásán r’òkun Ifa asked who will sojourn
with Alásán
Ògún ní òun bá’ Alásán r’òkun Ogun answered he would
sojourn with Alásán
Won ní ìwo Ògún, to bá d’elere ey said ‘You Ogun,
when you arrive at Elere
Níbi won gbé bí o lomo e place of your birth
Tí won bá fún ní ako ajá, If you are oered a
male dog
Tí won fún ẹ ní obì tó gbó If you are oered a ripe
kola-nut
Tí won fún ẹ ní olagbalagba epo If you are oered sweet
and tasty palm oil
Tí won fún ẹ íi gbogbo ohun tí òun jẹ If you are oered all your
favorite meals
Ògún ní, tí òun bá ti yó tán Ogun said that after he is
well fed
Ó ní ìjálá ni òun máa sun lo ilé tontonton He would chant Ijala all
the way home
A. O. Owoseni
161
Won ní ìwo Ògún, ey said ‘You, Ogun
O tó Alásán bá r’òkun You are not qualied to
sojourn with Alásán
Òòsà ńlá dìde, Oosa nla stood up
Ó ní òun bá Alásán r’òkun He said he would sojourn
with Alásán
Won ní ìwo Òòsà ńlá ey said, ‘You Oosa nla,
Tí won ba fún ẹ If they oer you
Ní gbogbo ohun tó ńjẹ Everything you enjoy to eat’
Ó ní tóun bá yó tán He said that once he
feeds well
Ó ní òun ó padà sílé òun ni He would return to
his home
Won ní kò tó bá’ Alásán r’òkun ey said, he is not quali-
ed to sojourn with Alásán
Gbogbo àwon Òrìsà ni won dìde All the deities stood up
L’o kookan One after the other
Kálùkù won wí pé tí won bá ti fún àwon Each one of them said
once they were oered
Ni ohun tí àwon mo on jẹ eir favorite meal
Oníkálùkù won a padà sílé ey would return to
their home.
Nii Orí bá dìde en, Ori stood up
Ó ní òun ó bá Alásán r’òkun And said he would
sojourn with Alásán
Won ní ìwo Orí ey said ‘You, Ori
Tí won bá fún ẹ ní adìẹ okoko If you’re oered a
chicken meal
Tí won fún nígbà, tí won fun lawo And if they oered you
this and that
Tí won fún ni gbogbo ohun tó mo on jẹ And all that are your
favorite meals
Ó ní, òun ó bá Alásán r’òkun He said, he would still
sojourn with Alásán
Ni Ifá bá ní en, Ifa said
Orí nìkan nii kí Alásán bá r’òkun5 It is only Ori that Alásán
should sojourn with
5 Personal Communication with Ifa Priest Olaleye, October 22, 2021
8 Enule bo : Ethical Imperative of Yorùbá Thought…
162
e signicance of the role of Ori in the Odù, which generates diverse
perspectives about the nature of human destiny in the search for a mean-
ingful life, is reenacted through the invitation of the deities to a sojourn
that involves feasting or eating their favorite meals. e verse emphasizes
Alásán’s expectation of virtuous display of reliability, trust, and forbear-
ance from each of the deities who is expected to complete the sojourn
with him, especially after being oered their favorite meals as induce-
ment. To Alásán’s dismay, none of the deities were willing to complete the
sojourn with him except Ori. e point stressed in the Ifá verse is that
there is an expedient need to prioritize the relational virtues of reliability,
trust, and forbearance over self-aggrandizement, self-centeredness, and
self-interest in the course of interpersonal relationship derived from the
acceptance to eat and accompany Alásán on the journey. In the nal
analysis, the meta-ethical core of the intent to converge to eat primes up
a situation of reliable and balanced relationship between the self and the
Other, which is fostered through the possibility of looking up to one
another for solidarity, support, and assistances that are capable of mediat-
ing blame games or self-propelled interests.
In the Yorùbá worldview, eating congures a dialectical relationship
between human and extra-terrestrial forces consisting of deities and
divinities, gods and goddesses, and ancestors. Eating in this context is
essentialized as sacrice (ẹbo) to the supernatural forces. e Yorùbá con-
cept of eeru refers to the ingredients oered to the forces as food in Yorùbá
belief. In other words, eeru is the food content brought forward by a cli-
ent or supplicant as the appropriate and prescribed sacricial oering to
the supernatural forces. It is believed that this food content is inclusive of
welfare provisions or gifts (similar to a kind of usury/tithe) from the gods/
deities to the Ifá priest. is is so since the priest also have to be well sus-
tained to perform his role eectively, even though his role is perceived as
a service to humanity. e procession of such food oering as rites of
appeasement is also foregrounded by the metaphysical acknowledgement
of the hierarchy and potency of the gods, goddesses, or deities.
According to Olaleye, Ifá is the one who sends invitation to the gods
and goddesses to come and feast on sacricial oerings. And a special
portion of the sacrice is always separated for Èsù, the trickster god, who
is believed to have huge appetite to consume indiscriminately and who
A. O. Owoseni
163
also serves as witness of the supplicant’s promise to oer the sacrice. To
breach this promise ultimately evokes Èsù’s wrath on the non-complying
supplicant. In other words, Èsù sanctions any sort of default that disrupts
the process or rites of food oerings to the gods, which is occasioned by
the supplicant’s failure to full the promise to make such provisions. In
Yorùbá belief, disruption in the process of eating is further consolidated
in the rationale for food taboos, or èèwò (orpe 1967). Èèwò refers to
things or actions that constitute aversion to the appetitive preferences,
desires, nature, or dispositions of persons and gods/deities in Yorùbá
belief. In this sense, oering food contents or ingredients that are counter
to the preferences of gods/deities constitute èèwò, which is accompanied
by inevitable consequences of the wrath of such gods. Since the Yorùbá
believe that oering èèwò angers the gods/deities, its repercussion for a
fettered or unpalatable state of human and environment well-being is
granted as inevitable. Such fettered state may be manifested as famine,
drought, diseases outbreak, and oftentimes death within the community
among other undesirable crises.
is also extends to the cultural conception of the association of these
forces with nonhuman entities like trees, animals, groves, and so on that
are often conceived as the symbolic totems or accomplices of the gods.
Existing research recount some of the fundamental beliefs that under-
score human and beyond human relationship in terms of the appropri-
ateness of sacricial contents that are religiously certied as proper and
betting for the forces to eat. For instance, in the situation where the
sacrice involves the use of animals for incurring healing, good/favorable
destiny, and so on, Olusola Ajibade (2006) notes that Ògún prefers dogs,
snail, tortoise, and ram; Sàngó prefers ram; and Òrúnmìlà likes rats and
mudsh. e act of presenting food ingredients that do not suit the appe-
titive preferences of these gods amounts to a taboo (èèwò) and is tanta-
mount to oering the gods iwǫǫ (poison). Èèwò and iwǫǫ in this context
become interconnected, in lieu of the perception of what qualies as
edible for the consumption or acceptance of the gods/deities. Given that
the food content or ingredients of such oering to the gods is inclusive of
welfare provisions (eeru) for the priests involved as well, it follows that the
avoidance of èèwò and iwǫǫ extends to human persons.
8 Enule bo : Ethical Imperative of Yorùbá Thought…
164
In other words, ensuring the attainment of a balanced state of human
well-being, which is devoid of crises such as infections/diseases outbreak,
demands a cautious consideration of what is betting and proper also for
human consumption, even though in Yorùbá context, such inclusive wel-
fare provisions for persons involved constitute some portion of what is
due for feeding/appeasing the gods. Eating/sacrice at this point is a con-
tinuum of a balanced state of well-being from human persons to the
nonhuman forces and deities. While it may be dicult to assert that the
specicities of this Yorùbá cultural tradition of food taboo belief is uni-
versal across varying cultural contexts, its signicant hint about the need
to disapprove of eating just anything that seems edible and may trigger
crises (by virtue of disregard of such beliefs) is nuanced. To this extent,
Yorùbá notions of èèwò and iwǫǫ deter indiscriminate eating, a situation
that could avert undesirable consequences of large-scale pandemic.
Persons found guilty of non-compliance of such cultural restriction of
indiscriminate consumption are believed to be reprimanded and sanc-
tioned by the wrath of the forces on the oenders, which may include
aiction or iniction (sickness, mental instability, infections, and so on).
In situation like this, the Yorùbá believes in pacifying the deities to avert
such sanctions. In the following, Sàngó is pacied to avert his wrath on
oenders who commit such taboo:
Olójú Orógbó, ẹlẹkẹẹ Obì oo e one with eyes for bitter kola, cheeks
for kolanut
Eégún tí yo iná lẹnu e masquerade that spits re
Òòsà tí ba ológbò lẹrù e deity that scares the cat
Ajísayégbẹgẹ oko iya olórógbó Ajisayegbege, husband of ‘iya olorogbo;
Ẹni fojú di o, Sàngó o gbe6 Whoever underrates Sàngó, would
be doomed.
e emphasis on “bitter kola” in the above reiterates the signicance of
the role the kola plays in entreating him to forgive an oender. e popu-
lar saying that Sàngó ki’je obi, a orogbo—“Sàngó does not eat kola-nut
except bitter kola”—further corroborates this. It is important to note that
6 is rendition is a popular cognomen of Sango (god of thunder) in Yoruba belief.
A. O. Owoseni
165
Yorùbá conception of “extra-human” or nonhuman forces reect an
anthropomorphic understanding in order to convey meaningful ethical
guidelines for human relationship through the symbolic totems and spa-
tial anities of the forces. is is implicitly reiterated through the appeti-
tive disposition of the forces (undergirded by taboo beliefs) to allay
indiscriminate consumption of almost anything in the name of “food” or
sacrice to the gods. Again, this reiterates the previous hint that “eating”
as a process in Yorùbá thought constitutes a continuum among humans
and between human and nonhuman forces. It signals the call for a com-
mon convergence between humans and nonhuman beings to enhance a
harmonious balance, from which delity of interdependent relationship
unfolds, which results into bonding.
It further implies that for human-to-human relationship, “eating” as a
process elicits the ideal of giving and receiving, tolerating each other, and
fostering a sort of solidarity to attain a balance of co-existence (as previ-
ously hinted in the concept of Akẹẹbodorun). For human and nonhuman
relationships, “eating” initiates the call for well-being or harmony from
realms beyond the physical through obeisance of moderated relationship
with the gods, underscored by beliefs that deter indiscriminate consump-
tion of almost anything. We will now draw the larger implication of this
indigenous notion of eating on COVID-19 and its related crises.
Imperative ofYorùbá Thought ofEating
forCOVID-19 Crisis
e essential question remains: How does this indigenous conception
address the crisis spurred by COVID-19? e emergence of COVID-19
constitutes not only a public health concern but also an existential chal-
lenge that demands more than a singular approach that goes beyond just
vaccine production and circulation to mitigate its far-reaching eects.
Leveraging on health insights and the relational worldview that derive
from indigenous thought system of the Yorùbá provides a glocal perspec-
tive in the search for an urgent resolution. e Yorùbá cultural perspec-
tive takes the relationship between humans and animals and the idea of
8 Enule bo : Ethical Imperative of Yorùbá Thought…
166
eating that derives from the perception of the latter by the former, seri-
ously. e Yorùbá understanding of eating as bonding/communion
inscribes the values of solidarity, interdependency, tolerance/forbearance,
and the vitiation of a self-centered worldview. ese values, we have been
arguing, have the potentials to neutralize the far-reaching eect of the
disruptive interactions that have characterized the incidence of
COVID-19 among nations.
For the Yorùbá, the contents of any acceptable sacrice are determined
by the appetitive preference of the deities demanding the sacrice(Awolalu
1973). e framework of culinary taboos (èèwò) also concretize the dis-
approval of indiscriminate eating, undergirded by the possibility of insti-
gating the deities’ wrath because of the possible imbalance or disharmony
of human and environmental well-being. Beyond this appeal of the
avoidance of supernatural wrath, the projection of the disapproval of
indiscriminate eating to an extent spurs the need to prioritize re-
modication of cultured culinary habits, as evidenced in the incidence of
the COVID-19 outbreak (Huremovic 2019), which involved overt
human exploitation and hunting of pangolins for the purposes of trade
and food (Wang Yetal. 2021a). Emphasis on such re-modication is due
to the global rate of casualty as a result of COVID-19. Within the Yorùbá
understanding of eating, indiscriminate or excessive consumption speaks
to the possibility of iwǫǫ (poisoning), which induces ill health and could
even lead to death. Iwǫǫ substantiates the scientic connection between
eating and infection, one fundamental link that plays a signicant role in
the provenance and epidemiology of COVID-19.
Furthermore, eating as a process (as implied in Yorùbá thought) initi-
ates an extended conception of eating as a schema of interdependent
social interaction and relationship that is aimed toward the accomplish-
ment of harmony, reliability, friendship, and solidarity. As an act of
extending invitation and acceptance of invitation to feed, it implies a
collaborative network of relationship, where each and every one ought to
relate with one another with “true and fair” intention as host/supplicant
and invited guests. In such situation where the ethical virtues of eating
(i.e., truthfulness, fairness due to communing or bonding together)
underscore the physical act of eating either meat or other edibles, the
potency of Iwǫǫ would become neutralized (since people who possess
A. O. Owoseni
167
such intent to bond would not attune to the vicious agenda of poisoning
one another). e common interest or intention to commune (as sym-
bolized in the course of converging to eat) together culminates into the
idea of Akẹbodorun, which has been previously claried.
A veritable way to situate the heuristic value of Akẹbodorun is to exam-
ine its import on the dynamics of global power contestation. e blame
game attributed to China as the cause of the global predicament of public
health challenge of COVID-19 spurs discriminatory outburst in feasible
dimensions, such that China is almost synonymously perceived as the
“contagious race,” who intends to blemish the entire human race for the
sake of techno-scientic advancement and global political economy gains
(Wang et al. 2021b; Nyika et al. 2021). While normative judgment
regarding the veracity or otherwise of the reading of conspiracy theories
of blame game conferred on the positionality of China in the scheme of
things is suspended in this discourse, the point granted is that in which-
ever way the blame game turns, the human race becomes polarized by
identity of dierences, which ultimately triggers the struggle of the Self
(China, in this case) against the Other (USA, WHO, developing/under-
developing nations). In simple terms, such identity of dierence reects
in the manifest strategies of production of various COVID-19 vaccines
and media propaganda of its source/cause (inclusive of the trend of info-
demic) by various contesting nations that implicitly involve in “compara-
tive competition” for world acknowledgment. Persistent struggle of Self
over the Other or vice versa trumps the realization of a harmonious or
ourishing condition for the attainment of a common goal or survival,
which is the point of emphasis in the notion of Akẹbodorun.
Alluding to the interactive model of eating as a process of bonding/
communing, as explicated in Yorùbá thought, could possibly purge the
contesting powers/nations of suspicious intent and tussle for recognition
of the Self over the Other or vice versa. When the notion of eating as com-
munion is embraced as a framework for international or intercontinental
diplomatic relations, all diplomats, agencies, and collaborators involved
would hardly imagine the deployment of conspiracy, inspired by ill intent
(Iwǫǫ—poisoning or corrupting) as strategy of interaction or relation-
ship. Optimistically, this would engender strong bonding that would be
shared through solidarity with one another for the attainment of
8 Enule bo : Ethical Imperative of Yorùbá Thought…
168
common good, sustainable survival, and balanced well-being that is
devoid of schisms of interest in the course to mitigate the crisis spurred
by the incidence of COVID-19. is means that such philosophy of eat-
ing would aid forbearance and tolerance with/of one another within the
international polity, and it would also get rid of suspicion and blame
game syndrome. In other words, all international stakeholders or agen-
cies implicated in the COVID-19 pandemic would dare to converge
together and commune with one another to earn a common trust and
reliability to seek indivisible human well-being and existential state of
balance. ey would all become collaborators toward mitigating
COVID-19, and in Yorùbá coinage, they would earn the honor of being
Akẹbodorun. Needless to say, in the absence of such common ethical
understanding of model of interaction or interdependency (instantiated
through Yorùbá thought of eating as a process of bonding or commu-
nion), the ip-side predicament of nationalistic rivalry and vindication
from blame game through purposeful continental and intercontinental
media propaganda and wide-scale production or “aids” of ecacious vac-
cines, especially by super power states, as well as the political economy of
annexing reliance and trust from the so-called dependent developing and
underdeveloped states of the world would continually abound. is sim-
ply means that the fruition of the imperative of bonding or communion
suggested in Yorùbá thought of eating for COVID-19-related crises
would remain a utopia.
Concluding Remarks
is discourse attempted to inquire the extent to which the plausible
ethical motifs of bonding/communion, trust, reliability, tolerance, and
forbearance that are derived from indigenous Yorùbá conception of “eat-
ing” can foster an alternative resolution strategy to douse the far-reaching
eect of COVID-19-related crises of suspicion, conspiracy, distrust, and
unreliability within the context of international polity that is suused
with blame game. It asserts an optimistic view about leaping from a glo-
calized context of understanding the complication of the crisis spurred by
the incidence of the global pandemic. e heuristic value of some Yorùbá
A. O. Owoseni
169
notions regarding the phenomenon of eating like Enulebo and relevant
Ifa citations among other beliefs were thus conceptually framed for con-
cretizing the optimistic view of the discourse. e discourse submits that
while the value of eating as bonding in Yorùbá thought projects a pro-
gressive ideal for realizing common trust within international/interconti-
nental diplomatic corridors, relegating its heuristic value as a mere
ethno-national appendage would readily obviate its universal appeal,
hence rendering it as a utopia.
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A. O. Owoseni
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9
Epidemiology andanEpistemic
Evaluation oftheManagement
ofCOVID-19 inNigeria
AnselmK.Jimoh andFrancisIkhianosime
Introduction
Although pandemics are issues for epidemiological discussions, the way
and manner they are managed by countries that are aected have socio-
economic and political undertones, which necessarily come with epis-
temic transactions. By epistemic transactions, we mean the transfer of
information between a testier and a hearer and all that inform and/or
dispose the hearer to believe and accept the testimony of the testier.
ese can have negative or positive impact on how eectively the pan-
demic is managed. It also calls to question some moral and ethical issues.
In the wake of the rst index case of COVID-19 in Nigeria on February
27, 2020, the Nigerian government got generous monetary donations
from well-meaning individuals and institutions to assist with the
A. K. Jimoh (*)
Department of Philosophy, SS.Peter and Paul Major Seminary,
Ibadan, Nigeria
F. Ikhianosime
Department of Philosophy, Seminary of All Saints, Ekpoma, Nigeria
© e Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023
F. Egbokhare, A. Afolayan (eds.), Global Health, Humanity and the COVID-19
Pandemic, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17429-2_9
172
management and control of the spread of the virus. Ever since, daily sta-
tistics on the spread indicate that it geometrically increased, spreading
from one state of the federation to another. Practically almost all the
states in Nigeria have at least some cases, with Lagos State being the epi-
centre and worst hit. e Nigerian government seems to have delayed its
response, adopting reactive measures rather than being proactive, in
restraining the spread of the virus. Controversies trailed the use of the
billions of Naira from donations by individuals and institutions towards
the management of the virus. e lack of availability of test kits; the lip
service of the government to control the spread, which is visible in the
lack of aggressive public awareness strategies; the politicisation of the
truth and palliatives to aid compliance with the stay-at-home recommen-
dation and ensure eective lockdown—all these, coupled with the vari-
ous conspiracy theories easily accessible on social media, cast aspersions
on the epistemic transactions regarding the management of COVID-19in
Nigeria. Consequently, the lack of trust evoked by the government’s lack
of commitment and sincerity induced apathy on the part of the public
and increased the rate of crimes all over the nation.
e present chapter is a critical analysis and evaluation of the Nigerian
government’s response to the management of the spread and control of
the COVID-19 pandemic. First, we analyse COVID-19 within the con-
text of the philosophy of epidemiology espoused by Alex Broadbent.
Second, we interrogate the Nigerian government’s response to COVID-19,
with special attention to the epistemic transactions and control measures
adopted. ereafter, we evaluate the eorts aimed at managing
COVID-19in Nigeria. We conclude that for the eective management
of pandemics in Nigeria, there is the need for commitment to the truth
about the actual situation at hand, unity of eorts to deal with it and
transparency in the epistemic transactions about the pandemic.
COVID-19 asaGlobal Pandemic
e coronavirus disease (COVID-19), initially called (2019-nCoV), is
one of the greatest public health challenges for our time. It belongs to the
zoonotic diseases in animals and humans. ese are respiratory diseases
A. K. Jimoh and F. Ikhianosime
173
common to bats, cats, and birds, which mimic pneumonia and often
manifests with clinical symptoms such as fever, cough, shortness of
breath, muscle pain, exhaustion, etc., in humans. Among the dierent
coronaviruses that threaten humans, ve have been identied in the
twenty-rst century, namely: HCoV-NL63, HCoV-HKU1, HCoV-
SARS, HCoV-MERS, and SARS-CoV-2 (Dzieciatkowski, etal. 2020).
In 2003, there was an outbreak of a strain of coronavirus, Severe Acute
Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) also known as HCoV-SARS, which was
responsible for more than 8000 deaths. e new coronavirus, COVID-19,
symptomatologically resembles that of SARS; hence, it is regarded as
SARS-CoV-2 but commonly called COVID-19.
COVID-19 is highly contagious. It is mainly transmitted through
respiratory droplets and aerosols when infected persons sneeze, cough, or
interact with other persons at close proximity of less than two metres.
Between December 12, 2019 when the rst case was reported in Wuhan,
China, and February 23, 2021, the number of recorded cases worldwide
has reached 112,102,423 million, with 2,480,696 deaths (www.world-
meters.info/coronavirus). Having taken a global dimension, spreading
rapidly across six continents, World Health Organisation (WHO)
declared the coronavirus a pandemic on March 11, 2020. Given the daily
linear rise of cases and resulting deaths, it is dicult to trace the Case
Fatality Ratio (CFR) because of the uctuating gures of contraction and
deaths in dierent regions. CFR is determined by the number of reported
deaths per number of reported cases. In Nigeria, the total conrmed cases
stand at 152,616 with 1862 deaths as at February 23, 2021 (www.world-
meters.info/country). Our interest in this chapter is the fact that
COVID-19 poses both an epidemiological and epistemological crisis.
COVID-19 asanEpidemiological Crisis
Epidemiology is a eld of scientic inquiry that studies “the distribution
and determinants of disease and other health states in the human popula-
tion through group comparisons to improve population health”
(Broadbent 2013: 1). is denition implies that epidemiology induces
answers or solutions from an inferential analysis. It assembles and
9 Epidemiology and an Epistemic Evaluation…
174
analyses statistics and details of groups, and makes inferences from them.
As a eld of scientic inquiry, epidemiology and philosophy are closely
connected in the sense that philosophy interrogates epidemiology. In this
wise, Broadbent explains six features that make epidemiology philosophi-
cally exciting. One, epidemiology engages questions of causation; it
investigates the causes or determinants of diseases. Two, it is nonconfor-
mant to standard philosophical images of science. ree, it uses observa-
tional methods and does not necessarily involve controlled experiments.
Four, it counts things and draws up conclusions from comparisons of
dierent counting. Five, it involves population thinking; the idea that
population may be thought to bear health-related properties. Six, it has
high stakes that raise moral and epistemic implications about values
(Broadbent 2013: 1–10).
Epidemiology advances diverse reasons about the causes of COVID-19,
some of which conict because of the application of dierent epidemio-
logical models. e latter are usually grounded in population thinking,
and the projection from a particular population may not apply to another
population. For instance, the epidemiological projection from Italy may
not be applicable as a prediction for Madagascar. e implication here is
that population thinking in a place can generate fear and anxiety in
another population, thereby creating an epidemiological crisis. In rela-
tion to COVID-19 that seems to have deed successful control so far, the
predictions about its eects and containment have remained woeful.
e principle of causation, which is common to epidemiological and
philosophical inquiries, further outlines why COVID-19 is an epidemio-
logical crisis. Epidemiology has vested interest in causation because of “its
goal of identifying the causes of diseases (both modiable and non-
modiable) so that the disease or its consequences might be prevented”
(Mcgwin 2010: 599). is vested interest is premised on the fact that the
measure of the “strength of association are also used as measures of causal
strength” (Broadbent 2013: 26). Consequently, strong grounds to estab-
lish an association imply the strength of its causation. Even though epi-
demiology lacks an integrated notion of causation, it is nevertheless the
basis upon which prediction, control, and theses are made. erefore, it
is left with the burden of justifying why a particular cause is linked with
a particular eect.
A. K. Jimoh and F. Ikhianosime
175
e rate at which particular diseases are contracted provide evaluative
paradigms for epidemiological concerns with diseases. erefore, to
understand the value of rate in epidemiology would enrich our under-
standing of the scope of COVID-19 because the rates of its contraction
would help us to measure the appropriate (or inappropriate) level of
intervention required to contain its spread. Generally, rates in epidemiol-
ogy are evaluated either as (i) case-specic mortality or (ii) case-specic
fatality. Case-specic mortality measures the death from a specic condi-
tion in the overall population. us, to determine the case-specic mor-
tality rate of COVID-19 within a particular country, we divide the total
population of the country by the total cases of death recorded. On the
other hand, case-specic fatality measures the death from a specic con-
dition in the limited population of infected cases. is is not that straight-
forward with COVID-19 because it is dicult to ascertain all those who
have died from it, given that there are equally other underlining health
conditions that may be responsible for the particular deaths. For instance,
when a COVID-19 patient who has underlying conditions of asthma,
HIV, and tuberculosis dies, it is not easy to adjudge that the patient died
of COVID-19 and not asthma or tuberculosis. Epidemiologists describe
this challenge as the “true rates” of case specicity.
e fact that a COVID-19 patient with other underlying conditions
dies can be a case-specic for either or both COVID-19, and the other
underlying conditions. is creates an epidemiological challenge with
COVID-19. Arguably also is the truth that fatality rates are not restric-
tive to either COVID-19 and/or other underlying conditions. ey are
equally dependent on several other factors like poor health care system,
inappropriate drug administration, the political situation at a time, and/
or the counting practices of a particular system, etc. (Canali 2020). is
increases the epidemiological complexity in analysing fatality rates, espe-
cially for COVID-19.
Cases of COVID-19 can only be ascertained with medical diagnosis.
us, if a country or system lacks the capacity to engage in testing a large
number of patients, its resulting number of recorded cases would be low,
which does not necessarily imply a low rate of prevalence in the country.
Almost across the board, we seem to be dealing with a situation of arti-
cially low cases of COVID-19 because of undertesting. is is
9 Epidemiology and an Epistemic Evaluation…
176
complicated with the fact that carriers of the virus can be both symptom-
atic and asymptomatic, yet they are equally dangerous to public health.
In Nigeria, for instance, when the rst 1000 cases were recorded, the
number of those tested was below 25,000. In this case, getting the true
rates and making proper epidemiological computation becomes dicult.
COVID-19 asanEpistemological Crisis
Following from the analysis above, COVID-19 is not just an epidemio-
logical crisis; it is also an epistemological crisis. According to Francis Beer
and Robert Hariman, we can understand COVID-19 as an epistemologi-
cal crisis from four perspectives: (i) description, (ii) explanation, (iii) pre-
diction, and (iv) control (2020: 19–28). In addition to these four, we
may add the social or moral aspect. e descriptive aspect involves not
having an accurate aggregate of the measures of this pandemic, that is,
the inability to correctly represent the situation of the pandemic as it is,
as well as some deliberate aspects of hiding the truth about the accurate
situation of the pandemic. Truth is a fundamental element for epistemol-
ogy and for pursuing any knowledge claim. Interpretations in epidemiol-
ogy cannot be imaginary; they must be based on available statistics. Even
if a prediction is to be made based on a counterfactual analysis, it must be
a leap from what is available or correct. e strength of inference is that
the particulars must be true, before making a general claim. However, as
Beer and Hariman argue, the descriptive dilemma is in the obscurity of
truth. For instance, “in some cases, like China, governments hide the
truth; in other cases like deaths in homes or nursing facilities, or from
pre-existing conditions, the numbers are simply not included in the
totals” (Beer and Hariman 2020: 20). is obstruction of truth can only
lead to a predictive framework with a misleading forecast, which weakens
the foundation for any authentic analysis, and comes with a lot of episte-
mological implications. For instance: Can science always tell us the truth?
Can we rely on scientic investigations as the basis for arriving at the
truth always or must we subject them to further interrogation? e ques-
tion of representing the situation accurately or the disruption of data for
analysis makes the issue a grave concern. Fareed Zakaria argues that the
A. K. Jimoh and F. Ikhianosime
177
gure of contraction coming out of some countries like Brazil, Nigeria,
and Indonesia is “articially low” (2020). is indicates that statistics are
tampered with, if that is the case—obstructing the truth, then it would
denitely create an epistemological problem.
Explanation as an epistemological casualty of COVID-19 arises from
using dierent epidemiological models, based on several assumptions, to
explain the situation. If there are just a few valid resources to conrm or
falsify the assumptions, it would ultimately implicate the overall dynam-
ics of predictions and theorisations from such scientic models. Karl
Popper argues in his falsication thesis that what makes science distinct
from pseudo-science is the ability to be falsied. According to him,
A theoretical system is to be considered as scientic only if it makes asser-
tions that may clash with observations; and a system is, in fact, tested by
attempts to produce such clashes, that is to say by attempts to refute it.
us, testability is the same as refutability, and can therefore likewise be
taken as a criterion of demarcation. (1963: 256)
If Popper is correct, a claim is not scientic merely because its observa-
tional account is supported; rather, a claim’s scienticness is predicated
on its falsiability. Although, Imre Lakatos (1970) and omas Kuhn
(1970) repudiate Popper’s claim, the strength of the falsication thesis for
our present consideration is that we do not have sucient resources to
verify or falsify most of the epidemiological claims. An instance is the
claim that COVID-19 is more fatal in regions with colder temperatures.
is cannot be easily falsied because of contradictory shreds of evidence.
Also, there is the fact that the phenomena—all the variables that are ana-
lysed to advance an explanation for a particular epidemiological position
on COVID-19—are increasingly paradoxical. For instance, Neil
Ferguson’s epidemiological model, which is strongly favoured, predicts
that lockdowns can overturn the primary infection peak, whereas John
Ioannidis’ model criticises lockdown measures and makes dire predic-
tions, like economic downturns, from it (see Roy 2020; Stegenga 2020).
e plurality of epidemiological postulations and predictions, which
sometimes have sharp contradictions, makes the issues of COVID-19 a
subject of epistemological concern. e non-linearity of predictions and
9 Epidemiology and an Epistemic Evaluation…
178
models is probably responsible for the various conspiracy theories about
COVID-19, and this has counterproductive consequences.
Predictions function in the epistemological crises because, coming
from the dierent epidemiological models, they constitute modes of
knowing. e interest of epistemology here is about the reliability of such
predictions, if they work, and how they can be used to improve social
learning. Epidemiological predictions about COVID-19 depend largely
on inductive logic and probability, which is a function or product of a
Bayesian model. A Bayesian model is a statistical model which deploys
probability to represent all uncertainties. Bayesian epistemology in par-
ticular, and the epistemology of science in general, deals with questions
of what counts as evidence in favour of a hypothesis and how probability
can be raised to the level of positive evidence for a theory. is is the
dilemma which predictions from COVID-19, like any other scientic
prediction, faces. According to Alex Rosenberg, the problem is “whether
the fact that some data raise the probability of a hypothesis makes the
data positive evidence for it” (2000: 117). It is not always clear how some
claims raise the probability of a hypothesis, thereby constituting a piece
of positive evidence for it. e case that certain facts make a situation
highly probable does not make it a conclusive positive evidence for a
given claim. Yet, science moves from this level of probability to a given.
Furthermore, given that this becomes a basis for theorisation, prediction
of future events resting on such claims as well as being a source of knowl-
edge becomes epistemologically problematic since it does not rest on
warranted grounds. Such a claim is fallible. is is why science too is
regarded as fallible. e problems associated with probabilism as an epis-
temic subject weaken scientic predictions on COVID-19 and this makes
such predictions liable to fallibility.
e concern with control as one of the epistemological crises of
COVID-19 arises from the decits in description, explanation, and pre-
diction. Beer and Hariman regard it as the chaotic medical and public
health response to the pandemic (2020: 22). For them, the poor manage-
ment of the pandemic by the public health systems due to poor health
facilities, insucient testing, poor tracking mechanisms of contact trac-
ing, etc., makes it less predictable and more dicult to forecast the end
of COVID-19. It also reveals the decay caused by the politicisation of the
A. K. Jimoh and F. Ikhianosime
179
health sectors of many countries, Nigeria inclusive. While some countries
were proactive, many others were ill-prepared to handle health emergen-
cies and the geometric rise of new cases. e poor control mechanism
directly aects the quality of information on COVID-19 as well as mak-
ing it less extrapolative.
ese epistemological crises about COVID-19 come with a social and/
or a moral dimension. ey create social dysfunctions like biased media
reportage on COVID-19 cases. is can arise from either an inated
estimation of the cases, perhaps for political reasons, as it is alleged in
Nigeria for instance, or a deated analysis of the cases to diminish fear
and anxiety among the population. is implies what Miranda Fricker
(2007) describes as testimonial decits. Testimonial decit or excess leads
to epistemic injustice, hence, the issue arising thereof is regarded as a
social and/or moral problem. Epistemic injustice is a grave concern for
virtue epistemology. Within the network of epistemic transactions about
COVID-19, there are palpable situations of decits, either: (i) because
there is no wholesome system that can accurately capture the records of
cases, (ii) no comprehensive medium to report the exact situations, or
(iii) because the information is deliberately warped to suit some ends.
COVID-19 remains a complex health situation because of its checkered
mutation patterns, which makes it dicult to ascertain some issues about
it conclusively. is social or moral aspect makes the perspectives of
understanding, interpretation, prediction, and control of epistemological
crises. Against this framework, we proceed to analyse the management of
COVID-19in Nigeria.
Management ofCOVID-19 inNigeria:
Mirroring theCrises inContext
COVID-19 has overwhelmed many countries in the world, including
countries with robust health sectors. Nigeria is not an exemption; her
case is even worse because of her penurious health sector. Upon identi-
cation of the rst recorded case of COVID-19in Nigeria, an Italian citi-
zen, the National Emergency Operations Centre began contact tracing of
9 Epidemiology and an Epistemic Evaluation…
180
suspected cases linked to the Italian. By March 9, 2020, two more index
cases were identied from 27 suspected cases spread across Edo, Lagos,
Ogun, and Kano states and the Federal Capital Territory (NCDC 2020).
Since then, the ocial recorded cases of COVID-19 have risen on a daily
basis all around the country.
e management of COVID-19in Nigeria is believed to draw upon
the success recorded in the control of other epidemics like Polio and
Ebola. However, and unfortunately too, unlike Ebola and Polio, which
have vaccines, there was no known immediate vaccine for COVID-19.
Recently though, Pzer-BioNtech, Moderna’s mRNA-1273, AstraZeneca,
Janssen, and Novavax’s COVID-19 vaccines have been developed.
Regardless of this development, the management and administration of
COVID-19 seems to have overwhelmed many African countries, unlike
other deadly epidemics in the past. Based on a modelling study to exam-
ine the preparedness of African countries and their vulnerability to
COVID-19, Marius Gilbert et al. (2020: 871–877) claim that even
though Nigeria and Ethiopia have the second highest importation risk
from China, they are highly vulnerable to the virus. Egypt, Algeria, and
South Africa are most vulnerable to COVID-19 because they have the
highest importation risk from China. e study further argues that with
early detection and prevention, ight bans, and travel restrictions, future
risks may be altered. Given her population and health facilities, Nigeria
has a moderate capacity to control the outbreak. e claims of this study
notwithstanding, and regardless of some successes recorded in curtailing
the spread of the virus, there are some grave worries in the way Nigeria is
managing COVID-19.
In the wake of the pandemic, the Nigerian Government set up a
Presidential Task Force (PTF) on COVID-19in collaboration with the
Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) under the auspices of the
Ministry of Health. e PTF was to ensure and monitor the adherence
to the precautionary and safety measures to be adopted in control of the
spread of the virus. One of the earliest measures was to strengthen sur-
veillance at ve international airports in Nigeria—Enugu, Lagos, Rivers,
Kano, and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) international airports.
Subsequently, the NCDC reportedly set up a “Coronavirus Preparedness
Group” that involved various stakeholders, including the Port Health
A. K. Jimoh and F. Ikhianosime
181
Services of the Federal Ministry of Health. Screening was heightened at
the point of entry into the country, particularly for those coming from
China, and public health awareness was increased for Nigerians across the
country through the NCDC (see Ihekweazu 2020).
Despite the already existing facilities provided for molecular diagnosis
for all epidemic-prone diseases by the National Reference Laboratory
established to ght against Ebola, Nigeria was faced with the initial chal-
lenge of specic testing equipment and technical expertise on COVID-19.
To combat this initial challenge, the Ministry of Health sought advice
from WHO on how to deal with the new virus. However, not until the
second index case was announced on March 8, 2020, did more concrete
steps in the management of COVID-19 commenced. At this point, there
were already 219 primary and secondary contacts of the two index cases
being monitored (NCDC 2020). Some of the concrete steps taken were
the cancellation and/or postponement of some events that would warrant
public gatherings, like the National Sports Festival initially scheduled for
Benin City from March 18, 2020 and the suspension of the National
Orientation Camp of the National Youth Service Corp already ongoing
across the country. Nigeria subsequently placed a travel ban on 13 coun-
tries with high cases of the virus, including the United States, the United
Kingdom, Germany, and France (see Ogundele 2020). With 226 new
cases and a total of 6401 index cases, the Federal Government had to
close all institutions of learning on March 19, 2020 (see Olaleye 2020).
As the index cases continued to soar, more precautionary measures
were taken to control the spread of the virus. For instance, land and sea
borders of many states were closed, movements were restricted, compul-
sory wearing of nose masks, and compulsory provision of running taps
and hand sanitizers at open places were announced. On March 23, 2020,
the Lagos and Abuja international airports were closed. Given that these
were two epicentres with a total index prole of 7526 cases of the virus,
many saw this move as belated. e Federal Government of Nigeria
(FGN) subsequently ocially banned interstate travels and enforced a
complete lockdown for the states of Lagos, Ogun, and the Federal Capital
Territory, Abuja because of the preponderance of index cases. By the end
of March, almost all states in the country have prohibited public gather-
ings, including churches, mosques, hotels, pubs, and markets, except for
9 Epidemiology and an Epistemic Evaluation…
182
the sale of food and essential commodities. Other measures taken
included the prescription of the observance of social distance based on
WHO’s recommendations. Isolation centres were opened to keep
COVID-19 patients away from others, and contact tracing of suspected
cases was initiated. Basically, the Nigeria Government applied what can
be regarded as a general approach adopted by many Western nations in
dealing with the same crisis. For Franklin Obeng-Odoom, this is “con-
ventional wisdom” (2020: 20), and for Charles Soludo (2020), it is a
“trial-and-error template of Western nations” and “copy and paste
response.”
To ameliorate the eects of the ravaging pandemic and the measures
taken to control its symmetrical spread in Nigeria, both the private and
public sectors, individuals and corporate institutions made several inter-
ventions in terms of magnanimous contributions. For example, under
the auspices of the Coalition against COVID-19, private sector leaders in
Nigeria donated a whooping sum of 21. 5 billion Naira, while the Central
Bank of Nigeria (CBN) announced a one trillion Naira stimulus package.
Also, the FGN asked the National Assembly to approve a 500 billion
Naira intervention fund, and also withdrew $150 million from the
Sovereign National Fund and indicated it would borrow $6.9 billion; all
purportedly to manage the eects of COVID-19 (see Fasan 2020). ese
huge sums of donation generated and appropriated were used to acquire
palliatives for distribution as relief materials for the populace.
Regardless of what appears to be a robust management plan by the
Nigerian Government in ghting the COVID-19 pandemic, there are
palpable lapses and gaps in the enforcement of the plan and possible
recovery options. is is even made worse with the second wave of the
virus, and its mutations. ese have consequently aected compliance
with some of the prescribed health norms. On the one hand, there is a
situation of distrust by Nigerians in the Government’s eorts to ght the
pandemic. On the other hand, the people are sceptical about the entire
records and reports on COVID-19in Nigeria, reasoning that it has been
politicised. It is interesting to note that distrust and scepticism are epis-
temic vices that seem to truncate the management of COVID-19in the
country.
A. K. Jimoh and F. Ikhianosime
183
Epistemic Evaluation ofCOVID-19 inNigeria
COVID-19 has generated an epistemic community for conversation in
Nigeria, between the government and the governed both with agential
powers. While the government has the capacity for enforcing control, the
people serve as the epistemic interlocutors. e information transfer
between the government and the governed, which we describe as epis-
temic transaction here is a conversational situation involving knowledge
transfer. It entails the transmission of testimonial knowledge by the gov-
ernment as the speaker to the governed as the hearers. According to John
Greco, knowledge transmission as we have in epistemic transactions
involves a cooperation between the speaker and hearer—a joint agency—
that requires trust (2019: 93). And Shannon Brick argues that “In most
testimonial transactions between adults, the hearer’s obligation is to
accord the speaker a level of credibility that matches the evidence that
what she is saying is true” (2020: 490). Where the hearer cannot accord
the speaker the required level of credibility because the available evidence
does not match the speaker’s claim, the hearer is not obliged to believe
the speaker. erefore, the hearer is justied not to believe the speaker.
e absence of the speaker’s credibility and/or a disparity between the
speaker’s testimony and the available evidence warrants the lack of belief
in the hearer in the testimony of the speaker. If it is the case that the
speaker deliberately exaggerates or distorts her information, and there-
fore, misinforms the hearer, then the speaker (in this case the Nigerian
government) would be epistemically culpable in her information purvey-
ance. Epistemic culpability implies that the agent is guilty of negligence,
misrepresentation and distortion of facts. According to Fricker, there are
two kinds of dysfunctions in epistemic transactions: (i) credibility excess
and/or (ii) credibility decit (2007: 17). Credibility excess results when a
speaker receives more credibility than is otherwise due to her, and credi-
bility decit occurs when a speaker receives less credibility than is other-
wise due to her. In the management of COVID-19 in Nigeria, the
credibility economy suers decit occasioned by the mismanagement of
the process, and the culpable dysfunctions in the administration of the
process.
9 Epidemiology and an Epistemic Evaluation…
184
e mismanagement is due to the many irreconcilable paradoxes with
COVID-19in Nigeria. For instance, there is no apparent corresponding
eects of the use of the billions of Naira raised, even in the health sectors.
In allusion to this, Peter Adeyemi (2020) avers that,
e standards obtainable in, and the number of isolation-centres nation-
wide are controversial. In Nigeria, those in isolation centres are not on
ventilators, but they have the energy to walk around and protest a lack of
care and are even able to escape from treatment centres. e palliatives
provided at all levels of government are parlous and ridiculous.
Some have even argued that while COVID-19 is a killer disease in Europe
and America, it is a business disease that has been highly politicised in
Nigeria. Some individuals and groups are believed to be feeding fat on
the donations, while some of the index cases appear merely nominal.
Some records show that in some isolation centres in Nigeria, rather than
seeing sick people, it looks like an entertainment centre and some even
protest that they are not properly taken care of. In almost a year (February
27, 2020 to February 23, 2021) of COVID-19 rage in Nigeria, we have
about 1862 deaths from 152,616 total conrmed cases. is compounds
the credibility decit given the poor hygienic context, poor social dis-
tancing culture, poor consulting clinics, poor use of nose masks, which
sometimes has become dust-carriers and chin masks rather than a virus-
protective shield, and etc. is scenario makes many suspicious of the
authenticity of the daily ocial statistics provided by NCDC.
Another paradoxical situation derives from shutting religious worship
centres to avoid overcrowding while markets are allowed to function
without proper observance of the health prescriptions. While schools
were shut, Sadiya Umar-Farouq, the Minister of Humanitarian Aairs,
Disaster Management and Social Development, announced the continu-
ation of the feeding of school children under the Nigeria Home Grown
School Feeding Programme (NHGSFP). ere were also reports of huge
sums of money spent on palliatives which only very few Nigerians
A. K. Jimoh and F. Ikhianosime
185
benetted from.1 It became public knowledge during the #EndSARS
nationwide protests that corrupt politicians and government ocials
hoarded these palliatives for selsh and future personal gains. is further
strengthens the allegation of the politicisation of the pandemic. In the
face of the ght against COVID-19, the Nigerian Association of Resident
Doctors complained about poor working conditions and lack of provi-
sion of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE). ey even threatened
industrial action if their working conditions do not improve (Bakam 2020).
e case of Mrs. Suzan Idoko-Okpe, a Nigerian-British citizen in
Benue State, is a specimen case of the aws and mismanagement of
COVID-19in Nigeria. Having returned from London and fatigued from
the trip, she decided to see a doctor on March 22, 2020, two days after
her journey. She was later declared a COVID-19 case and quarantined.
She raised an alarm that the entire process has been stage-managed, and
there was misplacement of information. ereafter, she sued the
FGN.She cried out to the public in a recording that went viral:
is is Susan Idoko Okpe, nee Lawani. I am pleading with everybody to
please tell the Nigerian government to let me go. is is my 16th day of
incarceration. What have I done? What have I done? Benue State lied to
me that I have COVID-19. I just got the result yesterday after 15 days and
the result is a stage play with dierent dates, birthdays, dierent recordings
which they know, and trying to put right. (see Etakibuebu 2020)
ere are many other such cases of discrepancies among the identied
index cases which gives credibility to Dr. Saka Haruna, the Kogi State
commissioner for health’s complaint that they are under pressure to
announce false COVID-19 cases (Odogun 2020).
e mismanagement of information about the coronavirus in Nigeria
has grave consequences and implications for the control of its spread in
the country. Some of these consequences include a sharp economic
downturn, which would imply massive retrenchment of workers in many
establishments; the rise in crime—for example, the emergence of “the
1 It was very interesting to discover, during the looting of warehouses containing palliatives that
followed the hijacked #EndSars notionwide protests, that it may be true that such reported huge
amounts were actually spent on palliatives.
9 Epidemiology and an Epistemic Evaluation…
186
one million boys,” who terrorised many communities in Lagos during the
lockdown; etc. All these make the management of COVID-19in Nigeria
epistemically culpable. Also, the poor network of epistemic transaction
oftentimes results to misinformation, and provides basis for conspiracy
theories. Although the NCDC tries to disseminate information to the
public through text messages and periodic information jingles on radios
and televisions, these have proven to be grossly inecient, given the wide
pool of information, misinformation, and even disinformation on
COVID-19, especially those available on social media.
e battle against COVID-19 has created a global infodemic—over-
bearance of information with deliberate attempts to misinform the pub-
lic in order to undermine public health. is makes trustworthy sources
of information and reliable guidance dicult (WHO 2020, also see Ball
and Maxmen 2020). Misinformation and conspiracy theories have stied
some progressive and scientic eorts in the proper management of
COVID-19 in Nigeria. Since the dawn of the pandemic, several
unfounded interpretations about the cause, spread, and treatment of the
disease have surfaced—from pseudo-scientic elucidations to apocalyptic
explanations. Arguably, some of the reasons misinformation have stied
the management of COVID-19in Nigeria include low literacy level in
Nigeria, the politicisation of information dissemination, absence of a
unied epidemiological model, fear and anxiety factors, and religious
fanaticism. Some analysts have unscientically labelled COVID-19 as a
spiritual problem that can be solved or cured by fasting and praying,
while some have sought spiritual assistance from marabouts, spiritual
healers, diviners, and other ritual processes.
Concerning the conspiracy theories, Philip Ball and Amy Maxmen
noted that “on March 19, 2020, a website www.Biohackinfo.com falsely
claimed that Bill Gates planned to use a coronavirus vaccine as a ploy to
monitor people through an injected microchip or quantum-dot spy soft-
ware.” Again, on April 8, 2020, Pastor Chris Oyakhilome linked the
emergence of 5G technology to the spread of the virus in a YouTube
sermon. ese and similar conspiracy theories have received several back-
lashes and refutations. ey have, however, distorted the belief system
concerning COVID-19in Nigeria, causing a disconnection between sci-
entic consensus and analytic thinking in curbing the virus. A distorted
A. K. Jimoh and F. Ikhianosime
187
belief-system would weaken analytic thinking regarding how to best con-
trol the virus because it breeds epistemic vices like distrust, gullibility,
prejudice, close-mindedness, and insouciance. ese challenge genuine
knowledge and truth about COVID-19 at the least, and make its man-
agement more complicated at the most.
Given a variety of factors, for instance: (i) the capacity of the corona-
virus to mutate, (ii) the limitedness of the knowledge of the scientic
community about COVID-19, and (iii) the manipulation of informa-
tion about the pandemic by the political class, it is tricky to refer to “truth
about COVID-19.” Truth as an epistemic concept is immutable; thus, it
is epistemically challenging to apply such a concept that is immutable to
a mutating virus because what is known about the virus today may turn
out not to be the case in a future date. is would further imply (ii)
above, namely that the scientic community’s knowledge of the virus at
any given point in time may not be all that needs to be known at that
given point in time since a mutated variant of the virus may present a yet
to be known information about the virus. is scenario is further compli-
cated by the tendency of the political class to manipulate the uncertain-
ties about the pandemic posed by (i) and (ii) above. erefore, when we
refer to “truth about COVID-19” we mean what is already, and correctly
known, irrespective of what is yet to be known, about COVID-19. Truth
here is epistemic success resulting from a reliable process and coheres
with existing facts.
Concerning misinformation and conspiracy theories which are very
infectious and inuential particularly in the adoption of curative options
for COVID-19in Nigeria, several probable curative remedies have been
unscientically explored. ese range from the use of chloroquine to dif-
ferent herbal combinations, some of which have led to medical complica-
tions among the users. e conict between dierent epidemiological
analysis and projections, and the absence of any prescribed pharmaco-
logical option(s) in Nigeria exacerbates the COVID-19 quandary. Even
though some herbal practitioners have advanced dierent herbal cures, of
which Cugzin by the Benedictine Monks in Ewu, Edo State is foremost,
none has received pharmacological validation or government support.
Not even the herbal option from Madagascar, which is alleged to have
helped the country combat COVID-19, has received formal validation.
9 Epidemiology and an Epistemic Evaluation…
188
e lack of validation and support for local medications is part of the
epistemological crisis that challenges the management of COVID-19in
Nigeria. It is a reection of an ideological structure of epistemic inferiori-
sation; an epistemic dysfunction in which an agent considers what she
believes or knows as inferior to other beliefs and claims by other agents.
Epistemic inferiorisation is also a part of epistemic transaction in the
sense that it involves how the hearer appropriates credibility to a speaker’s
testimony. In a situation where an agent S considers herself inferior to
another agent X, S has the tendency of attributing excess credibility to X
whom S considers as an epistemic superior. is is the scenario that has
played out so far, such that the herbal options from Africa, Nigeria inclu-
sive, are largely considered unacceptable because they lack Western vali-
dation, and not necessarily because they failed pharmacological tests.
is is an epistemic inferiorisation that is itself, an extension of Western
superiority complex and imperialism. Obeng-Odoom (2019) and Helen
Lauer (2006) have plausibly explicated this as a form of intellectual mar-
ginalisation in which Africa, African scientists, and African systems are
considered backward; victims of primitive traditions and superstitions.
Consequently, “Africa is written out of serious rethinking, as others arro-
gate unto themselves the power to think for Africa” (Obeng-Odoom
2020: 9).
In the light of the above, we agree with Björn Freter that Africa needs
a desuperiorisation of thought (2020: 121). Africa hegemonically depends
too much on Western models and thought, which sadly blinds her from
her rich heritage and values. In the case of COVID-19, Nigeria’s approach
is wholesale a Western approach to the problem—the lockdowns, travel
restrictions, use of Western medications, social distancing, etc. While we
do not disagree with the positivity of some of these prescriptions, how-
ever, we rmly maintain, as Soludo (2020) argues, that some of them are
practically unsuitable for Africa. In combating COVID-19, Nigeria is
waiting entirely on Western-approved solutions rather than explore her
veritable trado-medical options, which may be complemented with
Western solutions. is is a typical case of epistemic inferiorisation,
which has not allowed our management options to thrive.
A. K. Jimoh and F. Ikhianosime
189
A Management Paradigm forCOVID-19
inNigeria
Even though the mutating nature of the coronavirus makes it dicult to
be understood, the greed of Nigerian political elites coupled with epis-
temic inferiorisation shows that our leadership is epistemically vicious
rather than virtuous. e government’s indelity with information trans-
fer has resulted in the poor management of COVID-19in Nigeria. To
this end, we propose a management approach that is based on the unity
of our eorts which is only possible if there is transparency and authen-
ticity of information transfer and a commitment to the truth about the
actual situation of the pandemic in Nigeria. Our proposal derives its
theoretical strength from some aspects of the monadology of Gottfried
Leibniz which sees substance as unity.
According to Leibniz, monads are unique, with each having its own
spiritual individuality. ey are, however, united in such a way that no
external cause, except an internal principle, can inuence their inner
being (Leibniz 2003: n. 11). is implies that the development and actu-
alisation of monads is caused by some internal mechanism. Monads are,
in no way, isolated entities; they can interact with other monads, but they
do not exert principal or existential inuence on each other’s being. For
Leibniz, reality entirely consists of monads.
One aspect of Leibniz’s monadology that interests us is the idea of self-
actualisation; the notion that monads develop from within. If the ght
against COVID-19 is to be won in Nigeria, the leadership should regard
Nigeria as a compound monad, in which case, we must explore internal
mechanism to ght COVID-19 from within. Eorts to manage and con-
trol the spread of the virus should be advanced from internal analysis and
available local options, while at the same time, we take note of global best
practices and apply them where and when applicable. By this we mean
that the measures we adopt to check the spread of the coronavirus must
take cognizance of the particularities of the Nigerian society, we should
not just copy measures adopted elsewhere, which may not be applicable
here. When we apply measures that are not indigenous to us, they should
be with due regard to tackle the problem from within than from without.
9 Epidemiology and an Epistemic Evaluation…
190
Epidemiological models must duly recognise and respect the local envi-
ronment and population, and recommendations, proposals and predic-
tions ensuing thereof must not be alien to us. erefore, the rst
management option concerning COVID-19 that Leibnizian monadol-
ogy oers us is the need to study the crisis internally—explore internally
available options, pharmacological possibilities, and taking precautionary
measures that comply with our peculiar setting.
We opine that some of the precautionary measures in the current man-
agement of COVID-19in Nigeria are not immediately realisable. For
instance, the eects of lockdown measures would have been ameliorated
by exploring virtual possibilities. In Nigeria, the use of Information and
Communication Technology (ICT), particularly in the education sector,
is relatively very low; teaching-learning processes are still mostly tradi-
tional. Many tertiary institutions (not to talk about secondary and pri-
mary) lack standard and functional e-library and online Learning
Management System (LMS). Yet, it was the immediate option (based on
what was obtaining in many more developed nations), recommended by
the Ministry of Education to all schools that the closure of schools during
the lockdown would not signicantly disrupt academic activities. Such
an option is bound to fail when learners are not Internet-savvy or
compliant.
Adopting an internal approach option would encourage the explora-
tion of local medications without necessarily jettisoning global medical
and health options since both would complement each other for the
good of the populace. If we do not explore local herbs in the cure of
COVID-19, we would be stalling the possible development of our local
remedies, some of which have proven helpful with some sickness and past
epidemics. e philosophy of “herd immunity”—when more people
have become immune to a particular disease, provides a philosophical
backing here. For instance, even though malaria is still prevalent in Africa
and Nigeria, it is not so much of a killer disease anymore because more
people have developed herd immunity to it. Herd immunity occurs
when, over some time, people use a particular common treatment proce-
dure or adopt domestic forms of treatment that has helped to boost their
immunity. Given our proposed paradigm option, exploring herbal alter-
natives that we are used to would be a plausible way to go. If vigorously
A. K. Jimoh and F. Ikhianosime
191
and clinically pursued, it can lead to a locally developed remedy that
would boost our national integrity, which would in turn weaken the
superiorisation idea from the West. is calls for an epidemiological
model that can correctly project the situation in Nigeria, and be a scien-
tic basis for prediction and projections.
We can again draw on Leibniz’s monadology to tackle the problem of
testimonial decit or excess in the epistemic transactions towards a better
management of COVID-19 in Nigeria. According to Leibniz, while
some monads can clearly reect the world, others do not. A proper act of
perception (reection) of the world consists in consciousness, which only
a rational soul or mind is capable of. Leibniz puts it thus: “I think it right
that the general name of Monads or Entelechies should suce for simple
substances which have perception only, and that the name Souls should be
given only to those in which perception is more distinct, and is more
accompanied by memory” (2003: n.19). Apart from consciousness, the
rational soul as a created monad has the ability to know necessary and
eternal truth. erefore, Leibniz argues that all our reasoning should be
grounded on two principles: (i) the principle of contradiction and (ii) the
principle of sucient reasoning. By (i), we judge what is false by what
involves contradiction and what is true by what is opposed to contradic-
tion, and by (ii), “we hold that there can be no fact real or existing, no
statement true, unless there be a sucient reason” (Leibniz 2003:
nos. 31–32).
Based on Leibniz’s analysis, epistemic claims should be interrogated
using the principles of contradiction and sucient reasoning. Prior to
putting out any information, they should be diligently analysed against
the backdrop of these principles. Conspiracy theories thrive when they
are not properly interrogated, and this is the case with the cacophony of
paradoxical information on COVID-19in Nigeria. Many people either
doubt the information they receive, or approach them with some appre-
hension. e absence of a proper epistemic lter of information on
COVID-19in Nigeria is obscuring the truth about the pandemic. In his
analysis of perception, Leibniz describes two kinds of truth: (i) necessary
and (ii) contingent truths. Necessary truths are discovered through analy-
sis and resolved into simpler ideas and truths. Contingent truths are
based on facts (Leibniz 2003: n. 33). If information on COVID-19 go
9 Epidemiology and an Epistemic Evaluation…
192
through the lter of analysis and they are based on facts, they would be
both belief-worthy and truth-worthy. is would in turn increase com-
pliance with precautionary health directives on COVID-19. Sincerity is
an epistemic virtue that can increase trust and diminish insouciance, and
other epistemic vices. erefore, if the Nigerian government is sincere
and transparent, and stop politicising the information transfer regarding
the virus, it would improve the management of its spread. Also, a proper
analysis of issues about the virus would diminish the ember of epistemic
incongruity that beclouds it as both an epistemological and epidemio-
logical crisis. We therefore, insist that until we subject epistemic transac-
tions on COVID-19 to atomic analysis and facts, we would continue to
face issues of testimonial excess or decit in the epistemic economy and
obstructions with its proper management in Nigeria.
Furthermore, given that monads are simple or atomic substances and
atoms are the smallest indivisible units of a substance, if we atomise the
management process of COVID-19, we can detect the missing links and
gaps in the epistemic transactions. For instance, rather than provide index
cases according to binary value, they should be arrived at based on proper
atomic analysis. e point here is that we should decentralise the man-
agement system and allow particular tracing and analysis. is would
make for easy break down and identication of details and facts, and
eliminate the allegations of ghost cases. It will also ensure transparency in
the entire management process.
Leibniz’s monadology provides us the basis to argue for an inward look
in dealing with the coronavirus pandemic in Nigeria. is does not imply
that we discard global best practices; not in today’s global world of critical
interdependence, rather, it is an insistence on domestication. It is a pro-
posal that we work with a management paradigm within the context of
the Nigerian experience, which would include exploring local pharmaco-
logical options, ensuring proper epistemic transactions based on analysis
and facts. If this is done, it has the possibility of dispelling the present
apathy and improve compliance with safety measures.
A. K. Jimoh and F. Ikhianosime
193
Conclusion
In this chapter, we examined how COVID-19 is being managed in
Nigeria. First, we situated it within the global crisis of a pandemic and
noted that it has posed both an epidemiological and an epistemological
crisis. As an epistemological crisis, the authenticity and truth about what
we know concerning the virus and its spread in Nigeria is beclouded, and
therefore, impedes its proper and eective management. Given the de-
cits in the epistemic transactions about the virus in Nigeria, we argue that
there is need for transparency and commitment to truth; that the govern-
ment should stop politicising the known facts about the actual situation
of the pandemic. is would generate the required trust in the people
who would in turn unite in collaboration with the government in the
eorts to stem the tide of the virus. If, however, the government contin-
ues to allow some of our leaders make a business out of it, the present
apathy on the part of the people would remain since the people would
continue to lack trust in the government’s sincerity of purpose. Upon our
analysis and examination of the situation as it obtains presently in Nigeria,
we submit that for the eective management of the COVID-19 pan-
demic in Nigeria, commitment to truth on the part of the government,
unity of eorts and transparency in the epistemic transactions about the
pandemic is imperative.
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10
Borders, Boundaries, andIdentities:
Navigating theBarriers toSolidarity
andCohesion inaPandemic
AdeoluOluwaseyiOyekan
andWasiuAbiodunBalogun
Introduction andBackground
e COVID-19 pandemic represents fundamental challenges to public
health, human security, and economies across the globe. COVID-19 is
also reconguring social fabrics in societies and resetting social relations
among people with accelerated amplication of existing sociocultural
fault lines. Across borders and boundaries, and within national entities,
social identities and class relations are forged in dierent forms as
COVID-19 ravages. Across borders, COVID-19 is reshaping solidaristic
behaviors as states evolve nationalistic measures in the ght against what
A. O. Oyekan (*)
Identities and Social Cohesion in Africa (ISCIA), Nelson Mandela University,
Port Elizabeth, South Africa
W. A. Balogun
Department of History and International Studies, Lagos State University,
Ojo, Lagos, Nigeria
e-mail: wasiu.balogun@lasu.edu.ng
© e Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023
F. Egbokhare, A. Afolayan (eds.), Global Health, Humanity and the COVID-19
Pandemic, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17429-2_10
198
is clearly a social scourge. While COVID-19 may have heightened social
disconnectedness among geographical entities, communities, and people,
it has yet, undoubtedly, created the need for the global community to
foster a common agenda and act in solidarity against the pandemic. e
paradoxical reality of the COVID-19 pandemic, where the world is
expected to act “together-apart” in combating a health emergency, high-
lights the uniqueness of the problem at hand and the urgent need for a
shared agenda against it.
From the start of COVID-19, political leaders across the globe have
intensied the call for solidarity; propagating the message that “we are in
this together,” in the ght against the pandemic. Such calls have echoed
the need for behavioral change, sacrices, and collective being. Hence, as
part of a globally coordinated multipronged approach to combating
COVID-19, several states have adopted extreme social measures, such as
lockdown, social distancing, and isolation, which have signicantly rein-
forced segregation and identity formations in some states and among a
good number of people, and group solidarity in several others.
Whereas the idea of “shared threat” oers a compelling justication for
building solidarity, diering risk management capacities and deep-rooted
socioeconomic cleavages undermine the quest for building and sustain-
ing such solidarity particularly in a pandemic. is should however not
deny the centrality of solidarity in combating the ravaging scourge given
its many social challenges and dynamics. erefore, the challenge for
global and national leaderships across dierent borders and boundaries is
forging a sense of “us” rather than “I’s” in the ght against a pandemic
whose antidote thus far has been social segregation and national isola-
tion. Social solidarity may not oer a magic bullet, but the critical role it
plays in rolling back a pandemic of social division cannot be overempha-
sized; hence, it remains a key component of public campaign strategy
against the coronavirus.
e focus of this chapter is to explore the dierent dimensions of the
need for solidarity in pandemic management, drawing from diverse expe-
riences around the coronavirus. ese dimensions include those between
citizens in nation-states to one another, the people and the government,
as well as governments and peoples across nation-states. Divided into ve
main parts, we explain briey in the rst the emergence of COVID-19,
A. O. Oyekan and W. A. Balogun
199
while in the second and third parts, we examine the strains on solidarity
during the pandemic at both the local and global levels. e fourth part
is an explication of the idea of solidarity, while in the last, we explore how
the notion of solidarity within closed polities and transnational solidarity
at the global level can help in mitigating some of the challenges that have
either been created or aggravated by the pandemic.
Coronavirus: Emergence andImpact
Pneumonia-like symptoms in a cluster of patients on December 8, 2019,
in Hubei Province of Wuhan City, China, had woken up the world to the
reality of a pandemic that would reshape social settings and social forma-
tions and reinforce age-old identity crises while creating a new sociopo-
litical order of social distancing and national isolationism. Society’s ready
bulwarks against health emergencies, solidarity, and cohesion come under
signicant pressure as national boundaries and borders are closed, social
identity fostered, and social distancing normalized. Wuhan had gifted the
world a social pandemic.
Coronavirus (Covs) belongs to the virus family of Coronaviridae pleo-
morphic RNA virus. At present, though eorts are being intensied by
global pharmaceutical giants and research institutes to develop coronavi-
rus vaccines, information gap and age-long sociocultural biases, miscon-
ceptions, and misinformation about possible adverse side eects of
available vaccines constitute a clog in the wheel of progress of COVID-19
vaccination. Twelve months from when the rst coronavirus fatality was
reported on January 9, 2020, the emergent fatalities evidenced across the
world has created a high-risk health emergency in COVID-19. On
January 7, 2020, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention
recorded the rst case of the coronavirus, and on March 11, the World
Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 as a pandemic. As we
write this chapter, in slightly over one year, global deaths on account of
the virus have gone past the two-million mark (Johns Hopkins
University, 2021).
ough a health crisis, COVID-19 has created a “2020 emergency” in
all spheres of human endeavors, and for several years to come, the global
10 Borders, Boundaries, and Identities: Navigating the Barriers…
200
community will continually seek measures to deal with its aftermaths.
Coronavirus has visited on the global population a devastation of unpar-
alleled magnitude. Global COVID-19 deaths jumped to 2,501,626, with
over 112.7 million cases globally as of 17:24 GMT on ursday, February
25, 2021 (Johns Hopkins University, 2021). But that number has a social
component that oers insights into the social dynamics of the pandemic.
Millions of businesses across the globe are confronted with existential
threat. e impact of the pandemic on jobs and livelihoods is already
being felt especially in ird World countries of Africa, Asia, and Latin
America. e most aected belong in the informal economies where
there is an obvious lack of social security safeguards against emergencies.
According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), lost labor
income will heighten relative poverty for informal workers and their
dependents to 56% points in lower- and low-income countries, com-
pared to 52% points in high-income countries (ILO 2020). With many
struggling to earn a living during lockdowns, the challenge of survival
becomes dire, and there is heightened propensity for criminality. It is
apparent that the dierent dimensions of the impact of coronavirus speak
to the social elements of the pandemic. Job losses, criminality, and lack of
access to capital and health needs manifest heightened social stratication
within societies and across borders. And for societies where extreme
socioeconomic divisions are already entrenched, such cleavages will fur-
ther be accentuated by the pandemic. In the United States, where the
consequences of the pandemic have been uneven, reecting age-long
socioeconomic cleavages in American societies, millions of people have
lost their jobs, with black and Hispanic communities recording higher
unemployment rates compared with white. Yet, the risk of contracting
COVID-19 and dying of the virus is higher among minorities and per-
sons of color (Wadhera, etal., 2020). By the end of the rst quarter in
2020, among the 36 million jobs lost, households of less than $40,000
annual income had recorded about 40% share of pandemic-induced job
losses, with unemployment rates among white standing at 14.2% com-
pared to 16.7% among black and 18.9% among Latinx (Spievack, etal.
2020). e precarious socioeconomic conditions of the Almajiris in
northern Nigeria would be accentuated by the pandemic, widening
A. O. Oyekan and W. A. Balogun
201
further social stratication gaps and entrenching endemic poverty among
a people perpetually conned to the social pyramid base in Nigeria.
Coronavirus andtheManifestation
ofDifferences within States
With the exception of a few countries—North Korea, Turkmenistan,
Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Vanuatu, Tonga, Palau, Marshall
Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, and Kiribati—with no reported cases,
COVID-19, in terms of reach, spread, and rapidity, is the rst truly
“global” pandemic (Aljazeera, 2020). As the pandemic unfolds, countries
adopted measures in line with WHO guidelines, with the global multi-
lateral health agency leading the ght against the virus. However, there
existed marked dierences inlocal responses to the pandemic as seen in
the cases of the United States, United Kingdom, and Nigeria. As it turned
out, such dierences were shaped by national leadership, risk and emer-
gency management capacity, level of national awareness, and economic
and technological development, among others.
e United States’ response to the pandemic oers an interesting case
in leadership capacity and policy initiation in times of crisis. e rst case
of COVID-19 was reported in Washington on January 20, but a new
report of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has
found that there were COVID-19 infections in the United States as far
back as December 2019 (Basavaraju, etal., 2020). While the report reig-
nites controversies surrounding the origin of the virus, it highlights a
fundamental challenge of national awareness in America’s response to the
pandemic.
e United States’ approach demonstrates a clear lack of an overall
national response and a failure of leadership and policy. United States’
federalist and constitutional structure places the responsibility for public
health on the shoulders of the states, and cities and counties could act in
that regard with delegated authority. In eect, in ordinary times, states
could exercise sweeping powers to protect their citizens’ health, with due
consideration for individual rights as contained in the constitution.
10 Borders, Boundaries, and Identities: Navigating the Barriers…
202
Expectedly, the federal government’s public health authority is limited to
ensuring that measures are put in place to prevent interstate or interna-
tional spread of diseases. However, in emergency and extraordinary times,
the two tiers of government have the legal authority to activate emer-
gency powers to guarantee public health and safety and protection of
human life (Altman, 2020). As it turned out, after his initial self-
description as a wartime president, President Donald Trump announced
to the American people that the federal government would only provide
the necessary “backup” to states which are expected to have primary
responsibility in containing the pandemic. ough in line with conserva-
tive principle of devolution of powers in relations to public health emer-
gencies, the president’s decentralized and fragmented approach resulted
in extreme variation in the national response to coronavirus (Rebecca,
etal., 2020). e lack of an overall national response highlights a major
weakness in the country’s federalist arrangement regarding public health
management structure, which shared public health governance powers
among the three tiers of government.
e structural weakness in the US public health governance frame-
work is reinforced by President Trump’s rhetorical buckshot on coronavi-
rus. After several weeks of denial of the existentiality of the virus, President
Trump conceded to the reality of the pandemic by describing it as a
“Chinese virus,” an obvious reference to the origin of the virus but a
social proling strategy using the pandemic to prejudice China. For most
part going forward, the national leadership in the United States was more
preoccupied with projecting the image of a nation in charge of the health
crisis by justifying America’s responses against those of China than coor-
dinating national response measures. It is therefore not surprising that
the United States, as of ursday, February 25, 2021 (1724 GMT), had
recorded 28,348,259 cases and 506,500 deaths, 20% of global death toll,
the highest by any country (Johns Hopkins University, 2021).
e US COVID-19 experience is as much a case of historic neglect
and underfunding of state and local public health systems as it is that of
social stratication and national cohesion impact. is is highlighted by
disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on racial and ethnic minorities in
the United States. Systemic social and economic challenges to health cre-
ate institutionalized health inequalities among racial minorities and
A. O. Oyekan and W. A. Balogun
203
further foster structural racism. In the United States, prudential evidence
suggest that African Americans have a higher rate of COVID-19 infec-
tions and higher death rates from the disease than whites (Wadhera,
etal., 2020; Keating, etal., 2020). is is also the case with Hispanics
and Latinos across US cities and counties (Keating, etal., 2020). lCO-
VID- 19 pandemic, beyond being a health problem, is a fundamental
social crisis amplied by inherent challenges of social justice. So, at the
heart of inequalities in access to healthcare in the United States are genu-
ine concerns about social justice, and without addressing fundamental
social justice challenges in education, housing, healthcare, and adminis-
tration of criminal justice-issues that foster pervasive, pronounced, and
persistent racial discrimination, health disparities highlighted by US
COVID-19 experience will continue to exist. Navigating the challenges
of the pandemic would require social justice, social inclusion, national
solidarity, and cohesion as much as science-based policy interventions
and programs.
Unlike the United States, the United Kingdom maintains a centrally
planned and coordinated national response to COVID-19. At the start of
the pandemic, the United Kingdom held a cautious approach to contain-
ing the virus by holding back drastic changes and measures which would
have shut down the economy and put families in lockdown. e United
Kingdom had started with a “wait and see” approach, which allowed for
a trend analysis of the pandemic, but the government soon realized the
futility of indierence and national lethargy. From a clear lack of strategic
plan and publicly stated goal for combating the virus, the government
quickly fraternized with the herd immunity option by ensuring a high
enough number of infections thereby reducing non-immune potential
hosts for the virus. However, from February 21, when the rst case of
coronavirus was reported in a 75-year-old woman in Nottinghamshire,
the United Kingdom witnessed a steady rise in COVID-19 cases, a devel-
opment which forced the government to put the country on a 3-month
lockdown with aggressive “hfs”—hand, face, space—public enlighten-
ment campaigns (Solomon, 2020). A second lockdown was announced
on November 5 as a response to the second wave of the pandemic which
peaked at the start of August 2020. e rst wave had ravaged the United
10 Borders, Boundaries, and Identities: Navigating the Barriers…
204
Kingdom between March and April, characterized by a high infection
rate, followed by a steep and a steady decline in new cases.
And like the United States, the UK coronavirus experience is a true test
of national leadership in times of health emergency. ough their
approaches dier, very little separates the two countries especially on pre-
paredness, awareness, and national leadership needed in a time of global
emergency. e social dimensions of the pandemic oer signicant simi-
larities especially on the issue of social justice and health disparities. In
the United Kingdom, people of color, especially blacks and South Asians,
have a higher risk of COVID-19 death compared with whites (BBC
News, 2021). is gap may have closed during the second wave of the
pandemic especially with blacks, and Bangladeshi and Pakistani people
still experience three times the risk (ibid). Minority populations also have
higher number of multigenerational households, predisposing older indi-
viduals and aged parents living with grandchildren to increased risks of
COVID-19 infection.
Nigeria oers an exciting case study not so much for her status as a
ird World but for her unique socioeconomic attributes which reected
in the country’s COVID-19 strategy. COVID-19 highlights deep-rooted
socioeconomic and security challenges bedeviling Nigeria. e rst case
of COVID-19in Nigeria was reported on February 27, 2020, and on
March 29, the president gave his rst COVID-19 address that also rolled
out strategies to combat the virus. Like the United Kingdom, Nigeria’s
approach, initially, was cautious and lethargic, but the Federal govern-
ment and Lagos state, the epicenter of the pandemic, soon swung into
action as the pandemic ravages. e government adopted a cocktail of
health, economic, security, and social measures in combating the virus.
For several months, starting from March 2020, the Federal government
of Nigeria introduced extreme measures; borders were shut, lockdowns
imposed, and interstate travels suspended (Amzat, etal., 2020). ese
measures were reinforced by social measures and guidelines, such as social
distancing, compulsory mask wearing, and handwashing. A Presidential
Task Force (PTF) on COVID-19 was set up to provide leadership on
policy initiatives and coordinate activities of government agencies
involved in the ght against the virus. While the Nigerian Centre for
Disease Control (NCDC) was charged with developing capacity for
A. O. Oyekan and W. A. Balogun
205
testing, developing public health protocols and guidelines, and facilitat-
ing training, the Ministry of Humanitarian Aairs, Disaster Management
and Social Development was saddled with the task of addressing socio-
economic challenges of the pandemic across the country through pallia-
tive measures (Ibid).
Nigeria’s institutional approach to combating the virus is not markedly
dierent from that of the United States. For instance, Nigeria’s PTF has
functional similarities with the US Task Force on COVID-19 chaired by
Vice President Mike Pence. ere are also similarities in terms of proto-
cols, guidelines, and policy measures against the virus. Beyond the
approaches, the social ramications of coronavirus across the three coun-
tries profoundly inuence existing socioeconomic fault lines and cleav-
ages and are sustained by social justice challenges of access to healthcare,
job opportunities, housing, and education. In the case of Nigeria,
COVID-19, though a leveler in so many ways, also reinforces existing
prejudices and social cohesion challenges in the country. While this may
be true for both the United Kingdom and the United States, the dier-
ence lies in the degree of impact. In a country where access to basic health
is a function of social status and economic class, Nigeria’s COVID-19
experience vividly shows that there is a strong link between income and
health, a development suggestive of a linear relationship between policies
that promote economic equity and justice and health outcomes.
The COVID-19 Pandemic andtheStrains
onGlobal Solidarity
Prior to the pandemic, global politics had been at its most divisive. e
repudiation of multilateralism by the United States in addressing issues
related to climate change, the Iran nuclear deal, and unilateral withdrawal
from the Syrian war, made complex by the involvement of ISIS across
Syria and Iraq, were all complicated by rising populism in parts of Europe,
with a lack of coherent plan to address worsening refugee crisis. What the
pandemic did therefore was not to create global divisions but to worsen
them in manifestly dierent ways. e management of the pandemic
10 Borders, Boundaries, and Identities: Navigating the Barriers…
206
rather than bring the global powers together became an opportunity to
continue their antagonistic politics.
e United States, for instance, began by blaming China for conceal-
ing information about the virus, and this blame escalated further when
China was accused of masterminding the pandemic (e Guardian
2020). To drive home the point, the United States went further to accuse
the World Health Organization (WHO) of connivance with China and
followed up by cutting its funding to the Organization in the process,
before nally serving a notice to pull out (New York Times 2020). e
withdrawal of the United States from the WHO at such a critical time
made it dicult to develop a unied global response for managing the
virus. Eorts to use the platform of the G7 to muster a global response
failed at the rst meeting over dierences about what name to call the
virus in the communiqué (WSJ 2020). To put it succinctly, attempts at a
coherent global response to the pandemic have been overshadowed by
hegemonic tussles, especially between China and the United States.
Without a coherent global response, there began a scramble for control
and monopolization of critical resources such as ventilators, masks, and
other protective gears. ere were widespread reports of hostile intercep-
tions of supplies heading for some countries by others who exercised
greater bargaining power. With the exception of Cuba that sent medical
personnel and other resources to Italy, and China’s oers of assistance to
a number of countries in Europe and Nigeria, collaborative eorts have
been very limited. Even at that, China’s pandemic diplomacy has come
under severe criticisms as largely ineective interventions designed more
for political leverage and inuence than for the management of the virus
(Drezner 2020).
China’s domestic response to the virus has been described as ruthless
but eective, with reports of lockdowns and massive surveillance opera-
tions to monitor infections and spread. However, allegations of discrimi-
natory implementation of the measures surfaced, with black people
reportedly being targets of draconian, racist measures that bear no direct
semblance with the facts of the pandemic. While some were prematurely
thrown out of their accommodations, others were denied use of public
spaces such as restaurants, eateries, and pharmacies, with signs boldly
indicating that “blacks are not allowed” (HRW 2020). e targeting of
A. O. Oyekan and W. A. Balogun
207
“the other” since the outbreak of the pandemic is however not limited to
China, as people of Asian descent have been frequently targeted and
intimidated for causing the pandemic and its spread (UNESCO 2020),
in a manner reminiscent of past pandemic discriminations during the
outbreak of Ebola, Zika virus, and Asiatic u, among others (Ransing
etal. 2020).
e pandemic has also brought to the fore, more than before, the
increasing inequalities between countries in the West and those in the
global South. While there is no doubt that the global economy has been
massively impacted negatively, the implications have been severe in places
riddled by endemic poverty than developed nations. In countries like
Nigeria, South Africa, and across Central America, lockdown measures
were dicult to enforce on account of the inability of the various govern-
ments to adequately provide palliatives (Maoli 2020). e varied suc-
cess in demonstrating economic resilience, resource mobilization, as well
as economic sustenance has shown that COVID-19 is not an equal
opportunity pandemic in many respects (Stiglitz 2020).
ere are numerous eorts ongoing in dierent parts of the world to
nd a vaccine for the virus, with varying degrees of progress. e eorts
however are uncoordinated, largely on account of the polarized nature of
global politics. e discovery of a vaccine, or many variants of it, does not
appear designed to benet people from the developing parts of the world.
Using the global scramble for ventilators and masks as metric, developed
countries appear better positioned to prioritize their citizens in a way that
makes those in the global south appear as afterthoughts. ere are point-
ers to the fact that equitable access to vaccines will be constrained in part
by various measures being put in place by developed countries, which
essentially amount to acts of vaccine nationalism (Fidler 2020). us,
questions on how COVID-19 vaccines are to be best distributed have
focused on equitable distribution within countries, such as targeting vul-
nerable populations and healthcare and essential workers (Phelan etal.
2020), with less focus on equitable distribution between dierent coun-
tries. Infrastructural limitations needed for vaccine preservation have also
added to the obstacles faced by many ird World countries, especially
in Africa.
10 Borders, Boundaries, and Identities: Navigating the Barriers…
208
e question at this juncture is what type of response is best in manag-
ing the pandemic. Should individuals prioritize their autonomy over col-
lective action and interests? Ought nations to manage it as self-sustaining,
sovereign polities with limited obligations to members with clearly
dened attributes of belongingness, obligations, and benets? What are
the advantages of an ethics of solidarity in the curtailment and manage-
ment of the pandemic, as well as its fallouts? Are there motivations for
transnational eorts toward eradication and recovery? A country may, for
instance, decide to leverage on the notion of solidarity for managing the
pandemic within its own borders without feeling motivated to join hands
with other countries in an act of transnational solidarity. It may also be
deemed useful to solidarize in combating the pandemic, without the feel-
ing of a need for extended solidarity post-pandemic. Political solidarity,
in terms of domestic or foreign policy choices, is equally separable from
civic solidarity, wherein the people voluntarily take actions that promote
the eradication of the virus while avoiding those that spread it. We shall
attempt to answer these questions shortly. Before then, however, the next
section will be a synoptic conceptualization of solidarity.
The Concept ofSolidarity
Solidarity simply means a feeling of unity between people who have the
same interests or goals or a unity that produces or is based on community
of interests, objectives, and standards. e term, however, assumes a dif-
ferent meaning when it is being deployed in the context of state welfare
systems or in discussions in political philosophy. As Christian Arnsperger
and Yanis Varoufakis (2003) opine, when politicians, philosophers, and
political activists use the term “solidarity,” it simply refers to a generous
disposition, a propensity to sacrice something such as values on behalf
of some targeted group of people (e.g., refugees) whose welfare one deems
important. For them, the essence of solidarity lies in the hypothesis that
people are capable of responding sympathetically to (or empathizing
with) a condition aicting “others,” irrespective of who those others are
or whether one cares for them personally. From this explanation, we can
glean two important impressions. First, the term “solidarity” is used in
A. O. Oyekan and W. A. Balogun
209
respect to the “other,” and not the “self/individual,” and second, “solidar-
ity” is independent of the relationship that exists between the individual
and the other. at is, it does not matter whether the “other” is a friend,
family, or stranger; what matters is the “condition” that is aicting the
“other” which the individual identies or sympathizes with.
According to David Miller (2017), to understand the concept of soli-
darity, there is a need to make a distinction between solidarity among a
group of people and solidarity with a group of people. Miller argues that
solidarity with a group of people—for instance, a group that is suering
hardship at the hands of an oppressive regime—means identifying with
them emotionally, trying to imagine what it must be like to be in their
place, and then taking symbolic or practical steps to help them.
Solidarity among a group of people, on the other hand, presupposes
the following: there is a suciently precise and shared sense in which a
people constitute a group, that is, there must be some feature or set of
features that binds a people together; there is a relationship that is recip-
rocal in the sense that each member recognizes and is recognized by the
others as belonging to the group; the attitude adopted toward fellow
members of the group is one of concern and support; and more impor-
tantly, the group accepts collective responsibility for what its members do
(Miller, 2017: 64–65). Miller further explains that solidarity (among a
people) is very instrumental within the human society for it advocates
protection for members of a group in the sense that other members can
be expected to come to one’s aid when one gets into diculties. Also, it
provides a check on inequality and also implies social trust in the sense
that groups are able to solve collective action problems, since members
can usually be relied upon to comply voluntarily with rules that benet
the group as a whole, and so, it reduces the need for coercive measures to
ensure that agreements and contracts are carried out (Miller, 2017: 66).
e concept of solidarity, however, has been described by political
theorists, philosophers, and sociologists as an enduring challenge in
almost all liberal democratic societies because of the view that solidarity
requires individuals to tolerate views and practices they dislike, to accept
democratic decisions that go against their beliefs or interests, and to
moderate the pursuit of their own economic self-interest to help the dis-
advantaged. is challenge brings us to question whether there is a need
10 Borders, Boundaries, and Identities: Navigating the Barriers…
210
for solidarity between citizens and whether we can achieve solidarity
within and between diverse social groups. In response to this, Keith
Banting and Will Kymlicka (2017) argue that “solidarity” is a social con-
cept which applies at the level of a modern, culturally diverse, democratic
society as a whole and refers to attitudes of mutual acceptance, coopera-
tion, and mutual support in time of need such that if citizens are to
maintain a good society, especially in the context of growing diversity,
they must have, if not virtue or altruism, then some degree of solidarity.
is means that citizens must at times be motivated by attitudes of
mutual concern and mutual obligation toward their fellow co-citizens.
ey distinguished three dierent dimensions of solidarity that can
(and should) exist in contemporary democratic societies, namely, civic,
democratic, and redistributive solidarity. Civic solidarity is a relationship
that is characterized by mutual tolerance; acceptance of people of diverse
ethnicities, languages, and religions as legitimate members of the com-
munity; and openness to newcomers from diverse parts of the world.
Democratic solidarity entails support for basic human rights and equali-
ties, such as the equality of men and women, tolerance for the political
expression of diverse cultural views consistent with basic rights and
equalities, and acceptance of compromises among legitimate contending
interests. Redistributive solidarity involves support for redistribution
toward the poor and vulnerable groups, support for the full access of
people of all backgrounds to core social programs, and support for those
that recognize and accommodate the distinctive needs and identities of
dierent ethno-cultural groups (Banting & Kymlicka, 2017: 4).
Furthermore, Banting and Kymlicka argue that the concept of soli-
darity within a democratic culturally diverse society helps motivate peo-
ple to accept the strains of commitment involved in building and
maintaining a decent, good, or just society, particularly in contexts of
diversity. Solidarity, they opine, is important within diverse social groups,
maybe not so much for its intrinsic value but for its functional role in
motivating compliance with the demands of justice. us, solidarity is a
necessary (though not sucient) condition for a just or fair society
A. O. Oyekan and W. A. Balogun
211
(Banting & Kymlicka 2017). In contrast, however, Jacob Levy (2017)
argues that the aspiration to ground democratic politics on the concept
of solidarity is a futile attempt because it rests on philosophical mistakes,
ideological illusions, and empirical misunderstandings.
Levy argues that the inhabitants of a political community are not a
particular subset of humanity united by allegiance to some particular
political ideal, and neither are they demarcated set of persons who share
in a common inheritance of advantages and disadvantages, resources, and
relationships. Rather, fellow citizens are, in a fundamental sense, moral
strangers to each other, united only by the shared circumstances of inhab-
iting a common political jurisdiction, and not by any prior relationship
that legitimizes, grounds, underlies, or stands outside of those circum-
stances. He posits that the concept of solidarity especially within liberal
democratic and culturally diverse societies creates an imaginary line
between “us” and “them” such that those who fall outside the line or
those who do not share solidarity tendencies with other citizens are
regarded as “enemies.” He, therefore, submits that there is a need for
contemporary democratic societies to explore the possibility of having a
political life among strangers, that is, a kind of civil arm’s-length relation-
ship with fellow citizens who are neither friends nor enemies and who are
living with disagreement and managing it with no real hope of reconsti-
tuting as based on some deeper agreement or a social bond that trumps
all others (Levy, 2017, 107–110).
Miller argues, however, that solidarity does not necessarily advocate
general consensus on values because political cultures, especially demo-
cratic ones are multifaceted, and so, one does not have to sign up for
everything in order to be included as part of the “we.” For him, therefore,
solidarity permits and even encourages loyal opposition, so long as it is
clear that one’s loyalty to the political community itself is not compro-
mised (Miller, 2017, 68).
10 Borders, Boundaries, and Identities: Navigating the Barriers…
212
Managing theCOVID-19 Pandemic: TheCase
foranEthics ofSolidarity
Given the nature of the pandemic, and the massive disruption it has
brought upon day-to-day living as well as patterns of social organization
across the world, there is very little doubt that returning to normal, or
nding a new normal, will require enormous resources and planning. e
question then is whether it is useful to proceed within and between dif-
ferent countries on the basis of solidarity or nd solutions separately and
individually. Yet, putting the matter this way is not so straightforward. At
the local level, the case for solidarity, grounded on the notion of belong-
ingness, appears a bit more straightforward than at the global level,
though numerous challenges abound.
One of the challenges many countries have faced is how to balance
public safety with assertions of individual or group autonomy and iden-
tity, with which many of the measures introduced appear to be in con-
ict. Social distancing rules, for instance, have been breached in defense
of cultural, social, and religious rights and rites in South Korea (BBC
2020), the United States, and Nigeria among other places, leading in
some cases to violent confrontations with law enforcement agents
(Corbin, 2020; Agusi et al., 2020). While in the case of Korea and
Nigeria, religious worship was deemed more important than safety rules
provided by the governments and experts, in the United States, super-
spreader events, such as the campaigns of former President Trump, have
been hinged on the liberties guaranteed in the First Amendment of the
constitution. ere have also been clashes between authorities and groups
who assert their rights not to wear face masks. ere is an increasing
number of anti-vaxxers, who are committed to declining vaccination
eventually when they are ready (e NewYork Times, 2020).
Concerns about the powers of the state at a time of rising totalitarian-
ism across the world have also fueled suspicions that some of the contain-
ment measures are at best deliberately exaggerated to increase surveillance,
strengthen the powers of the state, curtail people’s rights, and roll back
democratic freedoms. is view has been reinforced by suggestions that
pandemic management requires greater state eciency and competence
A. O. Oyekan and W. A. Balogun
213
and has little or nothing to do with democracy. At a more extreme level,
it would appear that the demands of democracy are perceived as an
impediment to the state’s capacity to eectively respond to the pandemic
(Roberts 2020; Fukuyama 2020). In more than 60 countries, elections
were put o or rescheduled in the larger interest of “public safety” (IDEA
2020). In South Africa, the perceived high-handedness of the security
agencies in enforcing lockdown rules has generated serious debates
(Labuschaigne 2020; Seekings & Nattrass 2020). ese polarizing situa-
tions have the implications of deepening the impact of the pandemic,
with the attendant cost on lives and resources. e challenge then lies at
least partly in building support, or better still, consensus, around genuine
measures targeted at the pandemic in a way that reassures the people that
such measures are necessary and, in the main, temporary.
e nature of the pandemic as a public health issue creates a plausible
basis for solidarity within local boundaries. By its very nature, solidarity
is relevant to public health, because in contrast to personal healthcare,
whose primary focus is the individual patient, public health aims for the
longevity and functioning of populations through collective action
(Karako-Eyal 2018). Further, the successful implementation of public
health measures on the one hand, and the extent to which they gain nor-
mative legitimacy on the other, largely depends on the extent of the cul-
tural sense of solidarity and cooperation among the people (Jennings 2015).
us, while there may be arguments that a pandemic, no matter how
serious, should not upend rights that are taken as givens under normal
situations. But then, it can as well be argued that in a pandemic, obliga-
tions of solidarity are bigger than the claims of autonomy, especially
when such obligations do not constitute greater harm to the individual
than it benets the public. Wearing face masks, maintaining social dis-
tancing, and observing lockdown rules (save for situations in which peo-
ple are left with no means of survival and sustenance) constitute little or
no risk to the people, whereas outing these rules, depending on the
severity of the virus, is capable of spreading it, thereby endangering the
lives of many other citizens. is is even more so when the carrier is
asymptomatic and spreads the virus, especially to those who are vulnera-
ble. It may be reasonable for the state to enforce the observation of non-
harmful regulations that may safeguard public health. Similarly, group
10 Borders, Boundaries, and Identities: Navigating the Barriers…
214
activities such as religious worships and ceremonies capable of exacerbat-
ing the impacts of the virus require modications that prioritize both the
safety of members of such groups as well as others who may be negatively
aected by their own exposure.
Conversely, governments have the responsibility to make preventive
measures as clear as possible and provide cushions to minimize the nega-
tive impact its considered measures may have. Additionally, building
condence and trust in the citizenry requires imposing measures which,
though may be tough in a few cases, are not themselves more harmful
than the virus. For instance, contact tracing, screening, and tracking
through facial screening apps generate apprehensions about the possibly
draconian use of such powers without assurance that the measures are
indeed temporary and that the measures are more scientic than politi-
cal. If people are required to stay indoors for indenite periods, socially
distanced, deploy their skills on the frontline, or to accept a vaccine
despite a barrage of hostile internet propaganda, they need a sense that
such demands are coming from trustworthy sources, are given for good
reasons, and are geared toward plausible, public goals (Roberts 2020).
Also, preexisting inequalities that exposed the poor and groups like
BAME (blacks and minority ethnic groups) to the ravaging eects of the
virus in the United States and the United Kingdom have contributed to
its spread and casualty gures in the aected countries. In South Africa,
there exists signicant inequalities in the distribution of ill health and
disability, with the implication that the need for health services to diag-
nose and treat these illnesses becomes greater among lower socioeco-
nomic groups. ere is a strong correlation between these inequalities in
illness and a host of socioeconomic factors, such as inequitable access to
portable water, housing, sanitation, education, employment, and income
(Gopalan & Vasconcellos 2019). ese challenges, left unattended, have
the capacity to undermine even the best of responses to a pandemic, now
and in the future. Managing the pandemic and preventing possible recur-
rence transcend its mere curtailment and require more lasting measures
to address social imbalances not caused by the virus, but nonetheless
exposed and amplied by it.
At the global level, solidarity requires that dierent countries work
together at a multilayered level of containing, eradicating, and recovering
A. O. Oyekan and W. A. Balogun
215
from the virus. So far however, not much seems to have been achieved
collectively at the rst stage of containment. Divergent interests between
global powers, especially the United States and China, have made mutual
cooperation dicult and rendered multilateral platforms such as the
World Health Organization (WHO), the G-7, and the G-20 largely inef-
fective. e implication of this is that dierent countries have had to
battle the pandemic within their limited resources and interest. One
notable instance was the scramble for personal protective equipment
(PPEs) and the reported hijacks of supplies, as a result of erce bidding
wars. Also, discussions on vaccines have focused more on their distribu-
tion and usage within national boundaries, without much reference to
developing countries.
In coping with the economic and social eects of the pandemic, there
have also been interesting policy options, as dierent countries plan to
overcome the ruinous impacts of the virus on economic growth. For
instance, the EU has agreed to a union-wide economic stimulus, but the
agreed package has been caught up in right-wing politics that stalls imple-
mentation. Many of the aected countries in the developing world are
therefore more seriously confronted with the management of the pan-
demic in the immediate and its consequences in the near future.
As earlier alluded to, the motivation for transnational solidarity diers
from Durkheim’s (1997) idea of mechanical solidarity. Philosophically,
questions as to whether we have obligations toward strangers have gener-
ated diverse views, even as globalization has deepened integration between
states (Appiah 2007). Defenders of cosmopolitanism, for instance, argue
that solidarity is extendable to all humans, irrespective of the particular
group to which they belong. On the contrary, some argue that nationality
limits the scope and reach of the norm of solidarity to nation-state citi-
zens and/or the population occupying a state territory (Nowicka
etal. 2019).
One question about the possible source of motivation for transnational
solidarity in the face of global inequality has continued to generate
debates. Solidarity, as we have earlier averred, nds easier expression
within the bounds of political communities where the people have a sense
of shared identity. Conversely, the motivation to solidarize with the dis-
tant other appears to be much weaker. In managing the pandemic then,
10 Borders, Boundaries, and Identities: Navigating the Barriers…
216
it is important to identify the possible source(s) of commitment to collec-
tive actions that benets all.
e case for global solidarity we believe, can be hinged on the notion
of broadening regard for others as being worthy of equal moral consider-
ation. is consideration helps simultaneously hold attachments to par-
ticular identities, such as members of one’s political community, while
acknowledging the fact of shared humanity with others. Attachment,
couched in universalist terms as we have done, is admittedly weaker than
particular ones, and it is easy to see that the salience of particular attach-
ments is reinforced in many ways by facts of shared experiences and close
anity. Building global solidarity on this type of commitment therefore,
and complementing the notion of shared humanity, requires an apprecia-
tion of the increasing interdependence of the world we live in. is inter-
dependence has increased the scale and scope of the risks and burdens
that constitute signicant threats to people across the world, such as the
coronavirus pandemic.
Working toward the curtailment of global challenges makes a demand
on people across diverse cultural and political communities for a broader
sense of shared responsibility for the preservation and sustenance of
humans and the environment. e ethics of solidarity as we espouse here,
then, rests on the twin notions of shared humanity, which is an inherent
moral worthiness and equality of all persons, and prudence, which pro-
pels an instrumental appreciation of the need for cooperation for the
survival and ourishing of all. Seen this way, the apparent contradictions
between the demands of particularistic, in-group solidarity and the
impulses of universal solidarity can be reconciled and mutually
acknowledged.
e notion of shared humanity, while fundamental, has a limitation of
practical nature. e acknowledgment of the moral worthiness of others
may encourage us to avoid discriminatory actions against them but does
not motivate us in very strong ways to cooperate with them or act in ways
that enhance their interests. On the other hand, prudential appreciation
of current global challenges and the threats they pose provides a strong
basis for action, but on an ad hoc basis. Proceeding from an approach
which combines the inherent equality of all with instrumental,
A. O. Oyekan and W. A. Balogun
217
self- interested sense of prudence addresses the weaknesses of each, taken
in isolation.
For the foreseeable future, the threats of pandemics, environmental
crises, and terrorism, among others, suggest strongly that there will be a
need for sustained interdependence and solidarity across the globe. What
this suggests is that whereas the commitments that come from prudential
considerations may be situational and instrumental, the scale and dimen-
sions of the challenges are likely to motivate a prolonged period of coop-
eration for collective survival. What this implies is that global challenges
may serve as catalyst for the deepening of interdependence and the deep-
ening of commitments between groups whose motivation for solidarity
was hitherto weak, on account of limited binding factors. Importantly
too, while particular attachments remain strong and continue to enjoy
primacy, the increasing emergence of dierent sites of identication and
self-denition, cutting across religious, sexual, and gender persuasions
among others, continue to make the boundaries of solidarity less rigid
than they used to be.
It is therefore possible to imagine a form of solidarity that transcends
sameness to accommodate those who are neither like us nor members of
our political community (Nowicka 2017). is recognition of the obliga-
tions owed to those who, by voluntary or imposed categorization, appear
as dierent defends the possibility of a form of global solidarity that com-
plements rather than override internal solidarity engendered by the group
or nation-state (Habermas 2004). is type of solidarity can either be
specically universal in its universality, by applying to all persons across
dierent states, or particular yet universal, by transcending boundaries to
apply to specic groups that are for instance dened by gender, occupa-
tion, age, or religion (Duyvendak etal. 2016). Transnational solidarity
therefore becomes possible when we accept the possibility of multiple
belongings, and the logic of simultaneity that at once incorporates people
into an expanded conception of the community at the level of the global,
while acknowledging their commitment and belongingness to the nation-
state (Levitt & Glick Schiller 2004; Nowicka etal. 2019).
With respect to the pandemic, the imperative of global solidarity
becomes obvious once we note that beyond being a public health issue
for the individually aected countries, it is also a global health issue with
10 Borders, Boundaries, and Identities: Navigating the Barriers…
218
social, economic, and political implications. Historically, pandemics have
played signicant roles in transforming societies, whether in the modera-
tion or widening of inuence; the decline of a given civilization, as it was
in the case of Rome; or redistributing power (McNeil 2020; Drezner
2020). Historically too, multilateral institutions, to make the World
Health Organization (WHO) a specic example, have arisen in times of
crisis of global proportions (Fidler 1999). In recent time however, right-
wing populism and resurgent nationalism have eroded the recourse to
multilateral, interstate agencies as vehicles of shared solutions to com-
mon challenges, in a way that not only undermines the capacity for their
eective functions but also questions their relevance. e pattern in
which the pandemic has spread, and the way it has aected the global
economy, however, suggests that it won’t be fully controlled anywhere
until it is controlled everywhere, and the economic downturn won’t be
reversed until there is sustainable, equal global recovery (Stiglitz 2020).
ere is a need then for a global approach to the pandemic that focuses
on its immediate and future threats, as opposed to the gridlock occa-
sioned by the tussle for domination among the big, powerful countries.
In developing the mechanisms for managing the pandemic at the global
level, one of the issues arising is the need to manage the closure of borders
and the attendant restriction on migration in a way that does not rein-
force isolationism. While a pandemic like COVID-19, by its nature,
necessitates measures that severely curtailed cross-border movement,
there is a fear that it has the tendency to feed into populist inclination to
blame foreigners as the source of all ills (Muller 2017).
e closure of borders is, however, benecial in the sense of preventing
further spread of the virus through migration from and into particular
countries. In this way, restricting border movements becomes an approach
that ought to reinforce a mutual sense of obligation to help others stay
well because their well-being at the time requires that we maintain safe
distancing rather than deepening an “us” against “them” perception. In
this way, distancing becomes a way of reinforcing cohesion and exhibit-
ing solidarity with others (Metz 2020). Divisive and discriminatory rhet-
oric has not been proven helpful in managing the pandemic. It is therefore
important to enhance mechanisms that deepen transnational
A. O. Oyekan and W. A. Balogun
219
engagement and solidarity even as physical borders assume greater impor-
tance for the moment.
Strengthening global solidarity will require the reforms of multilateral
agencies so that they are better positioned to coordinate responses to the
big challenges for which they were created. It is important as well to
strengthen multilateral agencies for a more eective management of
global challenges in a way that complements national eorts. It is also
important to focus on equitable distribution of resources such as kits and
vaccines, in a way that helps countries that are ravaged by the virus but
are relatively ill-prepared in managing it. Attempts to focus mainly on
national needs, especially by the developed countries, are likely to delay
the global eradication of the virus for much longer, eectively allowing it
to remain a threat to the world at large.
Post-pandemic recovery eorts will also be needed to revive the econo-
mies of weak nations in a way that will stimulate global growth and
engender sustainable development. Not only will this impact positively
on overall global recovery and economic outlook, but it will also likely
enhance the capacities of such countries to prepare and cope better with
future pandemics, should they arise. Widening global inequality, it can
be argued, has contributed to the inability of many countries in the global
south to adequately respond to the pandemic. Acting in solidarity there-
fore requires more than immediate assistance to ameliorate the direct
impacts of the pandemic. More important is the reorganization of the
international economic structures to be fairer and more equal.
Conclusion
In this chapter, we have examined the challenges posed by the coronavi-
rus pandemic within societies and indeed across the world. It is apparent
that beyond the immediate health ramications, it has impacted nega-
tively on social and economic spheres in dierent countries with disrup-
tions that may prove extremely dicult to surmount. Managing the
pandemic therefore requires an attitude of solidarity within and between
states. Hegemonic tussles between global superpowers have made it
nearly impossible for coordinated confrontation of a common problem,
10 Borders, Boundaries, and Identities: Navigating the Barriers…
220
with its attendant tolls. Similarly, societies that have left some groups
economically and socially vulnerable have experienced serious diculties
in managing the pandemic. It is therefore important that the vertical
structures that perpetuate inequality within and between states require a
reassessment and reorganization, if the world is to beat the coronavirus
and be better prepared for the next pandemic.
Acknowledgments e contribution of Adeolu Oyekan to this work is based
on the research supported by the National Research Foundation of South Africa
(Grant Number 99188, SARChI Chair in Identities and Social Cohesion in
Africa, Nelson Mandela University). Opinions, ndings, conclusions, and
recommendations expressed in this work are those of the authors’ alone, and the
NRF accepts no liability whatsoever in this regard.
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11
Discourses oftheWandering Almajiri
Child asRepresentation ofthe(Post-)
COVID Generation
MalamiBuba andMikailuIbrahim
“e world is on the brink of a catastrophic moral failure and the price of
this failure will be paid with lives and livelihoods in the world’s poorest
countries.”
—Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (Director-General, WHO)
Introduction
ere seems to be no better words to describe the role of the humanities
in global health than the “moral” case advanced by the Director-General
of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom
Ghebreyesus, reported in the Guardian UK (January 19, 2021). He was
M. Buba (*)
Division of African Studies, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Global
Campus, Yongin, South Korea
M. Ibrahim
Department of English and Literary Studies, Usmanu Danfodiyo University,
Sokoto, Nigeria
© e Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023
F. Egbokhare, A. Afolayan (eds.), Global Health, Humanity and the COVID-19
Pandemic, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17429-2_11
224
referring to the vaccine nationalism that saw only 25 vaccines adminis-
tered in any low-income country as against the 39 million given in high-
income countries. In the same report, the Director-General argued that:
“It’s not right that younger healthier adults in rich countries are vacci-
nated before health workers and older people in poorer countries.” ere
are other “moral failures” even in these developed economies, as when the
United Kingdom was forced to reconsider the withdrawal of free school
meals to disadvantaged children during school holidays (Guardian UK,
January 20, 2021) or when thousands of dollars are sent to millions of
individuals who have lost their livelihood during the COVID-19 pan-
demic. At the same time, it saw the greatest rise in the wealth of the
world’s richest individuals, with one estimate noting that the $540 billion
made by the ten richest individuals is “enough to vaccinate everyone in
the world” (Guardian UK, January 26, 2021). Even low-income coun-
tries, such as Nigeria, are being forced to address the pandemic’s eco-
nomic challenges by opening a social safety net register to support petty
traders in distress, as reported in Premium Times of January 19, 2021.
Humanity has been blighted not only by the actual disease but perhaps
more insidiously by the continuing mental and psychological disorders as
a result of the absence of a “human touch.”. As Falola (2016: 86) pointed
out: “Humanity itself (as a being, in the individual and collective sense)
becomes totally diminished without the humanities.” And herein lies the
role that the humanities can play in, at the very least, uncovering the
nature both of local and global iniquitous practices that often hit the
“most vulnerable of the vulnerables” hardest. e wandering child, such
as the Nigerian almajiri child, is undoubtedly one of the most vulnerable
members of humanity.
e wandering child has been a feature of the global south since the
beginning of the scourge of globalization. Images and representation of
the child as a scavenging menace to public morality abound in major cit-
ies of Africa and the Americas. ey come in many “colors”: as street
children, as beggars, as hawkers, and as the domestic help. As the force of
the law is being unleashed on their frail frames through the police and
other mass incarceration agencies, their numbers continue to grow. e
continual human drift from impoverished rural areas into the urban
slums of big cities ensures the movement of more children in search of
M. Buba and M. Ibrahim
225
basic survival. Yet, as children, the law enshrines the right of the child to
basic health, well-being, and education. As we shall see below, the UBEC
Act 2004 of Nigeria follows the Dakar Declaration in asserting children’s
right to free and compulsory primary education. Hence the conicting
signals that seem to permeate many policies toward children’s welfare in
the urban jungle that is the city. However, the current coronavirus pan-
demic has exacerbated the crisis of this generation. In poorer countries,
the crisis of an already neglected generation becomes more evident as the
bite of closures, curfews, and clampdowns deepens the anguish of this
post-COVID generation. Yet, the life chances of almajirai are further
diminished by the perceived hopelessness and irrelevance of their “voca-
tion” as beggars of food and purveyors of dangerous crimes. e almajiri
has always been viewed with suspicion in the urban landscape of many
West African cities. A combination of attitudes toward Muslim itinerary
scholarship and regional disparities forms part of the narrative of alien-
ation that the almajiri experiences in daily encounters with fellow citi-
zens. e coronavirus pandemic has worsened the onslaught of this
negative perception to the point where a direct connection between the
virus and the almajiri is imputed. Witness the massive operation in
Nigerian cities of forcibly removing and transporting children to their
presumed localities in the midst of the pandemic in Nigerian cities! is
massive exodus of children is discussed in greater detail below in the sec-
tion dealing with almajirai as vectors and super-spreaders.
It is against this background that this chapter seeks to explore how
representation can work to demonize and dehumanize the victim further
by dening a whole epistemology in terms of a virus without cure. In the
rest of the chapter, we will explore the nature of itinerant scholarship
within Muslim theology and examine how it ts with the pursuit of the
good life in a post-modern, coronavirus-aicted Nigeria. In this respect,
the almajiri is situated in the historical context of his vocation. Within
that context, we explain the rationale and rationality of the quest for
knowledge even in the face of urban adversity that daily impacts upon
almajiri’s determination to survive. In both the real world of Nigeria’s
sprawling urban landscape and the ctional world of African literature,
we point out the changing fortunes of the almajiri, whose journey from
a mystical character of wisdom, knowledge, and humanity to a child
11 Discourses of the Wandering Almajiri Child…
226
made monstrous by the new economy of inequality remains a recurring
decimal in transhuman movement. e coronavirus pandemic, we argue,
is a juncture in the continuing saga of children without hope or help. All
of these issues of representation and perception will be critically addressed
using sources as diverse as novels, newspapers, institutional reports,
edicts, personal histories, and encounters. In theoretical terms, we look at
representation as a conceptual paradigm through which meaning is cre-
ated and circulated (Hall 1997) and situate the current disavowal of alm-
ajiri practices as an aspect of this representational narrative in ction and
in everyday description. In our concern to fully specify how representa-
tion works at both of these levels, we have attempted to link them to the
contrasting and, at times, complementary concepts of semiotics (Barthes
2012 [1972]) and discourse (Foucault 1980), respectively. We also
explore the trajectory of the language and practice of disavowal, which
resulted in mass deportation of almajirai at the peak of the COVID-19
pandemic in Nigeria. We will examine the consequence of such translo-
cation both to the children and the national landscape which permits
such movement in the midst of a health emergency without the support-
ing infrastructure. We will also endeavor to situate the conditions under
which the almajirai nd themselves within the wider global context of
child poverty, deprivation, and health inequality. Finally, we suggest how
best to accommodate the practice of Muslim discipleship without demon-
izing children and denying them the right to a future of opportunities
from which Nigeria can benet and prosper. Our claim is that the repre-
sentation of almajirci as a product of a patently discredited system of
Muslim acculturation highlights the representational gap between reality
and perception.
Itinerant Scholarship inLocal Muslim Theology
One of the most oft-cited prophetic traditions in Islam related learning
to journeys beyond one’s locality and imagination. It spoke of the impor-
tance of seeking further knowledge wherever it may reside. us, the life
of learning for those Muslims wishing to “drink deep” had involved the
metaphor of learning as a (dicult, but rewarding) journey in Hausa:
M. Buba and M. Ibrahim
227
taya mabuɗin ilmi (“travelling is a source of knowledge”); karatu, far-
konka maɗaci, ƙarshenka zuma (“learning is bitter in the beginning, and
sweet in the end”). e journey could be as short as a walk to the local
school in the neighborhood or the early morning walk of the Malam in
search of further knowledge. At times, however, the journey could involve
thousands of kilometers as was the case of famous itinerant West African
Su scholars travelling to Sokoto, Nigeria, in search of further knowledge
(Bâ 2008).
is journey of learning and devotion was often undertaken on foot,
and on a shoestring, on the belief that Allah Ka Bai, Allah Ka Hanawa
(“God gives and God deprives”). Small acts of labor would be undertaken
as well, in exchange for food and shelter. At other times, the seeker of
knowledge would have to rely on the kindness of strangers along the
route of learning. Many a Zango quarter in West Africa started as a listen-
ing and resting post for itinerant malam and other transhuman travelers
searching in the borderless world of Islamic epistemology, duniya ta Allah
ce (“the world belongs to God”) (Adamu 1978). Alhassan Dantata
(1877-1955), one of the wealthiest merchants of West Africa, was said to
have begun his incredible journey into international trade through itiner-
ant almajiri discipleship and in the process left a legacy of business acu-
men that has been passed down to the current billionaire Dantata
extended family, including Aliko Dangote, a grandson, and the wealthi-
est man in Africa today. e classic quest journey of Shaihu Umar (1966)
exemplies both of these trajectories.
In eect, the discourses of the wandering almajiri represent a great
tradition of learning as a universal quest, and it is important to keep this
assumption in mind, as we move into the examination of the life and
tribulations of the almajiri as a representation of a (post-) COVID gen-
eration. We begin however with a description of the lived experience of
an almajiri in ction.
11 Discourses of the Wandering Almajiri Child…
228
Ambiguous Adventure andtheFictional World
ofAlmajirai
Cheikh Hamidou Kane’s Ambiguous Adventure opens with a glimpse of
the life of an almajiri, who, in this context, is no “ordinary” beggar-
disciple. Samba Diallo is a noble prince of the Diallobe country, and his
sojourn at the hearth of the revered teacher, ierno, is part of the long
tradition of his people to send crown princes to learn to lead by following
in the footsteps of their ancestors. is tradition entails a period of dislo-
cation from the sheltered connes of the local palace to a dierent envi-
ronment in which the prince becomes one of the many disciples that are
voluntarily sent to the master Su to learn to recite and memorize the
Qur’an. Away from home, with only learning on their minds, the young
disciples must also fend for themselves as part of the knowledge architec-
ture of Islamic susm that promotes self-denial, ascetism, and other
deprivatory practices, including begging. Begging was an essential com-
ponent of the learning process, for it instils in the disciple, according to
this school of thought, an awareness of the irrelevance of material pros-
perity. Mastering the Qur’an is viewed as the rst step toward enlighten-
ment and proximity to the very essence of godliness.
e process of mastering the word for almajiri Samba Diallo necessar-
ily involves “the strength to master his suering” (Kane 1972: 1). Such
suering comes from beatings, but also from the very act of dislocation
from one’s immediate family at a very young age. In this period of extreme
deprivation, all disciples must beg to feed and feel the essence of subsis-
tence through leftovers from families for whom the prayers of the beggars
at the beginning of the working day serve as a form of cleansing and
absolution:
Under the morning wind, Samba Diallo improvised edifying litanies, with
interpolations by his comrades, at the closed door of his cousin, the chief
of the Diallobe. e disciples would go about so, from door to door, until
they had collected victuals enough for their day’s nourishment … [e
disciples squatted in the dust and set to on their rst meal of the day. When
they had eaten enough to satisfy their hunger, they put the rest in their
wooden bowls, against possible future need. With his bent index nger
M. Buba and M. Ibrahim
229
Samba Diallo thoroughly cleaned the plate, and put the little ball of food,
thus recovered into his mouth …] Tomorrow the same quest would begin
again. While seeking God, the disciples would know no other way of sup-
porting life than by begging, whatever their parents’ wealth might be.
(Kane 1972: 14)
In this vivid description, we have a glimpse of the life of the wandering
almajiri disciple. Beyond assuaging the hunger of the moment, nothing
else takes precedence over learning to recite the Qur’an—a book whose
mystery becomes open to them in a long time to come. is particular
form of spiritual resilience is considered the antidote to the ravaging
march of modernity.
In the contrasting world of the Diallobe and that of the French colo-
nizer, Cheikh Hamidou Kane is conicted. e issue for him was how to
achieve harmony between the new school’s “ways of joining wood to
wood” and the old school’s learning, in which “what we teach the chil-
dren is God [so that] they forget … themselves, their bodies, and the
futile dream which hardens with age and sties the spirit’ (Kane 1972:
34). ere was always the fear that these two ways of seeing and being to
which the Diallobe were bound would lead to the impasse, eloquently
put forward by Hamidou Kane through ierno, the teacher: “can one
learn this without forgetting that, and is what one learns worth what one
forgets?” (Kane 1972: 34). As the Diallobe would nd out, there is no
easy solution to an existential problem for all colonized societies. On the
one hand, the march of modernity, globalization, and more recently eco-
nomic nationalism forces poor and impoverished ex-colonies to swallow
the pills of consumption capitalism with the active collusion of rigged
multilateral systems. On the other hand, their knowledge production
capacities have been maligned, decimated, and broken by the permanent
allure of urban economy and culture.
Yet the narrative of almajiri practice is lled with stories of redemp-
tion, (re-)discovery, and emancipation. Nigeria’s late prime minister
Tafawa Balewa’s Shaihu Umar (1966) exemplies the transformative
eect of knowledge acquired through the path of itineracy. In this quest
novella, the protagonist, Shaihu Umar, recalled his journeys of (mis)
adventure through time and space to the gathering of his own almajirai
11 Discourses of the Wandering Almajiri Child…
230
disciples. He recounted his capture, enslavement, and tracking into the
hands of the Arabs before nally becoming the most learned scholar
throughout sub-Saharan Africa. He was later to nd his way back to his
homeland and settle in the northeastern city of Bauchi, the location of his
recollection. And in the course of this grand narrative, we were invited to
participate in the unmasking of a borderless Africa of immense diversity,
complexity, and transformations, where slaves became masters and
descendants of masters knelt before slaves to receive learning, wisdom,
and healing. e unbounded nature of Shaihu Umar’s journey was not
only linked to slavery but also to the cosmopolitan and migratory inter-
actions of the various Muslim peoples of Africa (Kane 2016). In that
process, circulation and exchange of knowledge is also engendered, in
addition to commerce and cultural brokerage (Brenner 2000). Let us
bear this in mind as we ponder about the role of the humanities in con-
textualizing the almajirai and the local knowledge production system
they are deploying to challenge their own “ambiguous adventure” through
a dominant ideology of Islamic education.
Interestingly, the knowledge architecture of almajiri education dis-
plays a denitive pattern of knowledge transmission within the Muslim
Su brotherhood throughout West Africa. In a non-ctional scholarly
context, Ousmane Kane, the Harvard historian and a member of a prom-
inent Su Tijjaniya lineage in Senegal, presented his diary of knowledge
navigation at age six and over, as he moved between secular French lycée
and the Islamic madrasa in 1960s Senegal (Kane 2016: 3). e present
authors are also products of this parallel co-mingling of the “old” school
of spirituality, makarantar Allah (“faith school”), and the “new” school of
modernity, makarantar boko (“secular school”).
COVID-19 Pandemic andtheWandering
Almajiri Child
Almajiri, as a term of religious and social acculturation, has expanded to
cover all manner of migratory practices, including those that sit rmly
within the realm of child tracking, child labor, and exploitation. In this
M. Buba and M. Ibrahim
231
respect, the almajiri shares many of the terrible conditions in which girl-
child house help, child traders, and other minors nd themselves in
Nigerian cities (Khalid 2020). In its classical form, a Malam and his alm-
ajirai pupils embark on a scholarly journey, locally called yawon bundi
(literally “wandering-of-tail”). It requires the Malam to take over the
responsibility not only of the Qur’anic education of the children under
his care but also their general health, well-being, and safety. Parents will
ordinarily send some food and clothing items and, at times, cash for the
basic upkeep of the child. However, this is neither regular nor compul-
sory, as part of the character strengthening of the almajiri disciple will
depend on his forbearance and the kindness of strangers. It is also impor-
tant to note that the Malam may be on his own quest for greater knowl-
edge and enlightenment, as he seeks residency with his potential teacher.
Needless to say, there is no exchange of money at any stage in the learning
process for both the almajiri and his Malam. (e emphasis of male
membership of the almajiri group underscores the virtual absence of girls
as almajirai.)
us, the daily life of the almajiri before the pandemic was character-
ized by uncertainty in essentials as basic as food and clothing. A typical
Almajiri wakes up to roam around begging for daily meals in tattered
clothes. Some of them identify with the homes of families helping with
house chores in exchange for a meal and a little allowance. Other than
these chores, they stay around their school with the Malam to learn the
recitation of the Qur’an. eir accommodation with the Malam is mostly
congested and lacks basic sanitation facilities like toilets and water.
Hoechner’s (2018) extremely valuable insights into the lives of almajirai
make a compelling case for understanding and recognition of the under-
lying poverty and alienation dictating their changing fortunes. She situ-
ated her extensive study within a broader conceptual context “bringing
insights from education studies, poverty research, and childhood and
youth studies” (Hoechner 2018: 7). And, perhaps, for the rst time, we
heard from the almajirai themselves, who pointed out that the practice
provides a platform for learning how to cope with their inescapable and
impoverished condition through “patience and humility.” As Hoechner
(2018: 5) noted, “patience and humility … are central elements of faith.”
ese attributes are also part of the characteristics of the “perfect-person”
11 Discourses of the Wandering Almajiri Child…
232
in Hausa society (see Buba 2020). Instructively, the local personality with
the perceived highest perfection was Shehu Usmanu Danfodiyo, the
revered itinerant Malam who founded the Sokoto Caliphate in the nine-
teenth century. Yet, the almajirai continue to experience extreme preju-
dice and stigmatization, as their dehumanization during the current
COVID-19 pandemic shows. For Hoechner (2018: 225), it is the society
that needs reform, in order “to ght the stigma attached to poverty, and
to promote respect on the basis of one’s worth as a human being rather
than as a function of one’s position within social hierarchies.”
While this is the reality of their daily experience, an interview con-
ducted by the second author with some of the families patronizing the
almajiri services in Sokoto revealed that the almajiri phenomenon also
represents an adaptive strategy for the economic necessity of rural-urban
migration and search for better life opportunities. One of the interview-
ees revealed that there were many economic benets to the almajiri chil-
dren in the kind of domestic work they provide. She explained that
immediately the help begins, the almajirai get smarter with improved
cleanliness, concentrate more on their learning, and aspire to join public
school. She recalled her almajiri domestic help buying a bicycle for his
younger brother from the stipend he received. Another almajiri house
help bought livestock from the money he sent home. He would also use
the money to buy brocades and related fabrics as he sets out to visit his
family in the village. However, even where they nd solace in the above
patron-client relationship, Hoechner (2018) argued that the transaction
was largely one of unequal exchange, and the “good boss” is a rare occur-
rence in the lived experience of the almajirai in her research study. Clearly,
then, modernity in the form of urbanization and extreme inequality has
eroded many of these lofty ideals.
Almajirai asVectors andSuper-spreaders
In common with the rest of the world, the COVID-19 pandemic in
Nigeria exposes the extreme inequality which exists in the new knowl-
edge economy. Poor and “unlettered” citizens were left to fend for them-
selves, although their daily paid manual jobs have virtually disappeared
M. Buba and M. Ibrahim
233
due to restrictions in human and vehicular movements. In addition to
these two devastating factors, there is the persistent insecurity that has
engulfed most part of the non-industrialized northern Nigeria. is part
of Nigeria relies heavily on agriculture both for internal consumption
and for export to other parts of Nigeria. In exchange for food, particu-
larly cattle, manufactured goods are bought and brought to the north.
is trade has been going on for many centuries, but it came almost to a
halt as a result of the twin tragedies of COVID-19 and insecurity in
the north.
In this atmosphere of restriction and deprivation, the almajiri sud-
denly became the focus of anger, where newspaper headlines began to
exploit the vulnerability of this “minor” and indefensible group. ere
was a strident attempt to merge the images of scavenging little boys in
tattered clothes and a well-worn bowl in hand with the discourses of
demonization. Labels of “terrorists,” “criminals,” “menace,” “plague,”
“virus,” and “threat” feature prominently in these discourses of demoni-
zation. ere was, for example, the story carried in e Sun Nigeria
(October 22, 2020) of the concern expressed by the Christian Association
of Nigeria (CAN) in Anambra State over the “distribution of almajiris
from Kano to other parts of the country.” In the report, spokesman of
CAN in the state quoted a news report in Vanguard Nigeria (May 15,
2020), in which “fear gripped A[kwa]-Ibom residents as Taskforce inter-
cepts another trailer conveying 32 Northerners.” e concern, according
to the Vanguard, was related to “alleged transportation of Almajiris sus-
pected to be COVID-19 positive from some states in the north to the
southern states,” as well as “the invasion of some states in the region by
suspected terrorist groups from the north.” In the same vein, the Igbo
pro-Biafra group, IPOB, warned, in a Daily Post (May 4, 2020) news
report, about “the ploy … to export coronavirus from its epicenter to
other parts of Nigeria”, noting also that “Everybody knows that almajiris
are wanderers causing uprising, mayhem and crises in the whole of
North.” In Rivers State, Nigeria, the Governor, in a state broadcast,
reported in PM News, Nigeria (April 29, 2020), “directed the
Commissioner of Social Welfare to round up and deport all vagrants,
including the almajiris, to their States of origin to protect our people
from the threat they present to the transmission of this pandemic.”
11 Discourses of the Wandering Almajiri Child…
234
An extensive review of the demonization of almajirai by all sections of
the Nigerian society has been undertaken in Hoechner (2018). In that
study, she quoted scholarly studies and inuential public intellectuals,
such as Wole Soyinka, who described almajirai as Boko Haram “foot
soldiers … bred in madrassas.” (See Hoechner [2018:4] for a fuller criti-
cal overview of these negative portrayals.) Yet, Hoechner (2011) reported
the tendency of the almajirai to “occupy moral high ground” and restrain
themselves from retaliating “bad treatment,” which is in contrast with the
common perceptions earlier quoted that make them the pool for Boko
Haram recruitment.
Managing the almajiri situation, however, was also one of the major
issues of the COVID-19 pandemic period in most northern Nigerian
states, where the number of almajirai includes the “expelled” and
“deported.” is did not come as a surprise considering that the life of the
almajiri children—roaming about the street begging for their daily
meal—is irreconcilable with the lockdown that authorities imposed to
curve the spread of the pandemic. us, the almajirai were caught in the
crossre of the demands of the pandemic for restricted movement and a
political leadership that was ill-prepared for the emergency. What fol-
lowed was a statement from the Northern Governors Forum on April 21,
2020, banning the almajiri and the resolve to return them to their states
of origin. Some northern State Governors started enforcing the decision
of their regional forum leading to what a feature on May 12, 2020, by the
BBC considered “the biggest ever state organized mass movement of
minors” in the country, with evident contradiction of repatriating thou-
sands of children in crammed vans across state borders in the midst of a
travel ban to control the spread of the virus. In May 12, 2020, e
Guardian Nigeria reported that “not fewer than 435 of such vulnerable
children were returned by Kano to Katsina.” Governor Abdullahi Umar
Ganduje of Kano Sate also announced a plan to immediately return 524
to neighboring Jigawa state. Kaduna State’s response was more promi-
nent with the Premium Times (May 20, 2020) quoting about 30,000 as
the number of almajirai “who have been sent back to their home states
so far.”
Sentiments brewed in divergent ways from the decision and action of
the states to repatriate the almajirai. e revered head of the Muslim
M. Buba and M. Ibrahim
235
population in Nigeria, Sultan of Sokoto, was reported by Premium Times
(May 20, 2020) to have distanced Islam from “laziness, ignorance and
idleness as exemplied by itinerant almajiri,” conrming the main opin-
ion of the report, which celebrated the pandemic as “a golden opportu-
nity to change the [almajiri] narrative and put the plague behind us once
and for all.” And, in a statement during the pandemic, Secretary to the
Government of the Federation, who doubles as the Chair of the
Presidential Task Force on COVID-19, described the almajirai as “instru-
ments for faster transmission of COVID-19 virus in the society” in addi-
tion to their pre-existing threat of “grooming future members of Boko
Haram.” e discourse of apprehension here, as elsewhere, was one of
deportation and expulsion in addition to banishment and evacuation. As
the almajiri children were rounded up, arrested, detained, and then
deported, COVID-19-positive cases within their conned spaces
increased. On what to do with them when they arrived at their intended
destination, no statement was forthcoming. ere was a muted indica-
tion of coordinated eort among the governors of northern Nigeria, for
example, but little came of it in the form of policies and provisions for the
dispersed almajirai.
While the state actors are being ambivalent about the responsibility for
taking care of the almajirai, and proceeding with the action of repatriat-
ing them, civil society groups were unequivocal in challenging the depor-
tation. Human Rights Agenda Network (HRAN) condemned the
deportation as “illegal and unconstitutional,” supporting the position
with Section 41 of the 1999 Constitution that guarantees the rights of
citizens to stay in places of their choice within the federation. e
Coalition of Kano Civic Groups made a related statement and considered
the action of the Governors as “fundamentally wrong.”
11 Discourses of the Wandering Almajiri Child…
236
Supporting Almajirai inthePandemic
Expulsion Aftermath
Since the announcement and implementation of the almajiri expulsion,
several initiatives emerged to provide alternative views and actions on
managing the situation. e moment also bolstered other already existing
initiatives to renew their commitment on the issue. Prominent among
such initiative is the proposed National Almajirci Summit which, accord-
ing to a report in the Tribune Nigeria (October 18, 2020), was “borne
out of the recent move by states governors to stop almajiri in their respec-
tive domains.” e National Coordinator of the Summit described any
attempt to stop the practice of almajirci as “a shame” for Muslims.
Instead, the Summit proposed reforms and plans to mobilize all stake-
holders for technical sessions on critical issues around sustaining the
almajiri system ahead of the national summit. Coordinators of this initia-
tive worked to mobilize the identied stakeholders, led technical cohorts,
and developed draft documents on the history of almajiri system in
Nigeria with its models and challenges. ey also understudied related
models in other Islamic countries, as well as proposed mechanism for
funding and logistics and identied strategies for outreach and
enlightenment.
Although an aliate of the planned summit, the independent eort of
the Almajiri Child Right Initiative (ACRI) in mobilizing support for the
almajiri toward reform deserves a special mention. ACRI led and partici-
pated in a series of webinars and advocacy with the support of United
Nations platforms, particularly UNICEF, with a view to providing alter-
natives to deportation. One of those webinars was on the occasion of
World Children’s Day on November 20, 2020, with a multi-stakeholder’s
perspective to address “the rights of Almajiri children.” Speakers included
the UN Deputy Secretary General, the Ambassador of the European
Union to Nigeria, and ECOWAS President.
Another dimension of the deportation debate was the awareness of
practical interventions that impact the life of almajiri and are worth emu-
lating. Prominent among these was the intervention of the Emir of
Gombe who was known to cater for the basic needs of hundreds of
M. Buba and M. Ibrahim
237
almajirai in his emirate. He spoke in a webinar organized by Noor Takaful
in June 2020 and called for an integrated National Policy on Almajiri.
Another eort that started a few months before the COVID-19 repatria-
tion asco and continued throughout the period was the intervention of
a National Assembly member from Sokoto State, Nigeria, Dr. Balarabe
Shehu Kakale. e intervention targeted 1000 almajirai with skills and
decent learning environment during 2021. Daily Trust Nigeria (January
11, 2021) reported that the legislator distributed 9 vehicles, 33 motor-
cycles, 60 sewing machines, and 40 grinding machines, among others, to
the rst set of almajirai beneciaries. e national legislator was also one
of the main sponsors of the bill seeking to repeal and enact UBEC Act
2004, so that vulnerable groups such as almajirai are captured in its pro-
visions. He was reported to have called for “a total overhaul of the alma-
jiri education system … [through] Recognition, Reform and
Mainstreaming (RRM).”
Critical Considerations
It is important, however, that we do not take this narrative of the almajiri
as a health hazard and an economic embarrassment at face value. It has a
broader context in representation theory, where culture, in this case
Muslim Hausa (Su) religious culture and its representation in the every-
day lived experience, is widely condemned as “other.” In his many engage-
ments with culture as an overarching principle of understanding society,
Stuart Hall warned us that everyday life is, in fact, an essential compo-
nent of the economic and political life of the people. He noted that how
“ordinary” people speak, what they watch, what they eat, as well as the
company they keep, all feed into their perception and how they are per-
ceived in the society. He went on to advocate for acute awareness of how
these cultural artifacts of a society could inform its political and eco-
nomic behavior. In short, Stuart Hall had always sought to put the
humanities at the center of his studies of representation. According to
Hall (1997:15):
11 Discourses of the Wandering Almajiri Child…
238
Representation connects meaning and language to culture … [and] is an
essential part of the process by which meaning is produced and exchanged
between members of a culture. It does involve the use of language, of signs
and images which stand for or represent things— semiotic and discursive.
In focusing attention on the semiotic and discursive roles of represen-
tation, Hall (1997) was appealing to the wider concerns of Roland
Barthes and Michel Foucault. He argued, following Barthes (2012 /
1972), that representation can proceed from consensus-building denota-
tion features of signs, be they individuals, objects, or events, to their inde-
terminate connotative attributes for which interpretation becomes the
source of meaning. Furthermore, connotative interpretation is rooted in
a “social ideology,” which serves to represent “the general beliefs, concep-
tual framework and value system of society” (Hall 1997:39). Hence the
creation of a “myth” around which members of a society construct their
own sense of belonging and membership. In explaining how interpreta-
tion proceeds in this context, Hall (1997: 39) summarized Barthes’ (2012
/ 1972) exemplication of the mythology of French greatness through
the image of a black soldier “giving the French ag a salute.” At the level
of connotative interpretation, it symbolized both a progressive nation
and its “imperiality,” now celebrated at the level of a myth.
With respect to Foucault’s (1980) notion of discourse, Hall pursued it
as a function of “the production of knowledge through language.” In this
context, language has been supplanted by discourse, which now describes
the relation between power and knowledge production. Discourse,
according to this representation paradigm, is where meaning resides, and
it is through such discursive practices that we uncover both the specicity
of the representation and the historical context of its interpretation. In
addition, the meaning of a discursive practice is subject to continuous
change and interpretation with the passage of time.
In this connection, it is interesting to note how the almajiri represents
a particular form of learning culture and is, in turn, represented and
dened by a dierent form of learning culture. As we noted elsewhere,
the almajiri represents a great Su tradition of learning whose ultimate
aim is communion with God and the radiation of such communion as
ethics to the wider community. e transitional vagrancy and victual
M. Buba and M. Ibrahim
239
satiation of hunger that are associated with his vocation are components
of the disciple’s “regime of truth” test along the path of freedom from
wants and needs (see Foucault 1980). is path is, of course, not the
same for everyone, but no one is spared from experiencing part of the
journey, precisely because it is the only path to salvation for (Hausa)
Muslims. e obligatory Muslim daily prayers, for example, require indi-
viduals to memorize portions of the Qur’an through practice and perse-
verance. is is the same for the Ramadan fasting during which all
Muslims must eschew food, leisure, and pleasure from dusk to dawn for
the full lunar month in a year’s cycle. And here lies an aspect of the pow-
erful discourse of power and knowledge production behind the resilient
and resistant posture of almajiri as a cultural practice (See Hall 2016).
Viewed in this way, almajiri practices and ethos have resonance in the
wider Muslim practices in the society. In fact, it was the dominant dis-
course of power, knowledge, and religious conduct for more than three
centuries of Islamic propagation in Nigeria and beyond. e current
appearance of almajirai as pitiful and their subsequent dehumanization
as the “virus” itself, then, arose from a “new” interpretation of their rele-
vance and the suciency of the “message” they project in the society. For
local Muslims, whose new religious culture directly connects to Wahhabi
Sunni traditions of Mecca and Medina, almajiri practice is a peculiar Su
practice that privileged a clerical lineage with tight control over knowl-
edge production and dissemination. at hierarchical ordering of society
has since been replaced ocially by the colonial “meritocratic” education
system and unocially by the leveling eect of Madrasa-to-Medina
Salasm of urban Muslim Hausa (urston 2018). e ecacy of their
prayers, amulets, and rubutu written potions has been publicly destabi-
lized by the overwhelming presence of Izala ritual practices beginning
with the declaration of Where I Stand by Sheikh Abubakar Gumi since
the 1970s (see Gumi and Tsiga 1992; Kane 2012). Having noted this, the
services of the Malam and his almajirai to the sprawling urban poor for
health and healing continue with an unbroken regularity.
For the wider Nigerian population, the continued presence of the alm-
ajiri as a permanent feature of the urban landscape in Nigerian cities is a
conrmation of a historic tradition of conservatism, illiteracy, religious
fanaticism, and endemic poverty. In particular, the conation of the
11 Discourses of the Wandering Almajiri Child…
240
itineracy of the almajiri with Islamic radicalization and subsequent
recruitment into the Boko Haram terror group represents a potential
danger to the society. e evidence for this apprehension is not supported
even by one of the most detailed studies of Boko Haram in Nigeria
(Walker 2016). In addition, many parts of Nigeria are already experienc-
ing the unwelcome encroachment of Fulani herdsmen, whose cattle rear-
ing has come under severe scrutiny as a kidnapping and murderous ring.
Here too, the “northern” dimension of this transhuman movement is
stressed, as is its “recolonization” and “Islamization” agenda. Yet, for hun-
dreds of years, movement, settlement, and exchange had taken place
among peoples and cultures currently within the borders of Nigeria.
Resident Muslim Hausa communities, particularly in the southwest of
Nigeria, have found Sabo “new” settlements and inter-married with the
local Yoruba communities in these areas. Trade between the north and
south has continued to ourish even in the face of rampant violence and
kidnappings along the bad roads of Nigeria. Islam is also a constant
reminder of the intersectional nature of the relationship between the
dominant ethnic groups in Nigeria. Crucially, Lagos remains the pre-
eminent commercial nerve center of Nigeria, necessitating the massive
inux of fortune seekers from all parts of the country. One of the “night
jobs” of almajiri in these areas, as well, have always included participating
in the burgeoning “prayer economy” of a citizenry living with uncertainty
(Adamu 1978; Falola 2016; Walker 2016).
Almajiri andthe“National Question” inFocus
It seems, then, that the anxiety about a super-spreader marauder in the
form of almajiri was much more than a concern with health. After all, the
almajirai were herded together and transported to other epicenters of the
disease without any protocols in place on how to handle their cases when
they arrived at their destination beyond the optics of media coverage.
Worse, there was no indication that there was any data source against
which their actual state of origin could be conrmed. Presumably, these
states relied on the information supplied by the children themselves,
which will serve to explain the harried manner of their evacuation.
M. Buba and M. Ibrahim
241
Fundamentally, the circumstances of the almajirai evacuation to a
putative state of origin were an indication of state’s failure. Quite apart
from the constitutional rights of all citizens to roam and remain in any
part of the country, as noted earlier, children have specic rights under
the Child Rights Act 2003. In the act, children’s safety from harm and
education are to be guaranteed by the state, agencies, and the individuals
caring for them. However, most northern states have not incorporated
the act into their laws, meaning that eective enforcement of the rights
of children under the act is in abeyance. How then could they be evacu-
ated and handed over to states where their rights as children are unen-
forceable? One of such rights is a constitutional requirement of the right
to education, which has also been enshrined in the Universal Basic
Education Commission (UBEC) Act 2004. e UBEC Act 2004 was
fashioned to align with the goals of Dakar Declaration on Education for
All (EFA) which Nigeria raties. e declaration sets out to ensure, for
example, that “all children, with special emphasis on girls, children in
dicult circumstances and from ethnic minorities, have access to com-
plete, free and compulsory primary education of good quality.” Hence,
the agitation of National Education Summit on Almajiri for UBEC to
use its funds to support the almajiri schools. Unfortunately, here, too,
aspect of these rights has been ceded to states with respect to primary
education. In other words, local provision regarding children education
will apply to evacuated almajirai in many of these impoverished states. At
any rate, the current school infrastructure is totally inadequate even for
the children enrolled in mainstream state schools. Even with the expand-
ing role of Arabic Boards, which now cater for a bigger school intake than
mainstream schools, places for the “newcomers” will be non-existent in
these states. e Arabic boards, ordinarily established by states at their
discretion, cater mainly for Integrated Qur’anic Schools (IQS), which
promote the integration of national curriculum subjects such as English,
Science, and Arithmetic into their religious education curriculum of
memorization and exegesis.
Related to this incapacity to address the needs of almajirai is the under-
lying current of national “conicts” of resource control, resource alloca-
tion, and resource mismanagement. As one of the most intractable
national malaises, these “conicts” are at the heart of the use of
11 Discourses of the Wandering Almajiri Child…
242
indigeneship to determine the statehood of citizens whose right to resi-
dency anywhere in Nigeria is guaranteed by the constitution. However,
given the current revenue allocation formula, states, usually high-income
generating ones, have been placing the hurdles of the formula in the path
of “non-indigenes.” is hurdle, often determined through language and
ethnicity, is in addition to considerations of biosecurity and criminal
conduct that were used to exclude almajirai from auent states’ “imagi-
nary borders.” Currents of political polarization and re-alignment, as the
wind of change blows in the direction of the 2023 presidential election,
should also not be discounted in the hawkish posture of regions jostling
for power.
Way Forward
What existed prior to COVID-19 on policy that relates to the specic
situation of the almajiri was the sponsorship of the Child Destitution Bill
by the senator representing Sokoto Central Senatorial district in 2017.
e bill sought to establish a National Commission on Child Destitution
to meet the basic livelihood needs of children without caregivers. e
debate on almajiri deportation during the COVID-19 pandemic re-
enacted the importance of the bill with Almajiri Child Right Initiative
(ACRI) calling for its passage into law.
Another aspirational move also emanating from Sokoto was the pro-
posal to adopt the Indonesian Pondok model “as an alternative to the
existing almajiri system in the state” as reported by the Vanguard Nigeria
(March 1, 2020). is intent was expressed when the State Governor
received the Indonesian Ambassador to Nigeria in the state. According to
the report, Pondok utilizes mosques and other traditional centers to pro-
vide integrated learning for Islamic and formal education. e Governor
assured that Sokoto State was not in a hurry to ban the almajiri system
like other states until an alternative system was provided.1
In the global arena, UNICEF has been providing interventions to the
Integrated Qur’anic Schools (IQS) for more than a decade. One of the
1 For a detailed study of the Pondok system in Malaysia, see Omar (1993).
M. Buba and M. Ibrahim
243
most recent of such interventions was through the Girls Education
Project (GEP3) with funding from the Foreign, Commonwealth &
Development Oce (FCDO). Some of the interventions include grants
for building learning centers, as well as provision of materials and train-
ing to support the integration of literacy and numeracy in the schools.
HASKE and RANA programs are part of GEP3 and have reached over
2500 Qur’anic schools in ve states in northern Nigeria with founda-
tional learning materials, training, and support.
A related initiative from the World Bank, managed by Better Education
Service Delivery for All (BESDA), also targets the Qur’anic Schools with
a view to the integration of Basic Education curriculum in their routine
learning. ese trends point to the initiatives of taking responsibility on
the life of the almajiri as a child with rights enshrined by global and local
statuses through a combination of literacy, numeracy, and vocational
skills with their spiritual learning of the Qur’an as the best and humane
way forward to the situation during and beyond COVID-19.
Concluding Remarks
us, the specic phenomenon of almajiri discipleship in Nigeria has
continued to be addressed in relation to (a) the Arabian model (Islamiyya),
(b) the Western (faith schools) model, and lately (c) a proposed Indonesian
model, but the underlying issues of poverty, social exclusion, and misal-
location of resources as elements of the narrative of representation must
rst be addressed. Already, there is a deafening silence regarding the allo-
cation of N400 billion for vaccine importation, while young people of all
ages are facing uncertain futures as a result of COVID-19 school closures
and the loss of economic livelihood by millions of caregivers on whom
they depend. A World Bank report on the negative impact of COVID-19
indicated that the pandemic has the potential for increasing the number
of children in learning poverty by 72 million over the 382 million count
before the shock. e future for almajirai in this uncertain time is even
more dire as the contest between the epistemologies of “useful knowl-
edge” and “deep learning” continues to arrest their development into
active and condent members of the wider community. e humanities
11 Discourses of the Wandering Almajiri Child…
244
must endeavor to push for a parallel system of access to educational
opportunities that produced much of the creative talents in northern
Nigeria well into the 1980s. ere is space and scope for both “useful
knowledge” and “deep learning” to ourish in the same environment, as
it did in the past with positive outcome for the almajirai, then broadly
dened to include all Hausa children undergoing their rites of passage in
Muslim Hausa households.
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———. 2018. Quranic Schools in Northern Nigeria: Everyday Experiences of
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———. 2016. Beyond Timbuktu: An Intellectual History of Muslim West Africa.
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11 Discourses of the Wandering Almajiri Child…
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12
Quarantining theHoly Spirit: Africa
andthePentecostal Economy
ofCOVID- 19 Pandemic
AsonzehUkah
When a planet wants you dead, you die. (Gaal Dornick (Foundations, 2021))
Introduction
In the early months of 2020, the world was hit by a ravenous coronavirus
(COVID-19) pandemic, the like of which had not known for over a
hundred years.1 In epidemiological jargon, the causative virus of
1 Research for this chapter was partly supported by the National Research Foundation of South
Africa (Reference number [uid] 85,397). e opinions, ndings and conclusions or recommenda-
tions expressed are those of the author; the NRF accepts no liability whatsoever in this regard. I am
grateful to Banchiliyew Getahun Silewondim for assistance during the revision and editing of this
chapter. e usual caveats hold.
A. Ukah (*)
University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa
University of Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany
© e Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023
F. Egbokhare, A. Afolayan (eds.), Global Health, Humanity and the COVID-19
Pandemic, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17429-2_12
248
COVID-19 is SARS-Cov-2, a severe type of pneumonia. e initial out-
break was reported around the city of Wuhan in China, specically,
among dealers and vendors at the Wuhan Huanan Seafood Wholesale
Market. However,the origin of the virus has been shrouded in controver-
sies, unproven theories, allegations and accusations.2 e “mysterious”
and uncertain origins of the virus have lent some credence to its increas-
ing spiritualisation by some believers, especially Christian evangelicals
around the world. Historically, however, what is known and beyond con-
troversy is that every known pandemic leaves an indelible mark on soci-
ety, especially in its religious epistemology and relationships to both the
material and the metasocial worlds (Ranger and Slack 1992). Such an
indelible mark could be a loss of “cultural self-condence” or permanent
destruction of culture by disease (Ranger 1992: 241). As Pierluigi
Consorti (2020: 17) pointedly asserts, “e COVID-19 epidemic is …
unavoidably destined to produce eects … on religious cultures, on the
way of being of religions and on their laws”. It could also be how the
epidemic elicits religious reasons and specically the types of responses
and reactions that are produced as modes of understanding, interpreting
and explaining it. Making sense of adversities such as pain and suering
or death and sickness is a hallmark of religious epistemologies, myths and
rituals.
e COVID-19 pandemic, like all epidemics, is primarily a public
health problem that impacts all aspects of society and in signicant ways
revises a people’s understanding of death and its aftermath. Because it is
transmitted by touch or contaminated surfaces, it calls for the institu-
tionalisation of particular social and cultural infrastructure and regimes
of bodily and public hygiene to contain and control its transmission.
Such new structures and reorganisation of social connectivity call into
2 In a detailed 120-page WHO-China joint report, “WHO-Convened Study of Origins of SARS-
CoV- 2”, the World Health Organisation and association with Chinese scientists ranked four pos-
sible theories about the origins of virus from “very likely to extremely unlikely”, namely, i) an
intermediate host, ii) direct zoonotic introduction, iii) introduction through cold/food chain and
iv) introduction resulting from a laboratory incident. Yet, some claim it was an accident from some
bioweapons’ experimentations which occurred elsewhere in Europe or the United States. e
report concluded with a call “for a continued scientic and collaborative approach to be taken
towards tracing the origins of COVID-19” (p.120). (See: https://www.who.int/publications/i/
item/who-convened-global-study-of-origins-of-sars-cov-2-china-part).
A. Ukah
249
question already established conviviality which religious communities are
known for and which they attribute to their connection to a metasocial
realm. Moreover, these regimes materialise what it means to live in an age
of anxiety and a permanent condition of personal and socialrisk. With
more than 6.5 million conrmed deaths from the epidemic, according
the the World Health Organisation,the COVID-19 pandemic has pro-
duced an excess of deaths and suering, anxiety, worry and fear (Ranger
and Slack 1992; Fleisher and Norman 2016).3 is is essentially because
there are no known and generally available and accessible cures or remedy
for it. COVID-19 is a pandemic of excesses. In this sense, it resembles
Pentecostalism as preached and practised in Africa: it is a religion that
erases moderation and preached the excess of wealth as a sign of God’s
blessing and health and human ourishing as ends in themselvesin this
world. Religion has also played an important role in the meaning and
purpose of death and its aftermath. Some scholars have argued that reli-
gion emerged from humanity’s attempt to make sense of death and what
happens after death (Chidester 2002; Harari 2014: 303–306).
e present pandemic, therefore, has particularly produced marked
responses and challenges to the Pentecostal communities of Africa where
the Pentecostal spiritualityhas blossomed and attracted intense public
fervour because of its theology of prosperity and healing claims. As a
religion of power (and also a “public religion”4), the pandemic provides
not just theological, socioeconomic and practical challenges but opportu-
nities for Pentecostalism to demonstrate its community-making resources
and the resilience of theological creativity in dealing with human suer-
ing. e Pentecostal theology and rhetoric of power, miracle, healing and
prophecy are all, it seems, put to the test by the COVID-19 pandemic.
e too-muchness of Pentecostal promises, especially from the activities
of the megachurches (Ukah 2020d), appears to have been modelled for a
3 e global death toll from COVID-19 as at 28 October 2022 stands at 6,566,610; there has been
a total of 626,337,158 reported and conrmed cases of COVID-19 infection. (see WHO
Coronavirus (COVID-19) Dashboard, https://covid19.who.int/).
4 I characterise “public religions”, as active social movements intent on transforming members,
renovating social structures and reconguring society according to the priorities and inspirations
from metasocial considerations or other-worldly sources or text such as scriptures (see Marty 1998:
393–4; Casanova 1994; Ukah 2020c)
12 Quarantining the Holy Spirit: Africa and the Pentecostal…
250
human catastrophe such as a pandemic. Moreover, in the history of
Christianity, there is much that apparently would, it is supposed, prepare
Pentecostal leaders and communities for epidemics of global proportions
such as the COVID-19 pandemic. e early church was characterised as
a community of mercy, love, kindness and empathy. ese factors would
predispose the Pentecostal communities of Africa to respond in specic,
theologically consistent ways to a pandemic. It is, therefore, important to
understand how in reality these ourishing Christian communities in
Africa responded and continued to respond to the emergence of the
COVID-19 disease to put into context the place of religion and religious
organisations in post-colonial Africa, where states are known to be under-
performing and unable to meet their obligations to their citizens. is
chapter critically examines how the Pentecostal communities in Africa
responded to doing church from a distance and making sense of a human
tragedy of unimaginable proportion, now called the COVID-19
pandemic.
Lockdown andtheQuarantining
oftheHoly Spirit
e fear, dread of death and sickness occasioned by the outbreak of the
COVID-19 pandemic caused state governments and public health o-
cials across the world to institute strict and hitherto unprecedented mea-
sures and regulations such as lockdown of society, social or physical
distancing between people, restrictions of the sales of certain goods and
the unavailability of some social services. e closedown of schools and
public gatherings such as sporting events and the insistence on the wear-
ing of facial coverings and use of hand sanitisers were sucient sources of
panicand distress to many people. For many individuals, because these
new public regulations restricted personal freedoms such as publicgath-
ering, in some cases gathering in private homes too, and movement, the
pandemic also impacted the relationship between faith communities and
public laws. As religious communities of all stripes could not come
together to worship or exercise their liberties of worship, panic set in and
A. Ukah
251
resistances to the new rules emerged. It was not just a test of the power of
the state to make new laws and implement them but also the test of the
nature and extent of public trust in government or publicocials and the
state infrastructures that they oversee. For many African Christians, how-
ever, it was a test of their faith in God and a search for a new meaning or
explanation for evil and suering, death and human frailty in the face of
a supposedly just, all-powerful, loving, caring and righteous God. Like all
problems of evil, COVID-19 is a challenge to believers’ understanding
and conception of a benevolent deity in the face of human nitude which
pain and death evoke and which the global death toll of the disease pres-
ents to believers.
e initial panic and draconian nature of the rollback of societal con-
nectivity and common life elicited sharp, sometimes negative, reactions
from some sectors of societies. Among those with sustained and uncoop-
erative reactions, at least at the onset of the pandemic, have been faith-
based organisations and leaders. Among these, evangelical Christians of
which the Pentecostals are a subset, predominate. e Pentecostal seg-
ment, because of their mastery and penetration of modern social media,
has acquired a larger-than-life inuence among their followers and a size-
able section of African communities. For these communities, the
COVID-19 pandemic represents a direct attack on protected rights and
freedoms such as those pertaining to movement and gathering or associa-
tion. More importantly, some of the public measures directly interfered
with their understanding of their religion and of God, as the maker, mas-
ter and controller of the universe. Furthermore, the (sometimes confus-
ing, even contradictory) public health messaging by governments and
state agencies created a cloak of secrecy and misinterpretation which
somebelievers took to be directed at the very foundation of their faith in
a higher power. us, the distrust of the state and its ocialsstarted a
sustained and confusing circulation of alternate explanations and inter-
pretations based on faith and religious convictions. Pentecostal leaders
have been very vocal about their views partly because of their access to
modern social mediaand partly because of their belief in an all-knowing
deity who is also a source of accurate information about the world and its
organisaton. Pentecostal sermons and other forms of communication
12 Quarantining the Holy Spirit: Africa and the Pentecostal…
252
have frequently been posted on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and
Instagram giving Pentecsotal leaders’views a large footprint and uptake.
Understanding the reactions and responses of some religious leaders to
the Covid pandemic would help in better situating African conceptions
of evil and healing amid global ows of information and technologies of
mass communication. For example, was it the need for community or
healing or income that informed the challenges to social distancing and
lockdown mounted by Pentecostal leaders? Because the coronavirus pan-
demic and the attendant restrictive legal regime hurriedly instituted to
contain its eects impinged on economic and legal rights and liberties,
some of the implications directly and adversely aected the economic
rights of religious clergy to earn a living. e primary income of
Pentecostal clergy derives from the nancial collections (oertory, dona-
tions, tithes, etc.) they take during religious events. ese events include
the Sunday worship event but also other ritual activities such as bible
study, healing services, and prayer meetings among others. Lockdown
regulations largely compromised incomes and revenues from these
sources. Pentecostal leaders’ near-collective opposition to the new legal
and social regimes dealing with the pandemic might havearisen from a
diversity of sources: theological, social, legal and economic. For these
groups of clergy who are functionally religious entrepreneurs, religious
freedoms are economic freedoms. ese freedoms arediscursively and
conceptually separate but practically and realistically the same. e coro-
navirus pandemic, therefore, has presented a constitutional conundrum
for many African countries (such as Nigeria, South Africa, Uganda and
Malawi) regarding the complex and complicated (incomplete or is it
impossible?) relationship between religion and the state and the limits of
each sphere’s authority (Asamoah-Gyadu 2020, 2021; Ukah 2020a;
Tengatenga etal. 2021). Religious leaders claim authorities beyond the
realm of the state, but the state exercises the regulatory authority on reli-
gious association and public conduct.Across Africa, religion provided a
canopy for interrogating state laws and regulations of the public sphere;
religious leaders articulated alternatives to both ocial [state, see Fig.12.1
below, for example]or scientic interpretations and explanations of the
disease as well as possible solutions to it. e eective exercise and imple-
mentation of state authority and regulations required the co-operation
A. Ukah
253
Fig. 12.1 A public message about COVID-19 (Photo: author 2021)
and co-optation of religious leaders.Religion provides anchor and direc-
tion to many but also, during the COVID-19 era, religion demonstrated
its overaching inuence as a destabilising rhetoric for manyothers in the
face of fear, panic and the unknown (Prempeh 2021). Pentecostal com-
munities and their leaders were in the forefront of making their views
public in response to government actions and regulations vis-à-vis the
pandemic. eir initial reactions were that of confusion and powerless-
ness; leaders revolted but soon retraced their steps, retracted some of their
initial opinions and revised their actions. e confusion that ensued
could be attributed to the direct and immediate impact of the lockdown
which also foreclosed pastors’ exercise of “Holy Ghost Power”, the rheto-
ric of invincibility which the pulpit aords them when they preached.
When Pentecostal healers failed to perform their rituals of healing and
miracles, they resorted to cursing and binding the coronavirus.Perceived
as evil, cursing and binding the pandemic became a strategy of
12 Quarantining the Holy Spirit: Africa and the Pentecostal…
254
performing ritual power by Pentecostal leaders. Not being able to do this
in physical religious assemblies was a severe setback and challenge to
many Pentecostal leaders (Asamoah-Gyadu 2021).
COVID-19 andSpiritual Inoculation
As the ongoing coronavirus pandemic has exposed the limitations of
African state powers and authority—in the area of public trust and the
power of the state to respond to the needs of their citizens—so also it has
shown the weakness of African religious systems and their leadership
capabilities. e reactions and responses of both African state govern-
ments and religious organisations to the pandemic and attempts at con-
taining the spread of the virus or managing the disease illustrate “a web of
religious prevarication and state fragility” which partly inform “the pre-
vailing perception of the virus as eschatological and nihilistic among citi-
zens” (Chidume etal. 2021: 1). In a pandemic, trust in the powers and
reliance on the resources of groups and entities above the individual is
critical. is is where trust in the powers of the state comes in. But for so
many people, more trust is invested in the powers of religion or the enti-
ties around which religious rituals revolvethan in the structures of the
state; for some Christians, their trust is in God. For Pentecostal Christians
especially, more trust is reposed in the power of the Holy Spirit—to bring
healing and sustenance, for example—than in human structures and
knowledgesuch as the state or science.
By far the most far-reaching shock for many Africans and their physi-
cal and economic well-being and livelihoods in the twenty-rst century is
the coronavirus outbreak and the COVID-19—the disease caused by the
virus—pandemic that has since January 2020 ensued. African countries,
with weak institutional structures—such as healthcare facilities, techno-
logical production, political institutions and economic bases—are
aected by the pandemic in dierent and perhaps more adverse ways
than many non-African countries and societies. Statistically, while Africa
has not experienced high rates of infection and deaths from COVID-19
disease, the socio-economic consequences of the outbreak seem far-
reaching than in more developed societies with robust medical and
A. Ukah
255
politico- economic institutions and networks.5 In the weak and under-
performing post-colonial African states, religion and religious organisa-
tions have become crucial actors in the public management of disaster
and vulnerability. Religious actors—Christian, Islamic and indigenous—
have historically exercised signicant inuences in bringing members of
societies together and reassuring them through various methods and
meansof the powers of the unseen world and entities in restoring whole-
ness and broken harmony. Harmony, which is the primary religious quest
in the African worldview and order of things, is only meaningful in the
context of discordant desires and forces or sources of disharmony such as
illness and disease, poverty and lack, suering and pain, confusion, disor-
der and dislocation. All this has characterised contemporary African soci-
eties in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. e COVID-19 era has,
therefore, heightened the quest to re-establish harmony as a rst step
towards achieving human and societal ourishing.
Pentecostalism promises its adherents life lived in abundance (Jn
10:10) which is made manifest in health, wealth, success and prosperity
in life. Pentecostal promise of salvation in terms that strongly resonate
with the cultural worldview of Africans accounts for its wildre-like pop-
ularity, especially in urban centres and cities. In the past fty years, schol-
ars of African Pentecostalism have described the explosion and spread of
this new form of pneumatic spirituality and Christianity as a “revolution”
(Gaiya 2002; Ojo 2004; Marshall 2008; Burgess 2008). However,none
of those who so generously and eloquantlydescribed Pentecostalism as a
revolution supports such a description with an in-depth, empirically
driven analysis of what a “revolutionary religion” means or the many-
layered features of a revolution (e.g. see Cherstich etal. 2020).6 Based on
the capacity of Pentecostal leaders to mobilise and seize the public and
keep throngs of people spell-bound over hoursand days—ostansibly for
5 Alex Eze, Michael Silverman, Saverio Stranges & Janica Adams, “e impact of COVID-19 has
been lower in Africa. We explore the reasons”, Conversations, 17 August 2021, https://theconver-
sation.com/the-impact-of-covid-19-has-been-lower-in-africawe-explore-the-reasons-164955.
6 What may be apparent is that “revolution” and “revolutionary” are used relative to the inuence
or impact of African Pentecostalism and its leadership on the African landscape in a metaphorical
rather than analytical sense. However, concepts such as revolution or decolonisation do not have
synonyms and so need a great deal of care and analytical clarity in their application (see Tuck and
Wayne Yang 2012).
12 Quarantining the Holy Spirit: Africa and the Pentecostal…
256
revivals and retreats—some scholars have concluded that Pentecostalism
is the fastest-growing religion in Africa with a capacity to transform urban
ecology and structure, among other aspects of social life. In the sphere of
urban regeneration and reconstruction, Pentecostal leaders have built
massive prayer camps that have slowly enlarged into ritual cities, some-
times with self-sustaining facilities. ey have also actively engaged in the
real estate industry developing in some peri-urban areas of Africa large
swaths of prime real estate, primarily for their wealthy members.
Pentecostal Christians have also made their imprint on the political life of
many African countries where their participation in multi-party democ-
racy and partisan politics have been very visible. In Nigeria, Pentecostals
have swayed voting outcomes and as a result have been intensely courted
by politicians aspiring for elective public positions. is leads to such
claims, like that of Ebenezer Obadare (2018), albeit prematurely, it
seems, that there is a “Pentecostal Republic” within the Republic of
Nigeria. In Zambia, the popularity of Pentecostalism nudged Frederick
Chiluba, the country’s erstwhile president (from 1991–2002), to declare
it a “Christian republic”. In the past sixty years or more, Pentecostal theo-
logical schools have also emerged across many African cities where local
clergy are trained in culturally relevant methods of theological education.
Further, in East, West and southern Africa, Pentecostals have also engaged
with public education, particularly at the tertiary education market,
where they own and manage universities and vocation centres, thus,
inuencing the training of Africa’s future elite. In all these areas, it is
apparent that the new Pentecostal paradigm of power is obvious, palpa-
ble, even visible. e varied and diverse African publics can see, touch,
feel, and smell the material manifestation of African Pentecostal social
and ritual life and spirituality. is was so until the emergence of
theCOVID-19 pandemic.
In the course of the unfolding COVID-19 pandemic, this characteri-
sation of Pentecostal public face and force has come under severe scru-
tiny. African Pentecostalism as a people-centred revolutionary impulse
has come under intense re-examinationand recharacterisation. ere are
many reasons for this. Broadly, Pentecostalism is recognised as a religion
of the “Spirit and Power” (Miller etal. 2013). e “spirit” isusually but
not exclusively understood as the Holy Spirit that believers recognise as
A. Ukah
257
the engine and energy that drive and propel the believing community but
that empowers in the sense of ‘bringing to be’ new forms of life and
socialites in the community. e spirit is associated both in the African
worldview and in Pentecostal theology with lifeand vitality (on African
concept of vitality, see Magesa 1997;Molefe and Maraganedzha 2022).
As Matthew Engelke (2018: 288) rightly points out, in many African
languages the word for spirit is synonymous with breath, air, wind and
life. Pentecostalism claims to be internally animated by the breath of life
that indicates the central role of the Holy Spirit in its scheme of things.
e claim is thatIt is the Holy Spirit that informs its rituals, teachings,
leadership style and structure, and work. Above all, the claim continues,
the Holy Spirit is the power that believers and leaders exercise in speaking
in tongues and performing miracles. Many of these assumptions and
claims of power and its practiceshave been challenged by the emergence
and impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
For Africans, life is a force, a power, and energy for action, a capability
to perform (Sogolo 1993: 91–118; Kamalu 1998: 51–75); hence, human
life is often characterised as participation in a “life-force”, “a divine power
manifesting itself in everyone and everything in the universe … a world
of faith which is the crown of culture” (Ruch and Anyanwu 1981: 163).
Pentecostal claims to, and of, power and its performance are totalising,
encompassing all aspects of life and society (Lindhardt 2012; Endong
and Essoh 2019; Premack 2019; Soothill 2019), which would mean that
under the vitiating inuence and impact of the COVID-19 pandemic,
the Pentecostal spirit and practice should constitute a mitigating impulse
in believers’ experience. As Wynand J. de Kock (2000) observes,
Pentecostal theology of power is a “doing” rather than a “thinking” activ-
ity; it is action-oriented and driven. As such, it privileges action and
praxis over reection and reexivity. is aspect of the religion is easily
evident in the way its leaders advertise their activities as sights and scenes
of change and transformation, of healing, repair, regeneration, restora-
tion and miracles as radical and positive realignmentand self- and social-
repositioning. e Pentecostal concept of power often revolves around
the role ofcharismatic leaders as spiritual mediators of the capability to
bring about human wellness and the “wellbeing of [hu]mankind”
(Endong and Essoh 2019: 371). us,well-being is comprehensive and
12 Quarantining the Holy Spirit: Africa and the Pentecostal…
258
all-encompassing in the diverse ways in which power is advertised in
Pentecostal discourse and praxis.
Pentecostal practices of the Holy Spirit and performances of power are
intimately linked to health and all the diverse ways in which this key
cultural religious and spiritual quest is threatened and compromised.
Because the natural and the supernatural interlock and intertwine, the
quest for health and healing are spiritual exercises. What threatens, hin-
ders and compromises physiological or biological well-being and wellness
is connected to and believed to be of spiritual consequence. African
understanding of health—and by extension the Pentecostal conception
of health and wellness as a comprehensive physical, mental, physiologi-
cal, social and spiritual well-being—is consistent with the World Health
Organisation’s denition of health.7 Such conception recognises the com-
plexities of the human person, condition andaspiration. e apprecia-
tion of both the comprehensiveness and the complexities of health
indicates that it is more of an ideal, an approximation and an unrelenting
quest than a practice, achievement or goal. e search for well-being and
the desire to explain the presence and cause of misfortune (in order to
prevent it) in human experience have animated the Pentecostal imagina-
tion and praxis, and remains an enduring attraction for many Africans.
is is all the more so under the conditions of a public health epidemic
such as COVID-19. More importantly, the claim by prominent
Pentecostal gures across Africa to have the power to heal, restore, cure,
or provide remedy remains a strong selling point for Pentecostal entrepre-
neurs. e COVID-19 pandemic, it would seem, presented a near- perfect
condition for Pentecostal entrepreneurs to market their healing wares and
exercise their gifts of realigning the social distortions and dislocations
many people experienced and still experiencing.Presented as a healing
strategy, Pentecostalism may, therefore, be construed as a public wel-
fareand health facility, a mechanism that enables and restores broken
harmony and empowers believers with optimal capability to discharge
their responsibilities, personal and social. Conceived in this manner, the
Holy Spirit in the life of the believer can be likened to a spiritual
7 WHO’s Constitution, signed on 22 July 1946 by representatives of 22 states, is available at https://
www.who.int/about/governance/constitution.
A. Ukah
259
inoculation, a vaccine against lack, illness and malevolent forces. Again,
this is until the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic when the global social
order was so abruptly disrupted and disorganised, and, as it turned out,
the Holy Spirit and its powers of healing—as claimed by many Pentecostal
entrepreneurs—were challenged and quarantined by statepublic health
regulations enforced and backed up by state power and bureaucracy.
COVID-19 Pandemic andthePower
oftheHoly Spirit
Understanding the generalised and nuanced reactions of believers to
adverse events, especially sudden and unexpected adverse events, is
important in understanding religious behaviours and the implications for
religiously induced social change. As Diego Meza (2020: 218) states, fear
of the unknown “motivates religious faith” and religious faith “mitigates
fear”. From the experience of past pandemics in history, religion has been
prominent in bothsupplying explanations and interpretations as well as
responses to human adversity (Stark 1997; Ellwood 2009;Ukah 2020b:
446–457). In the economies of evil, human suering and death, religion
thrives (Lopez and Gillespie 2015). For example, Omololu Fagunwa
(2020: 52) claims that the 1918–1919 inuenza pandemic in West Africa
“overlapped with the move of the Holy Spirit in the life of indigenous
African Christians”. e “move of the Holy Spirit” referred to is the
emergence of the Aladura (adura, Yoruba for prayer; Aladura, people of
prayer) Church movement in southern Nigeria during this time (Peel
1968: Mitchell 1970) as well as the rst group ofPentecostal churches in
Nigeria. According to dam Mohr (2020: 220), “the 1918–1919 inuenza
pandemic, a destructive disease … led to a religious revolution” in West
Africa. at “revolution” was the emergence of 250 faith-healing churches
in West Africa all of which traced their roots to the Faith Tabernacle
Congregation in Philadelphia.
In the face of a health crisis, spiritual resources such as divine healing
assume new and reinforced resonance. Both religious beliefs in higher
powers and ritual practices provide certain degrees of assurances and
12 Quarantining the Holy Spirit: Africa and the Pentecostal…
260
regularities during crises moments that mitigate the unpredictability of
unfolding health emergencies such as an epidemic of massive proportion.
While the problem and presence of death have remained a key issue in
religious doctrines and the search for life’s purpose, the sheer volume of
deaths during a pandemic comes with a heightened awareness of human
vulnerability and mortality(Chidester 2002). Across Africa,many new
religious movements sprang up as a direct response to the u pandemic
of 1918–1919. According to J.D.Y Peel (2016: 79), the Aladura move-
ment in West Africa, which was established during this time, sought to
make the power of prayers more available than in the older Protestant
churches “for such this-worldly objectives as health, fertility, protection
against witchcraft and danger, guidance, prosperity, and success—in
sum, that state of all-round well-being …”. Sickness and large numbers
of deaths occurring in very short intervals cause panic and a feeling of
helplessness and distrust in existing structures of interpretation and miti-
gation. For some Africans, COVID-19 has turned their previously our-
ishing family trees into wasteland twigs due to the high fatality rate of the
virus. e shredding and jarring experience nudges them to re- evaluate
their religious spiritual beliefs and standpoint.Religion supplies beliefs in
higher powers and supernatural capabilities in dealing with the anxiety
caused by the imminence of death and human frailty.is may explain
the manifest spiritualisation of the meaning and interpretation of the
COVID-19 pandemic among African Pentecostals.
e outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic from the beginning of
2020 onward is a case in point in assessing and understanding the impact
of Pentecostal beliefs and practices in many parts of the world. is is
more so in Africa where the religion of the Holy Spirit has many adher-
ents and where high-prole Pentecostal leaders have emerged over the
decades claiming unusual powers to heal and restore people to health and
to empower and promote believers to function optimally in all aspects of
life. Prophecy, as one of the highly sought-after gifts of the Holy Spirit,
has played a visible role in the making and marketing of Pentecostal inno-
vators and entrepreneurs. e most prominent African Pentecostal inno-
vators have been those who claim to have the power of prognostication.
ose religious leaders who promise to provide insights into their clients’
private lives and hidden explanations regarding the outcome of future
A. Ukah
261
events have attracted large patronage. Often during religious events, these
leaders have in various ways tried to meet the expectations of their clients
by supplying what many of their followers claim to be predictions of
future events or a demonstration of the foreknowledge of hidden events
or experiences attributed to the power of the Holy Spirit. In this
respect,two important and pre-eminentPentecostal prophets in Africa
will illustrate the place and role of prophecy in times of existential uncer-
tainty. From the 1990s through to his sudden and shocking demise on 05
June 2021, Temitope Balogun Joshua, founder-owner of the Synagogue
of All Nations Church (SCOAN)and Immanuel satellite television sta-
tion, was the most important religious entrepreneur and innovator in
Africa. His rise to prominence was partly on account of his claims to
accurately predict high prole deaths of politicians or voting outcomes in
many countries across the world or football matches (Ukah 2016;
McNaught 2021). e dramatic ritual services and the power of satellite
television drew a global audience and followership to Joshua’s Lagos
headquarters of SCOAN.Joshua’s popularity came with greatwealth and
his wealth reinforced and expanded his spiritual empire and disciples
who come from all walks of life and socioeconomic classes (McNaught
2022).Similarly, Emmanuel Makandiwa of United Family International
Church is a famous Pentecostal prophet from Zimbabwe whose claim to
fame revolves around his prophetic goods and services(Biri 2021). By
prying into the future and gaining insights about what is to happen
before they happen, these pastors and many others like them claim to
guide and inform believers’ decisionsthrough the inspiration of the spirit
of God. Such insights, they claim, come from their intimate relationship
with a metasocial or divine source, usually the Holy spiritsuch that the
words theyspeak are not theirs but those of the mind of deity. is expla-
nation notwithstanding, the practice of foretelling the future or prognos-
tication (which is dierent from prophecy as “the mediation and
interpretation of the divine mind and will” [Vawter 1990:187])is some-
thingthat ties these Pentecostal actors to the African religious and cul-
tural worldview and praxis. In both African religions and Pentecostal
practices, prophetism could rightly beregarded asakindred institution
or practice; Pentecostal prophets are diviners by a dierent name.ese
two pillars of Pentecostal innovators have featured prominently in the
12 Quarantining the Holy Spirit: Africa and the Pentecostal…
262
attempts to make sense of and contend with the COVID-19 pandemic.
While the latter claimed to have foretold the coming of the coronavirus
in a series of pronouncements in 2015, 2016 and 2017, the former made
no such claims. However, Makandiwa’s claims only became known after
the virus had gained ground around the world. It is puzzling, therefore,
to consider the worth and purpose for such prophecy when it did not
lead to any redemptive, amiliorative or mitigatingaction.
At the end of 2020, T.B. Joshua, who called COVID-19 “the aic-
tion” and a “monster”, prophesied that the pandemic has three stages, the
rst of which was nearing its end, while the remaining two parts would
be more devastating and “tougher” than the rst stage but only for a few
unnamed countries rather than involving all the world.8 For the African
Pentecostal community, the emergence of the pandemic was a rude shock
to the claimed ability of its principal prophets to speak, mediate and
interpret the mind of God to their followers and the larger society.
Pentecostal prophecy, which in the past is credited with predicting the
demise of politicians and other socially signicant people, failed to pre-
dict the death of a large number of the human population which includes
politically exposed and signicant personalities such as John Jerry
Rawlings of Ghana(22 June 1947– 12 Nov. 2020), (former)President
John Magufuli of Tanzania (29 Oct. 1959 – 17 March 2021), Abba
Kyari(23 Sept. 1952– 17 April 2020) and Obediah Mailaa (24 Dec.
1956– 19 Sept. 2021)both of Nigeria. e singular consistent interpre-
tation of the coronavirus that emerged from the Pentecostal community
is that it is a plague, a “demonic spirit” sent by God to punish humanity
for their failings. Some church leaders, such as Helen Ukpabio, founder-
owner of Liberty Gospel Church,Nigeria, further asserted that what she
called the “plague” was designed and devised by humans who mistakenly
allowed it to get out of hand and control(more on COVID-19 as a
8 Muhaimin Olowoporoku, “COVID-19: What God told me would happen in 2021, says TB
Joshua”, 1 January 2021, https://pmnewsnigeria.com/2021/01/01/covid-19-what-god-told-me-
would-happen-in-2021-says-tb-joshua/ (accessed 01.10.2021).
A. Ukah
263
plague shortly). In that accident, she sees the hand of God in penalising
humanity for its intransigence.9
e eervescence of Pentecostalism in Africa as well as on many Global
South centres has been widely documented and dierent explanations
and interpretations oered about its appeal. Central to these explanations
and interpretations is the place and role of the Holy Spirit in the life of
believers and communities, the organisation of ritual practices and activi-
ties. Pentecostal theologians of repute have come to describe Pentecostalism
as a pneumatological religion. e Holy Spirit, according to these schol-
ars, is believed to be active and operational in the lives of individual
believers, empowering them to speak in the language of the spirit, under-
stood only by the Spirit and characterising its power to overcome barriers
and produce manifold embodied experiences and expressions. Such char-
acterisation is often linked historically to the events described in the sec-
ond chapter of the New Testament book of Acts of the Apostles where a
handful of fearful followers of Jesus Christ hid in the Upper Room on the
Day of Pentecost—while their neighbours celebrated the Jewish feast—
experienced an unusual occurrence. e occurrence was the coming of
the Holy Ghost which was described as “a sound of violent wind …
[which] appeared to them tongue as of re [that] came to rest on the head
of each of them”.10 What is signicant for this chapter is that the follow-
ers of Jesus self-quarantined in fear of the larger Jewish community. e
coming of the Holy Spirit under the conditions of self- or group-isolation
also (eectively) quarantined the Holy Spirit. In like manner, under the
conditions of the coronavirus pandemic, one of the rst non-
pharmacological interventions to mitigate the spread of the virus was
social distancing, isolation and quarantining of exposed persons or groups
and the prohibition of mass gathering. Even when reinterpreted as an
apocalyptic instrument of divine anger, the coronavirus epidemic was a
re-enactment of Christian origin stories of fear, isolation and quarantin-
ing. Further, such reinterpretation that the Pentecostal community
9 Helen Ukpabio, “Corona Virus Plague Reveals God’s Anger”, https://www.facebook.com/ ladya-
postlehelenukpabio/videos/533021300734044/ (the sermon was preached on Sunday, February
23, 2020).
10 Acts of the Apostles 2: 1–3 (e New Jerusalem Bible, Standard version translation (London:
Darton, Longman & Todd Ltd., 1985).
12 Quarantining the Holy Spirit: Africa and the Pentecostal…
264
favours connects contemporary experience with the history and rereading
of the ten plagues of Exodus (Ex.7:8-13:16) and the seven plagues
ofRevelation (16:2-21).
Salvation,Starvation andSuffering
As sickness caused by COVID-19 infections caused many deaths, physi-
cal and social distancing devastated economic livelihoods. Across African
cities, usually characterised by endless cycles of Pentecostal gatherings
such as revivals, night vigils and other mass events, city life went dormant
and silent. According to a United Nations’ projection of the socio-
economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in Africa, “more than
$200 billion” would be needed and mobilised to stabilise African econo-
mies which would “include direct support that will help keep households
aoat and businesses solvent” (2020: 3).11 Ordinarily, the need to safe-
guard communities from the risk of food shortages, especially for the
most vulnerable such as young children, women and older people and
11 United Nations, “Policy Brief: Impact of COVID-19in Africa”, 20 May 2020, https://unsdg.
un.org/resources/policy-brief-impact-covid-19-africa.
Fig. 12.2 A Public Service advertisement to curb religion-induced vaccine hesi-
tancy in South Africa (Photo: author)
A. Ukah
265
other at-risk groups, evokes a powerful response from religious commu-
nities. It was the case for the early church during the epidemics of the
second and third centuries of the Common Era when the early church
members mobilised resources in support of its diverse communities. e
trust deciency which many Africans have with their government o-
cials and the formal state makes it possible for them to believe and trust
what their religious ocials and leaders tell them. African states are frag-
ile in the sense of not adequately meeting the citizenship and governance
needs of their people, not providing adequate security of lives and prop-
erty and not being responsive to the yearnings and aspirations of the
populations. Under such fraught social conditions,religious organisa-
tions and their leaders often step in the gap to full some of those impor-
tant needs which these populations cannot often meet on their own
(Prempeh 2021; Chidume etal. 2021). In the immediateaftermath of
COVID-19in Africa, however, Pentecostal organisations which priori-
tised health and wealth doctrines in their self-marketing and public rep-
resentation,responded dierently.
Pentecostal leaders called for more prayers and prayer gatherings, in
some instances explicitly againstpublic health regulations and state direc-
tives of social and physical distancing and lockdown. In Kenya, for exam-
ple, some clergy argued that the limited number of persons permitted in
indoor services during the early relaxation of the lockdown was unfair,
and that the one-hour stipulated by the government for church service
was not enough. In some cities, security ocials had to use bruteforce
such as whipping and tear gassing to disperse congregations who, encour-
aged by their leaders, had gathered in churches for prayers.12 It must be
added, however, that the forcible dispersal of worshippers happened
across the religious spectrum and not just restricted to the Pentecostal
churches.13 It does, then, seem that in the context of the unfolding
12 Sotho Molosankwe, “Soweto Pastor and His congregations arrested after Worshippers Attack
Cops, Damage Patrol Cars”, 1 May 2021, https://www.iol.co.za/news/soweto-pastor-and-his-
congregants- arrested-after-worshippers-attack-cops-damage-patrol-cars-7d34a193-bd69-4e07-
ad81- c465871e3dea; Dickens Olewe, “Coronavirus in Africa: Whipping, shooting and snooping”,
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-52214740.
13 “Worshippers ee as police og them out of Catholic Church”, https://naijabanging.com.ng/
worshippers-ee-as-police-og-them-out-of-catholic-church-photos/.
12 Quarantining the Holy Spirit: Africa and the Pentecostal…
266
disaster, Africans sought religious answers more than scientic, legal or
bureaucratic responses. More importantly for both congregants and the
leadership, many ignored the obvious capacity and potential of religious
community-making tendencies to accelerate and escalatethe spread of
COVID-19 and thesocial transmission of the disease. As a result, in
many parts of Africa, such as South Africa, Pentecostal groups became
super-spreaders of the coronavirus because they wilfully and deliberately
ignored government regulations and the new regime of social infrastruc-
ture put in place for controlling the spread of the virus. One reason why
these Pentecostal leaders ignored these new public healthrules could be
traced to the belief in the power of prayer, especially the power of the
Holy Spirit as healer and saver of believers from diseases and dangers.
Another reason is that Pentecostalpastors largelydepended on their con-
gregations for their livelihoods, which come from donations, collections
and tithes. Not being able to gather, then, deprived the leaders of a sure
means of income and thereby threatened their means of livelihood. It is
also important to consider another reason: the exercise of religious free-
dom as well as the assumption that “religious freedom” is an unlimited or
unrestricted human right. Many religious leaders argued that the exercise
of religion was a form of human right was also an “essential service”
requiring exemption from the general COVID-19 restrictive regimes
(Tengatenga etal. 2021). Worship as essential service is more about salva-
tion of the soul than serving people from starvation and meaningfully
responding to human suering. In many dierent ways, Pentecostal
actors assuming a superior source of knowledge and social power consti-
tuted formidable hindrances to government regulations and management
of the COVID-19 pandemic. Hence, some states made deliberate eorts
to court the support of some clergy in the implementation of state poli-
cies on COVID-19 (Fig.12.2).
A. Ukah
267
COVID-19 Pandemic andPentecostal
Prophetic Chaos
Money comes to money, and poverty to poverty. Education comes to edu-
cation, and ignorance to ignorance (Yuval Noah Harari, 2014: 161).
COVID-19 pandemic created, among other wide-ranging conse-
quences, global instability, uncertainty and chaos. e largest numbers
of people falling sick from infection with the virus, the unsightly scenes
of crowded hospitals and the elevated numbers of fatalities destabi-
lised social routines and processes forcing government and states to roll
back social connectivity by enforcing lockdowns and physical distanc-
ing, among other precautionary measures. ese two measures (physi-
cal distancing and lockdown) directly and viciously stabbed at the heart
of religious communities which are sustained by conviviality and con-
nectedness. Indeed, it seemed that when believers needed divine inter-
vention, the measures against the virus deliberately undermined such
intervention. is is especially so among the poor who live in crowded
homes who derive their livelihoods from petty businesses and with little
reserved resources to fall back on under lockdown conditions. e dis-
orienting condition likely nudged many to seek spiritual help or lean on
the resources that religion and religious belonging oer. One important
function of religion has been to make sense of chaos, to generate cer-
tainty in times of confusion and crisis through myth and rituals, and
also to provide interpretations of human experiences of unknowing.
Consistent with totalising Pentecostal beliefs and practices, leaders were
quick to oer a spiritual interpretation for the COVID-19 pandemic.
Religious interpretation and explanation of the pandemic became a via-
ble and meaningful resource in the face of the often confusing govern-
ment policy and communication or the frequently inaccessible scientic
jargons about the disease provided in the media. Even those Pentecostal
leaders who failed to predict and foresee the coronavirus outbreak were
quick to claim that the aiction was a form of communication of divine
displeasure from a metaphysical realm. Helen Upkabio, the Nigerian
religious entrepreneur and moviemaker, claimed that the pandemic was
12 Quarantining the Holy Spirit: Africa and the Pentecostal…
268
a plague sent by God to demonstrate divine displeasure at how humans,
especially westerners, have sought to dethrone God from his majesty and
enthrone the idol of science, technology and human knowledge cum
ignorance. is type of understanding of the pandemic as plague or a
divine visitor, gained traction among many Pentecostal Christians in
Africa. e reinterpretation of the pandemic as a plague is in line with
the story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah in the Bible as well
as the Ten Plagues (םירצמ תוכמ) that aicted the Egyptians (Ex. 7: 14–12:
30). e plague interpretation of COVID-19 pandemic is also consis-
tent with “evidentialist religious epistemology” of the Old Testament
whereby believers consistently sought to discern or decipher “the nger
of God” in human history (Gerike 2012: 376). Identifying the nger of
God in human aairs is a claim to revelation as well as an argument for
and an appeal to a divinely sanctioned cosmic and moral order. As Jaco
Gericke (2012: 376) argues, the attractiveness of evidentialist religious
epistemology is its “foundationalist assumptions” about “knowledge of
Yhwh”. ose religious leaders who claim that the sudden eruption of the
COVID-19 pandemic was a sacred visitation assume that they know and
understand the mind of God and divine intentions for the cosmos, not
just for the human world. As a pneumatological religion, Pentecostalism
prides itself as a veritable means and source of understanding and know-
ing the mind of God; Pentecostal leaders have always claimed they could
speak authoritatively about this to the believer. e claim to the inscru-
table knowledge of God is the foundation and basis upon which other
beliefs and practices (e.g. prophecy, miracle, speaking in tongue, healing)
are erected. According to the Pentecostal train of thought, knowing the
mind of God does not countenance the probabilities of chance since
God “does not play dice with the universe”, as Albert Einstein would
say (Born 1971: 91). Undergirding this Pentecostal epistemology which
presupposes that the COVID-19 is an act willed by divine intention is
the freedom of God to act decisively towards his creation. God’s freedom
cannot be discounted or contended with by the power of human knowl-
edge, science or technology. For those who believe that the COVID-19
was an unleashing of divine displeasure, they implicitly acknowledge
and recognise the power of the Christian God as creator-owner of the
universe and the ethical imperative to govern the aairs of the world
A. Ukah
269
according to certain discernible rules. As a plague, COVID-19 is both
a punishment for human sins and misbehaviour and a demonstration
of God’s power, ownership and dominion over the earth and all cre-
ations; using the coronavirus as instrument of war against humankind,
the COVID-19 pandemic is construed according to this narrative as a
holy war in which God manipulates natural elements in inicting harm
on humans and in manifesting his sole divinity. e virus, thus, serves as
an instrument of divine anger and majesty at the same time. e coro-
navirus, for those who conceive it as a plague, signies an eschatological
judgement of cosmic proportion since the pandemic aected more than
human beings: water, air, animals and the general environment. In this
judgement, there is salvation, and Pentecostal leaders and actors are pur-
veyors and key to unlocking this new salvic dispensation.
ere are, however, some problems with interpretations of socialcalam-
ities along this line. It is dicult to read COVID-19 as being about
human arrogance and disobedience. is is because the pandemic equally
aected the non-human populations; animals such as pets and zoo-kept
animals were also known to have contracted the disease and some of them
had died or suered immensely as a result. It is, therefore, dicult to
understand why these co-habitants of the world with humans should
suer for the misdeeds of a section of the human population against
God. Further, westerners who are, according to the interpretation of
COVID-19 asdivine wrath, responsible for the plague, constitute a small
minority of the human species. COVID-19 and its devastation savaged
non-Western societies which cannot, arguably according to proponents
of the divine wrath argument, be accused of usurping the throne of God
through their arrogance, science and technology and economic domi-
nance of world aairs.As it turns out, the suering and pain wrought by
the COVID-19 pandemic brought more wealth to the Western societ-
ies, economic institutions and scientic establishments. e invention
and selling ofCOVID vaccines and other related health-care products
made Western pharmaceutical companies wealthier than they were dur-
ing the pre- COVID era. COVID-19 vaccines were invented and manu-
factured in all continents by their respective scientists except in Africa,
wherea vaccine production facility was open in South Africa by Aspen
and another in Algeria by Saidal—both non-African pharmaceutical
12 Quarantining the Holy Spirit: Africa and the Pentecostal…
270
companies. Pentecostal leaders who claim COVID-19 is a punishment
fromloving God fail to explain those who are supposed to be punished
are made wealthier at the same time while the apparently righteous and
religious Africans depend on donations of vaccines and food and equipt-
ment to survive the pandemic.
e unfolding pandemic illustrates the chaos and confusion, inconsis-
tencies and contradictions of Pentecostal interpretation of the problem of
evil. What amounts to a theory of Pentecostal Chaos needs a bit of expla-
nation. Many events happened in quick succession or simultaneously
precipitated the COVID-19 panic and pandemic, creating a sense of
end-time anxiety that appealed to a religious mindset which needed to
reorder the events tomake sense of it. Prediction is governed by regulari-
ties and patterns, but the outbreak of the pandemic followed no discern-
ible pattern as randomness and irregularities seemed to be at the heart of
the responses by states and corporations. For example, the shutting down
of international travels and boundaries and the enforcement of stay-at-
home orders disrupted livelihoods and neighbourhoods. Furthermore,
the sheer complexities of global events and the many dierent moving
parts in the COVID-19 scenario created a degree of chaos that baed
and confounded Pentecostal prophets who were used to working with
smaller groups of believers or discerning patterns in routinised global
aairs and contexts. e suddenness of the ensuing events caused more
irregularities than disorder and within the apparent chaos, lurked a degree
of religious orderliness: the need for an omnipotent power to reveal a pat-
tern, a purpose and possibleoutcomes.
What some scholars have called the “distanced church” was one out-
come out of apparent COVID-19disorder (Campbell 2020). e dis-
tanced church, made possible by Internet connectivity and media
technologies, illustrates the uncoupling of society under the pandemic.
is period marked the increased intensication of how oine and
online religious spaces and practices merged, entangled, intersected and
blurred (Campbell and Evolvi 2020). e blurring of virtual and physical
religious spaces restructured the meaning of religious community, liturgy
as a public religious service, religious authority and identity and the place
of technology in accessing divine grace and salvation. Furthermore,in an
important sense, it also changed the religious economy of many societies,
A. Ukah
271
especially how religious entrepreneurs recruited pecuniary resources from
their clients. Under the COVID-19 era, the assumptions on which
Pentecostal churches were built and gained popularity in Africa—mass
energy, the ready availability of miraculous cure,or the promises of these,
the promise of the presence and power of the Holy Spirit—were chal-
lenged and undermined because they no longer t present realities. Every
aspect of the pandemic such as mass deaths and sickness, hunger under
lockdown, and the disruption of economic and livelihood activities
seemed to be directed to the Pentecostal promise of power and prosperity,
healing and wholeness but these practices failed to adequately respond to
these present realities. Before the pandemic, Pentecostalism ourished in
Africa on the assumptions of what its clients and consumers wanted and
what was considered meaningful in their lifeworlds. COVID-19 scuttled
these assumptions and undermined and reorganisedthe religious mar-
ketin signicant ways. e state asserted its powers to regulate society by
making new rules and enforcing these in a draconian manner in some
cases. e state became a supplier of material salvation goods such as
sanitisers and personal protective equipment, food rations, etc. In the
context of mass deprivation following the aggressive implementation of
pandemic regulations, the Pentecostal crisis of imagination became evi-
dent as religious leaders were unable to adequately respond to the needs
of their members, followers and the larger society. e usual Pentecostal
rhetoric of power, of healing miracles and power to make people prosper-
ous, or even the explanation and answers to the problem of evil fell short
of reality.is is what I call the prophetic chaos.
Bydiscounting the validity of scientic explanations and interpreta-
tions of COVID-19 andattributing the cause of the crisis to a spiritual
realm,Pentecostal leaders proered a spiritual solution to the unfolding
crisis. According to many of them, only prayer was needed to resolve and
dissolvethe problem. When their members starved as a result of the lock-
down and shutdown of economic activities, many megachurches failed to
respond with the provision of charity to their ocks. It is perhaps instruc-
tive to quote at length the views of one of the staunchest and persistent
disseminators of the African Pentecostal views on the pandemic, Helen
Ukpabio,
12 Quarantining the Holy Spirit: Africa and the Pentecostal…
272
Christians generally believe that it is the devil’s instigated agenda for this
last day in conformity with satanic schemes for one-world government. If
their agenda works then it is time for Satan to take over the world […] As
you can see, homosexuality, lesbianism, the Church of Satan, non-
acceptance of one’s gender, wickedness and hatred towards Christianity
and their tenet of faith, persecution of the church and believers and openly
discrediting the Bible and inciting people to hate it and many such things
simply shows [sic] that the pandemic is part of their bid to force Christians
to receive satanic marks via the vaccine and tampering with certain human
genes to corrupt it especially people of the third world countries. e entire
covid [sic] is manmade. […]. All the controversies surrounding the pan-
demic notwithstanding, government is interested in using it to advance
their [sic] selsh interest instead of embarking on [a] rescue mission.14
In the above quote, which resonated among many conservative religious
groups, western governments and their African allies are those being riled
against as trying to foist and instigate a Satanic world government.Views
such as these are shared by a large section of African Pentecostal Christians,
both lay members and leaders, as other studies have also found (Ossai
2021; Wild-Wood etal. 2021). Bishop David Oyedepo, founder-owner
of Living Faith Church, Worldwide (A.K.A.Winners Chapel),for exam-
ple, claims there is no longer coronavirus but “antichurch virus” and a
“satanic plot against the church”,15 a position that aptly summer-
ises Ukpabio’s opinion that the coronavirus has produced a “hatred
towards Christianity”. Chris Oyakhilome of Christ Embassy Church,
with branches across Africa, Europe and North America, adds a specic
element to the mix of causes: human technology; specically, the 5G
mobile telephony. e pastor claimed 5G, rather than coronavirus infec-
tions, was responsible for the deaths in Wuhan and the motivation for the
stay-at-home orders issued by dierent governments around the world.
Similar to the views of Helen Ukpabio, Oyakhilome claimed that some
unnamed but powerful forces were ushering in a “new world order”
14 Helen Ukpabio, personal communication, 11 September 2021.
15 Xavier Moyet, “Appraisal of the discourses of two Nigerian Megachurch leaders about vacci-
nation against Covid-19”, https://religiousmatters.nl/appraisal-of-the-discoursesof-two-nigerian-
megachurch-leaders-about-vaccination-against- covid-19/.
A. Ukah
273
through 5G technology. e global COVID-19 lockdowns were a pre-
text to stealthily buildand instal 5G structures without public notice or
disruption. For Oyakhilome,the real objective of the new lockdowns and
social distancing regimes were not containing and controlling a viral epi-
demic, but to “create the antichrist and go after the church of Jesus
Christ”.16 As the COVID-19 pandemic protracts, Oyakhilome has also
developed his 5G theory and connected it to nanotechnologies and the
development of vaccines. According to this evolved version of his claim,
the COVID-19 vaccines are embedded with nanoparticles actionable
through the 5G network. In May 2020 and again in January 2021,
Oyakhilome was found guilty of disseminating disinformationthrough
his televised sermons which was potentially harmful to his mostly
Christian audience about COVID-19.17 Ukpabio, Oyakhilome and
Oyedepo all dissuade their audiences from getting the COVID-19 vac-
cines. In his opposition to vaccination,Oyedepo says mandatory vaccina-
tion is immoral, inhuman and very likely illegal. He claims taking the
vaccine makes a person “a guinea pig”: “e world is confused but the
church is lighted. ey are confused. But the church has the answer. Did
you see any outbreak of virus here? How will it enter the gate?”. It was as
if the Pentecostal assembly was supernaturally or mysticallyimmunefrom
coronavirus infection.18
Another prominent Pentecostal leader in Africa who has weighed in on
the issue of vaccination is Pastor Enoch Adeboye of the Redeemed
Christian Church of God. Addressing his congregation during the
monthly Holy Ghost Service on 02 October, 2021, he said:
16 Aanu Adeoye, “Misinformation at the pulpit” (12 May 2020), https://restofworld.org/2020/
nigeria-covid-5g-misinformation/.
17 For disseminating “inaccurate and potentially harmful claims about coronavirus”, Oyakhilome’s
LoveWorld television broadcasting station, the United Kingdom broadcast regulators, Oce of
Communications, ned the television station £125,000 in January 2021. See: “Christian
Broadcaster Fined £125,000 for Covid-19 conspiracies”, (31 March 2021) https://www.indepen-
dent.co.uk/news/media/christian-tv-channel-ofcom-covid-conspiracy-b1825259.html, Jibril
Ibrahim, “Covid-19in Nigeria: Once Again, Religion Stands in the Way” (29.06.2020), https://
www.fes.de/referat-afrika/neuigkeiten/covid-19-in-nigeria-once-again-religion-stands-in-the-way.
18 Kayode Oyero, “I won’t take COVID-19 vaccine, I’m not a guinea pig –Oyedepo”, Punch (Lagos),
17 April 2021, https://punchng.com/i-wont-take-covid-19-vaccine-im-not-a-guinea-pig-oyedepo/.
12 Quarantining the Holy Spirit: Africa and the Pentecostal…
274
I never said to you don’t be vaccinated, you have never heard that from me.
Rather than living in fear or doubt, get vaccinated. If you believe that get-
ting vaccinated would put your mind at rest, then go ahead. If there are
nations in the world that say I cannot come to preach the gospel there
because of vaccination, I will do anything for Jesus Christ. If vaccination is
going to hinder me from doing the work that God has called me to do, if
they asked me to get vaccinated 10 times, I would be vaccinated.19
e equivocation or prevarication in Adeboye’s speechcannot be missed.
It is disingenuous, even dubious, to link vaccination with evangelism
rather than the social good of public health. e love of neighbour
(Matthew 22:35–40, Mark 12:28–34, Luke 10:27) and hospitality
towardsthe other Christian principles and premise for private and public
action are clearly lacking in the self-serving rhetorics of many African
Pentecostal leaders on COVID-19 and the need for vaccination. A reli-
gion that emphasises salvation as a private and personal pursuit rather
than a collective endeavour would also miss the notion in the teaching of
Jesus Christ and in theearly church that the religious and non-religious
“other” is not simply an object formissionary fervouror conversion but
a neighbour to love and keep safe (Yong 2008).Still, understanding that
Pentecostalism does not articulate a principle of the public or common
good as social virtue,20 one may begin to explain, that is, theorise the
emergent Pentecostal chaosin the face of public health emergencies.
What comes out in these views of popular African Pentecostal leaders
is the tensionin the interplay betweencertain kind of religions or faith,
the complex and complicated nature of contemporary public health
issues and scientic inquiries as well asthe interpretation of illness and
disease in the age of global science and technology. In the
Pentecostalviews discussed above, one sees an attempt to mobilise the
claims about the power of the Holy Spirit to provide answers and expla-
nations to contemporary suering and illness as well as for the clergy to
19 Sam Eyoboka, “Why I will Take the COVID Vaccine—Pastor Adeboye”, Vanguard (Lagos), 03 October
2021, https://www.vanguardngr.com/2021/10/why-i-will-take-covid-vaccine-pastor-adeboye/.
20 (See Cartledge 2016 on how charismata in Pentecostal-Charismatic churches could be used for
the benet of the wider society).
A. Ukah
275
play prominent roles as responsible and dedicated public health provid-
ers. In the attempt to reposition religion, or rather, the brand which they
produce and market, as perennially relevant in the face of the ongoing
pandemic, these Pentecostal leaders grapple with the relationship between
science and technology and divine revelation or the interpretation of
sacred texts.In the unfolding scenario of COVID-19 pandemic, a section
of African Pentecostal community transmuted into what might be called
“ConPentecostalism”: the emergence of conspiracy Pentecostalism as a
public force or public religion in relation to attempts to explain and
interpret the COVID-19 pandemic and its toll on human sociabilities
and sensibilities (on how conspiracy beliefs are created and sustained,
seeAlbarracín etal. 2022).
Conclusion
In the Pentecostal economy, sickness and diseases are not aspects of
human experience that is at variance with a theology of abundance and
ourishing; they are to be commodiedin framing a religious entrepre-
neur’s miracle-working capabilities. Pentecostalism claims to be a religion
of social, spiritual and economic power; a religion infused and driven by
the power of the Holy Ghost which produces radical change and cures for
human ailments. In many parts of Africa, it also claims to be both a social
force and political powerhouse for determining how society is to be struc-
tured and governed in line with the will of God. African Pentecostal lead-
ers have developed intricate theologies of health and wellness, wealth and
prosperity, and have built immense and expansive entrepreneurial empires
on these claims. e COVID-19 health emergency has put these claims
to the test. Prophets failed to predict or anticipate the emergence of the
pandemic; they spiritualised its origins and cause and actively resisted
government and scientic interpretation of the virus. When their initial
eorts failed, or when the force of public opinion or state implementa-
tion of a new social and cultural infrastructure became overwhelming,
many of them revised their actions and opinions and reluctantly encour-
aged their followers to adhere to state regulations. Furthermore,Pentecostal
leaders have been at the forefront of disseminating COVID-19 and
12 Quarantining the Holy Spirit: Africa and the Pentecostal…
276
vaccine disinformation; hence, creating and reinforcing vaccine hesitancy
among their followers. e ongoing pandemic graphically illustrates how
religion, specically Pentecostalism and its entrepreneurial leaders, stands
in the way of developmentand the production of social good. e alter-
native to the vaccine recommended by these leaders is prayers to “the true
God”—as Ukpabio frames it —and Oyedepo says, the “church is
light”that the darkness of a pandemic is unable to extinguish or dim. If
the church in Africa is light, it is dicult to understand why and how
Africa and Africans still dwell in the crushing darkness of poverty, vaccine
scarcity, political failure and unending conict. In their public pro-
nouncements and preaching about COVID-19, African Pentecostal lead-
ers provide a moral critique of the west; however, they fail to apply their
own standards to why and howAfrica is the way it is: the least developed
continent in the world (Okeja 2017).
e pandemic has thrown a serious challenge to Pentecostal spiritual-
ity, theology and practices. e rituals of casting and binding evil or ill-
ness have not worked with COVID-19; the rituals of performing
miraculous healings have spectacularly failed too. More importantly, as a
religion that claims the power of the Holy Spirit to foretell the future and
to guide humankind in understanding the mind of deity, Pentecostal
leaders and prophets did not notice the approaching tsunami of
COVID-19. When the pandemic unfolded, what ensued was a scram-
bling for responses in the face of chaos. Pentecostal chaos, the apparent
confusion that follows the simultaneous occurrences of many dier-
entevents, generated dissonance andconfusing responses from dierent
leaders. Also, the complex networking and the rapidity of the scientic
invention that went into the production of a range of vaccines caught
African Pentecostal leaders unpreparedbut also challenged their claims to
healing ability. Almost all continents except Africa produced their vac-
cines. Africa, with fragile states and weak structures, demanded and relied
on vaccine donations from mainly Europe and North America. e
dependency reinforced the perception of the west foisting a New World
Order as claimed by some of these Pentecostal leaders.
However, the presence of Pentecostal chaos does not imply the com-
plete absence of order and pattern within theAfrican Pentecostal eld. It
shows that the eld is composed of a wild array of actors whose actions
A. Ukah
277
collectively cannot be predicted or predetermined because there is a clear
absence of a single organising principle. For example, African Pentecostal
actors lack a nuanced understanding of the principle of social good or the
common good: goods, services, values, resources, basic/collective rights
and freedomsthat benet all members of society. Hence, a concept such
as “public health” is alien to their practice, which explains why Adeboye
would link his taking the COVID-19vaccine to the need for evangelism
rather than helping to secureand promote the good of himself and others
around him. He would not take the vaccine voluntarily unless it is man-
dated by governments as a condition to achieve other ends. Such instru-
mentalist thinking is embedded in the Pentecostal principle; the need to
achieve personal rather than collective objectivessuch as personal pros-
perity and salvation. Making sense of the apparent Pentecostal chaos
means guring outand making sense of the undergirding and underlying
principles governing the eld of practice and the real interests that drive
Pentecostal actors. e discussions in this chapter demonstrates
howAfrican Pentecostalism is driven by a set ofreligious entrepreneurs
acting in a competitive religious economy which compels each actor to
show relevance and visibility or be relegated to the sidewalks of the
Pentecostal market and eld. It is reasonable to assume that
AfricanPentecostalism is an integralaspect of the social economy needed
to redress a post-crisis society. It is, however, in crisis and would be unable
to assert its inuence appropriately. For the Pentecostal church in Africa
to regain its vigour and play a similar role that the early church played
during the epidemics of the second and third centuries, the Holy Spirit
needs to be freed from the quarantine which African Pentecostal leaders
have imposed on it. For the church to make the needed impact that serves
the needs of the people of God, African Pentecostalism needs to be born
again, reimagined and recaliberated in the COVID-19 era to usher in a
post-Covid worldrelevant to the suering people of God in Africa.
12 Quarantining the Holy Spirit: Africa and the Pentecostal…
278
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13
On Pandemic Planning andtheFrontline
Workers inNigeria
DamilolaVictoriaOduola
Introduction
In December 2019, a novel disease identied as SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19
broke out in Wuhan, China. is novel virus has resulted in a pandemic
with over 190million infected cases and over 4million deaths across 188
countries and territories (WHO 2021a). However, although in July
2020, COVID-19 vaccines such as the Pzer/BioNtech, the AstraZeneca
and the Moderna were developed and over 3.4billion doses have been
administered globally, yet, in late 2020, new variants such as the
COVID-19 Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta variants were identied and
they have continued to pose increased risk to global health (WHO
2021b, c). e emergence of the COVID-19 virus and its variants has
continued to raise a number of medical, scientic and ethical questions
about the plans and strategies put in place to identify its cause, facilitate
proper diagnosis and treatment, and develop eective methods to limit
the spread and to deal with future occurrences. It is common knowledge
D. V. Oduola (*)
Department of Philosophy, University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria
© e Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023
F. Egbokhare, A. Afolayan (eds.), Global Health, Humanity and the COVID-19
Pandemic, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17429-2_13
284
that pandemics, whether mild, moderate or severe, often aect a large
proportion of the population and that it could result to a large number of
casualties if mismanaged. For this reason, most countries develop response
plans that incorporate operational procedures and strategies for manag-
ing possible pandemic outbreaks. In preparation for such pandemic
occurrences like the COVID-19 pandemic, Nigeria, in 2011, established
the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) and in 2013, the
National Pandemic Inuenza Preparedness and Response Plan (NPIPRP)
with the mandate to lead the preparedness, detection and response to
infectious disease outbreaks and public health emergencies.
is chapter, however, contends that the NCDC and the NPIPRP
have not properly conceptualized and attended to the rights and respon-
sibilities of the Nigeria health workers (NHWs) within the context of
pandemic planning. We argue that the Nigerian pandemic response plan
has not addressed this signicantly important age-long question: do
healthcare workers have the duty to treat patients during pandemics,
especially when doing so exposes the workers themselves to signicant
risks of harm and even death? is chapter, divided into four sections,
will examine this question within the scope of ethical and medical con-
siderations. e rst section will examine pandemics and pandemic plan-
ning from a historical perspective. e second will discuss the Nigerian
pandemic inuenza preparedness and response plan within the context of
pandemic planning. e third will critically engage a critical omission in
the Nigerian pandemic response plan, that is, the neglected discourse on
the rights and responsibilities of the NHWs. e last section will inter-
rogate the signicances or implications of the NHWs rights and respon-
sibilities for pandemic planning in Nigeria.
On Pandemics andPandemic Planning:
AHistorical Overview
roughout the history of humankind, one of the greatest catastrophes
ever, if not the greatest is the outbreak of a pandemic. As a matter of fact,
very few phenomena throughout human history have shaped human
D. V. Oduola
285
societies and cultures the way outbreaks of infectious diseases and pan-
demics have. As Ashoka (2021) comments, pandemic outbreaks have had
terrible consequences on the human society throughout history, but also,
paradoxically, it has cleared the way for innovations and advances in sci-
ences, economy, and political systems. Etymologically, the word “pan-
demic” is derived from two Greek words pan, “all” and demos, “people”
which therefore suggests “an outbreak of a disease that occurs over a wide
geographic area and typically aects a signicant proportion of the popu-
lation” (Merriam-Webster 2021).
Human population, throughout history, has experienced several out-
breaks of pandemics ranging from the plagues, the earlier form of small-
pox and tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS to the inuenza virus pandemics of
the twentieth and twenty-rst centuries. However, the rst global pan-
demic that brought devastating consequences on human societies across
the globe was the 1918/1919 Spanish u. e Spanish u, an H1N1
inuenza virus strain, referred to as the “greatest medical holocaust in
history” is believed to have infected over half of the world’s population at
the time and caused about 50–100million deaths (Saunders-Hastings
and Krewski 2016: 4). As Saunders-Hastings and Krewski (2016: 4–5)
opine, during the Spanish u outbreak, eective vaccines and antibiotics
to prevent and treat inuenza were unavailable, public health systems
were grossly unprepared, and there was little or no meaningful interna-
tional coordination and cooperation among jurisdictions as regards the
prevention and control of infectious diseases. At this time, doctors were
clueless about the novel disease and the weak health system that was in
place was overwhelmed in no time. ese factors therefore contributed to
the high mortality rate and the severe economic meltdown that accompa-
nied the Spanish u pandemic.
Subsequent years after the Spanish u outbreak, the international
community established the World Health Organization (WHO) and the
International Health Regulations (IHR) in recognition of the view that
since the human community is constantly faced with the threat of pan-
demics that could have devastating eects on the whole human popula-
tion, there is the need for eective approaches and models that would be
geared towards the development and improvement of pandemic pre-
paredness and response capabilities. Apropos of this, the WHO, in 1999,
13 On Pandemic Planning and the Frontline Workers in Nigeria
286
established the inuenza pandemic plan which outlined the roles of the
WHO and public health leaders in responding to future threats of pan-
demic outbreaks. e roles of the WHO would be to “collect and analyse
data on the occurrence of inuenza viruses around the world; provide
information to health authorities, the media and the general public about
current inuenza vaccine recommendations; and develop proposals to
help guide national policy makers or those implementing national poli-
cies” (WHO 1999: 8). On the other hand, the roles of public health
leaders would be to establish National Pandemic Planning Committees
in their various countries, and these committees would be responsible for
drafting the overall contingency plans for responses to a pandemic (WHO
1999: 21–22).
In 2005, however, the 1999 WHO inuenza pandemic plan was
revised and replaced with the WHO global inuenza preparedness plan
aimed at assisting member countries and those responsible for public
health, medical and emergency preparedness to respond to threats and
occurrences of pandemic outbreaks (WHO 2005: 1). e 2005 pre-
paredness plan redened the phases of public health risk associated with
inuenza virus, recommended actions for national authorities and out-
lined the responsibilities of the WHO in the event of a pandemic (WHO
2005: 1). Since 2005, however, the WHO preparedness and response
plan has continued to witness several reviews and updates such as the
WHO strategic action plan for pandemic inuenza (2006/2007), the
WHO pandemic inuenza preparedness and response (2009), the WHO
guide to revision of national pandemic inuenza preparedness plans
(2017) and the recent 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-ncov) strategic pre-
paredness and response plan. Following the publication of the WHO
pandemic preparedness plan and the growing concerns about the threats
posed by inuenza viruses, however, many countries of the world began
to invest in developing, publishing and improving their preparedness
plan. Between 2005 and 2009, about 43 countries in the European
Union (EU) published their pandemic preparedness plan (Nicoll etal.
2012). Before 2007, fteen Latin American countries published their
preparedness plan (Mensua etal. 2009), between 2002 and 2006, about
six Asian-pacic countries published their response plans (Coker and
Mounier-Jack 2006) and between 2005 and 2017, about 35 African
D. V. Oduola
287
countries also published their national pandemic plan (Sambala et al.
2018). In spite of this, the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed that even
with the advancement in medicine and pandemic planning, global pre-
paredness for pandemics is still very weak as most countries have one or
more important gaps to address. Hence, as LePan (2020) notes, there is
an urgent need for countries to review, improve and update their pre-
paredness plans in order to address important shortcomings as well as
combat future challenges of disease outbreaks.
Pandemic Planning andtheNigeria Pandemic
Response Plan
e prevalence of contagious diseases and the increasing possibility of
new disease outbreaks in modern times have become an issue of concern
not only to the international community but also to nation states. In
recognition of this and the directives of the WHO, the Nigerian govern-
ment established the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) as a
regulatory institution with the mandate to lead the preparedness, detec-
tion and response to infectious diseases outbreaks and public health
emergencies in Nigeria (NCDC 2020). Upon its formation in 2011, the
NCDC became responsible for preventing and responding to disease
outbreaks; stockpiling and prepositioning of supplies for outbreak
response in the states; developing guidelines and checklists for emergency
preparedness; supporting states in responding to small outbreaks and
leading the response to large disease outbreaks in Nigeria (Njidda etal.
2018: 2). However, as part of its institutional function to coordinate pre-
paredness and response to diseases outbreak in Nigeria, the NCDC, in
2013, established the Nigerian National Pandemic Inuenza Preparedness
and Response Plan (NPIPRP) to serve as a blueprint for a coordinated
strategy to prepare for and respond to pandemics.
e NPIPRP, modelled after the WHO pandemic preparedness plan,
identied six alert phases of pandemic outbreaks and the expected
responses of the NCDC and other health agencies to each of the phases.
As outlined in the document, the rst phase of the pandemic response
13 On Pandemic Planning and the Frontline Workers in Nigeria
288
plan starts when the WHO announces that there are no viruses circulat-
ing among animals which is known to cause infections in humans
(NNPIPRP 2013: 8). In the second phase, the WHO identies an ani-
mal inuenza virus which is known to have caused infection in humans,
and is therefore considered a potential pandemic threat (NNPIPRP
2013: 8). e third phase is signalled when the WHO announces an
animal or human-animal inuenza virus, which has caused sporadic cases
or small clusters of disease in people, but has not resulted in human-to-
human transmission sucient to sustain community-level outbreaks
(NNPIPRP 2013: 8). At the fourth phase, the WHO announces veried
human-to-human transmission of an animal or human-animal inuenza
virus that is able to cause “community-level outbreaks” (NNPIPRP 2013:
8). It is at this fourth phase that the NPIPRP would identify the following:
Phase 4a: No conrmed or suspected cases within Africa, Nigeria or
neighbouring countries (Benin, Niger, Chad, and Cameroon).
Phase 4b: Conrmed or suspected cases in Africa, but no cases within
Nigeria or any of the countries immediately bordering Nigeria (Benin,
Niger, Chad, and Cameroon).
Phase 4c: Local Outbreak: First conrmed or suspected case in Nigeria
or one of the countries immediately bordering Nigeria (Benin, Niger,
Chad, and Cameroon).
Phase 4d: Regional Outbreak: Conrmed or suspected cases in Nigeria
and at least one country bordering Nigeria (Benin, Niger, Chad, and
Cameroon).
Phase 4e: Widespread Regional Outbreak: Conrmed or suspected cases
in Nigeria and at least three countries immediately bordering Nigeria
(Benin, Niger, Chad, Cameroon).
Phase 4f: High-Risk Regional Outbreak: Conrmed or suspected cases
in Nigeria and at least three countries immediately bordering Nigeria
(Benin, Niger, Chad, Cameroon) and widespread conrmed cases
in schools.
Phase 4g: Deceleration/Resolution: Weekly incidence rates of pandemic
inuenza decline by at least 10% per week for at least two weeks
(NNPIPRP 2013: 8).
D. V. Oduola
289
e fth phase commences immediately when the WHO conrms
human-to-human spread of the virus into at least two countries in one
WHO region (NNPIPRP 2013: 9). is also prompts the NPIPRP into
a series of processes:
Phase 5a: No conrmed or suspected cases within Africa, Nigeria or
neighbouring countries (Benin, Niger, Chad, and Cameroon).
Phase 5b: Conrmed or suspected cases in Africa, but no cases within
Nigeria or any of the countries immediately bordering Nigeria (Benin,
Niger, Chad, and Cameroon).
Phase 5c: Local Outbreak: First conrmed or suspected case in Nigeria
or one of the countries immediately bordering Nigeria (Benin, Niger,
Chad, and Cameroon).
Phase 5d: Regional Outbreak: Conrmed or suspected cases in Nigeria
and at least one country bordering Nigeria (Benin, Niger, Chad, and
Cameroon).
Phase 5e: Widespread Regional Outbreak: Conrmed or suspected cases
in Nigeria and at least three countries immediately bordering Nigeria
(Benin, Niger, Chad, and Cameroon).
Phase 5f: High-Risk Regional Outbreak: Conrmed or suspected cases
in Nigeria and at least three countries immediately bordering Nigeria
(Benin, Niger, Chad, and Cameroon) and widespread conrmed cases
in schools.
Phase 5g: Deceleration/Resolution: Weekly incidence rates of pandemic
inuenza decline by at least 10% per week for at least two weeks
(NNPIPRP 2013: 9).
e sixth phase of the process demands that the WHO makes the
announcement of a global pandemic outbreak (NNPIPRP 2013: 9).
Consequently, the NNPIPRP would also activate the following:
Phase 6a: No conrmed or suspected cases within Africa, Nigeria or
neighbouring countries (Benin, Niger, Chad, and Cameroon).
Phase 6b: Conrmed or suspected cases in Africa, but no cases within
Nigeria or any of the countries immediately bordering Nigeria (Benin,
Niger, Chad, and Cameroon).
13 On Pandemic Planning and the Frontline Workers in Nigeria
290
Phase 6c: Local Outbreak: First conrmed or suspected case in Nigeria
or one of the countries immediately bordering Nigeria (Benin, Niger,
Chad, and Cameroon).
Phase 6d: Regional Outbreak: Conrmed or suspected cases in Nigeria
and at least one country bordering Nigeria (Benin, Niger, Chad, and
Cameroon).
Phase 6e: Widespread Regional Outbreak: Conrmed or suspected cases
in Nigeria and at least three countries immediately bordering Nigeria
(Benin, Niger, Chad, and Cameroon).
Phase 6f: High-Risk Regional Outbreak: Conrmed or suspected cases
in Nigeria and at least three countries immediately bordering Nigeria
(Benin, Niger, Chad, and Cameroon) and widespread conrmed cases
in schools.
Phase 6g: Deceleration/Resolution: Weekly incidence rates of pandemic
inuenza decline by at least 10% per week for at least two weeks
(NNPIPRP 2013: 9–10).
In response to the pandemic alert phases 4a, 5a, and 6a, the NCDC
and other health agencies (e.g. NEMA, Federal Ministry of Health and
other cognate ministries) are to focus on monitoring the global situation
and increasing surveillance and pandemic preparedness eorts (NNPIPRP
2013: 18). e alert phases 4b, 5b, and 6b demand monitoring the global
situation, with special emphasis on the situation in Nigeria and West
Africa (NNPIPRP 2013: 21). With the phases 4c, 4d, 5c, 5d, 6c and 6d,
the NCDC and national, state and local health agencies are to step into
heightened surveillance and the activation of protocols to reduce viral
spread and actions to address existing and anticipated medical caseload
(NNPIPRP 2013: 24). Alert phases 4e, 5e and 6e compel the NCDC
and national, state and local health agencies to focus on community miti-
gation measures to minimize spread of the virus and its economic and
societal impact (NNPIPRP 2013: 28). In the alert phases 4f, 5f and 6f,
the risks associated with the pandemic outbreaks are at their highest, and
thus, the NCDC and other health agencies are to ensure continued com-
munity mitigation measures to minimize the spread of the virus and its
economic and societal impacts, and to also ensure the maintenance of
critical government services, as well as those provided by private sector
D. V. Oduola
291
businesses upon which the government and general public are dependent
(NNPIPRP 2013: 32). In the alert phases 4g, 5g and 6g, the health risks
associated with pandemic outbreaks begin to diminish. Hence, the
NCDC and all national, state and local health agencies are to ensure
continued mitigation measures to minimize any additional pandemic-
related economic and societal impacts; conduct assessments of the pan-
demic’s impact on the society; and work with international and regional
organizations to ensure societal stability and to assist in post-pandemic
recovery (NNPIPRP 2013: 37).
The NPIPRP andtheNigeria Health Workers
A pandemic outbreak often puts a great strain on the healthcare system.
During pandemics, the entire health community is expected to exhibit
day-to-day resilience and commitment towards mitigating morbidity and
mortality that the pandemic instigates. is suggests that eective pan-
demic preparedness also requires the total and active engagement of
healthcare workers—the “frontline soldiers” in the war against infectious
diseases. As Adindu and Asuquo (2013: 2) comment, the Nigeria health
workers (NHWs) which comprise of doctors, nurses, midwives, pharma-
cists and other health-related personnel are the diverse highly trained
health professionals who provide direct health services and support deliv-
ery of such services to the Nigerian population. Ojo and Akinkunmi also
comment that the Nigerian health professionals, who are involved in
activities primarily devoted to enhancing health in the absence of which
clinical and public health services cannot be delivered to the population,
constitute a signicant component of the healthcare system and are
important in the delivery of smooth ecient, eective and quality health-
care services (2015: 377). However, in the event of a pandemic outbreak,
the responsibilities of the NHWs—indeed of the entire health commu-
nity––become heightened. During this period, patients and the public
expect healthcare workers to employ their knowledge and skills to man-
age the situation eectively. ey will be generally required to go beyond
their routine roles to take on tasks with which they are less familiar and
which they will, most likely, have to carry out under stressful conditions
13 On Pandemic Planning and the Frontline Workers in Nigeria
292
and environments (Asghari and Tehrani 2020: 4). During outbreaks,
some of the tasks that would be required of health workers as illustrated
in the recent WHO COVID-19 Rights, Roles and Responsibilities of
Health Workers (RRRHW) document include: following established
occupational safety and health procedures; using provided protocols to
assess, triage, and treat patients; treating patients with respect, compas-
sion, and dignity; and reporting suspected and conrmed cases of infected
persons (WHO 2020a: 1).
In the discharge of these duties, however, there is the need to situate
the WHO pandemic preparedness plan within the context of a postcolo-
nial healthcare system like Nigeria’s. e Nigerian health workers, in
dealing with epidemics and pandemics, are often exposed to signicant
risks and hazards such as pathogen exposure and infection, long working
hours, psychological distress, fatigue, stigma and in most cases, unpaid
salaries and allowances. is is apart from the deep institutional and sys-
temic dysfunction within which they are expected to operate eciently.
During the recent coronavirus outbreak, for instance, many NHWs were
exposed to high risk of COVID-19 infection as a result of their close
contact with infected patients and the unavailability of the needed per-
sonal protective equipment (PPEs) (Adejumo etal. 2020: 42). As reported
by the WHO external situation report 11, between 25 February and 12
May 2020, 401 Nigeria health workers were already infected with coro-
navirus (WHO 2020b: 2), and by 27 May 2020, an updated WHO
external report 13 showed that the number of the infected health workers
had increased from 401 to 606 (WHO 2020c: 3). Apart from the risk of
infection, NHWs also suer other challenges such as increased workload,
traumatic stress, discrimination, unpaid allowances, and at the worst,
death. An instance of this is the indenite strike embarked upon by the
National Association of Resident Doctors in Nigeria (NARD) on 15
June 2020, due to the failure of the government to provide adequate
personal protective equipment for health workers and to pay hazard
allowances to doctors working on COVID-19 patients (Adejumo etal.
2020: 42). Also, in an interview with PUNCH HealthWise, the National
president of e Nigerian Union of Allied Health Professionals (NUAHP)
commented that the association had recorded about 150 infection cases
D. V. Oduola
293
among its members and 25 fatalities arising from complications of the
coronavirus due to the lack of PPEs (Folorunsho-Francis 2020).
ese challenges encountered by the NHWs especially during pan-
demic outbreaks raises the question as to whether health workers have a
duty to treat or care for patients especially when doing so exposes them
to signicant risks of harm and even death. at is, can a physician legiti-
mately refuse to treat a patient who, for instance, is suspected of having
COVID-19 because the doctor is not adequately protected and such a
patient would put the physician at risk of contracting the virus and pos-
sibly dying? In response to this, Heidi Malm etal. argue that “common
morality holds that we all, in virtue of our shared humanity, have a moral
duty to aid others in great need when we can do so at minimal risk to
ourselves” (2008: 6). is means that individuals have some general
duties to others, and these duties do not rest on any kind of special rela-
tionship between the individual and the others except that of common
humanity. In contrast, however, as Malm etal. further argues, the duty to
treat is a special duty because there is the existence of a special “role-
related relationship” between the health worker and the patient which
grounds the duty (2008: 6). According to them, this special relationship
can obligate health workers to incur greater risks than would be required
of persons in general because rst, the health worker had expressed or
implied his/her consent to treat when signing up for the job; second, the
health worker had received some special training to aid others at minimal
risk; third, the health worker has the duty to reciprocate or give back to
the society, and lastly, the health workers had submitted him/herself to
the oaths and codes of conduct guiding the profession (2008: 7–15).
In the same vein, Chalmers Clark (2003: 1) argues that there are moti-
vating and practical reasons for health workers to care for patients in the
face of personal danger because health workers are in a form of binding
social agreement with their patients and the public. Clark (2003: 1)
argues further that not only is it the physician’s duty to provide treatment
at some personal risk, but also public expectations for hazardous duty are
justied as a result of the physician’s choice of joining a profession aimed
at combating disease and the physician’s implicit promise of readiness in
perilous times. Consequently, doctors and other health workers have the
duty to treat simply because they have given their consent to join the
13 On Pandemic Planning and the Frontline Workers in Nigeria
294
medical profession. Now, if it is the case that health workers indeed have
a role-dened duty to treat even when doing so poses signicant risk,
then we may want to ask if there is a limit to what this duty demands of
them. In other words, do health workers have the obligation to tolerate
every form of risk especially during pandemic outbreaks? In response to
this, Clark contends that “doctors need not become abjectly self-
sacricing in medical emergencies …. doctors and other health workers
should have rst access to inoculations and other protections required by
those who toil on the front lines of illness” (2003: 1). Samuel Huber and
Matthew Wynia (2004: 9) argue similarly that the physician’s duty to
treat should be mediated with the doctor’s responsibility not to become a
patient herself, and so, risks must be balanced against one’s capacity to do
good in the future. ey argue further that the physician-patient rela-
tionship is a kind of reciprocal social relationship and since physicians
have the obligation to treat even at personal risks, then it suggests that
communities in turn have obligations towards physicians and the entire
health community (Huber and Wynia 2004: 9). More importantly, clari-
cation on how to handle predictably very high-risk situations and the
level of expertise that is required for caring during such high-risk situa-
tions should be subjected to open dialogues within and between the pro-
fession and the society (Huber and Wynia 2004, 9).
e above discussion therefore suggests that the responsibilities of
health workers are very germane or signicant during pandemics because
they are the frontline workers who, in the face of signicant harm or
risks, are expected to provide essential health services to the general pub-
lic and ensure minimal spread of the virus.In the same vein,there should
be corresponding expectation of some reciprocal social obligations that
should be geared towards the rights (welfare and protection) of health
workers, especially during pandemics. is means that although the
NHWs’ duty to treat especially during pandemics is sacrosanct, their
rights are equally important. As Onigbinde etal. remarks, during out-
breaks, “if a catastrophe will be averted, the healthcare delivery system
must be safeguarded. e health and safety of healthcare workers must
also be well-taken care of to sustain public health and recoveries” (2020:
1). Bringing this discourse into the context of pandemic planning, Draper
etal. argue that “healthcare workers are essential personnel in any response
D. V. Oduola
295
to emergencies and will be in the frontline of exposure to infection dur-
ing pandemic outbreaks. Hence, eective pandemic planning would
need to rely on the majority of health services sta in responding to out-
breaks” (2008: 2).
is simply suggests that heath workers are central gures not only
during pandemic outbreaks but also in pandemic planning because eec-
tive pandemic preparedness would have to rely on their professional ser-
vices. us, if health workers are central to pandemic planning, then, it
simply follows that their rights and responsibilities are also very impor-
tant and must be considered when preparing for a pandemic. According
to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, “to ensure optimal
workforce performance during a severe pandemic, an organization’s pan-
demic plan, pre-pandemic work culture, and safety procedures must
reect the importance of health protection and, where feasible, provide
services that enhance personal and professional resiliency of health
worker” (CDC 2020: 3). is therefore reveals that eective pandemic
preparedness requires not only taking into consideration the rights and
responsibilities of health workers but also outlining them in the pan-
demic response plans.
e submission gleaned from the CDC and the WHO with regard to
the rights and responsibilities of health workers instigates a re- examination
of the NPIPRP document and how it aects the rights and responsibili-
ties of the Nigeria health workers. e NPIPRP was designed to achieve
ve major objectives, namely: contribute to an eective national and
local level response to inuenza pandemic; reduce inuenza-related mor-
bidity and mortality; minimize disruption of critical social, economic
and medical services during pandemics; mitigate pandemic-related
impacts on critical infrastructure; and facilitate post-pandemic recovery
operations (NPIPRP 2013: 3). ese objectives are to be carried out
through ten functional operational areas: surveillance and laboratory; tri-
age and patient care; infection control measures; antivirals acquisition,
storage, distribution and use; vaccine acquisition, storage, distribution
and use; mass fatalities management; mental health; mass care and logis-
tics; communications and public education; and command and control
and continuity of operations (NPIPRP 2013: 11). Unfortunately, out of
these ten operational areas outlined in the NPIPRP, the only operational
13 On Pandemic Planning and the Frontline Workers in Nigeria
296
area that made reference to the NHWs is the mental health operational
area which states that
e primary recommendations for workforce support focus is the estab-
lishment of psychosocial support services that will assist workers in manag-
ing emotional stress during response eorts to an inuenza pandemic, and
resolving related personal, professional, and family issues …. Hospitals in
Nigeria are encouraged to develop a mental health component to their
inuenza pandemic plans to ensure that healthcare sta and their families
receive adequate mental health support during any pandemic disaster. Sta
members in hospitals and other healthcare facilities should be trained in
behavioural techniques to help employees cope with grief, stress, exhaus-
tion, anger and fear during an emergency. (NPIPRP 2013: 56)
Sadly, the NPIPRP only mentioned issues pertaining to the mental health
of NHWs and paid less attention to other fundamental rights such as
adequate protection against risk of infection, payment of allowances and
provision of reliable compensations for the families of those who die
while fullling their duties. Also, the NPIPRP failed to spell out the spe-
cic responsibilities of the NHWs as well as the extent or limit of these
responsibilities during pandemic outbreaks. is critical omission there-
fore reveals a shortcoming in the NPIPRP that should be addressed.
Lessons toLearn: Pandemic Planning
andtheNigeria Health Workers
A pandemic outbreak is largely an unpleasant event but its severity
depends on the preparedness of a community in its response to it.
Pandemic planning is expected to be all-encompassing as it requires the
ability of public health ocials, healthcare professionals, researchers and
scientists to work together to devise a plan and to strengthen their capa-
bilities to prepare and respond to outbreaks. Pandemic planning, there-
fore, becomes very vital in developing preventive and cost-eective
mitigating measures against pandemic threats (Bollyky and Patrick
2020). As Oppenheim et al. (2019: 2) note, epidemic preparedness
D. V. Oduola
297
reects the capacity of institutions such as public health authorities,
health systems and emergency response bodies to detect, report and
respond to outbreaks; and in the event of a pandemic, health institutions,
healthcare workers and public health systems are required to identify,
investigate, monitor and manage infected persons through the mobilisa-
tion of personnel and resources.
As mentioned earlier, the duties of health workers during pandemics
would often go beyond the conventional roles as they would be required
to receive additional knowledge, skills and trainings to protect them-
selves, protect others and as well work safely and eectively. However, if
it is the case that health workers would be required to go beyond their
conventional duties to take on additional responsibilities during pan-
demics, then it becomes necessary to spell out these roles accordingly. In
pandemic outbreaks, health workers are often saddled with overwhelm-
ing responsibilities, and if these responsibilities are not clearly stated and
understood, health workers may not be able to carry out their duties or
respond eectively. A vivid example can be drawn from the 1918 Spanish
u pandemic which had an estimated case mortality rate of 2.5% and
caused more than 40 million deaths worldwide (Schoch-Spana 2001:
32). According to Schoch-Spana, “during the 1918 inuenza pandemic,
health care workers were just as vulnerable to inuenza as their patients.
In some instances, fear of contagion kept caregivers from performing
their duties. Practitioners and public health nurses faced overwhelming
caseloads and frequently elded demands for care among crowds in the
street” (2001: 33). At this time, pandemic planning was nonexistent and
health workers were mostly clueless about what to do or how to respond
to the ravaging disease, and this, in a way, contributed to the high mortal-
ity rate that accompanied the pandemic. is implies that the absence of
a pandemic preparedness plan that recognises and outlines the responsi-
bilities of health workers during pandemics may lead to confusion, poor
response and management of the disease which could ultimately lead to
a surge in the mortality rate and a collapse of the overall health system.
In the same vein, the increased vulnerability of healthcare workers dur-
ing pandemics clearly justies the need to highlight and recognise the
rights of health workers in pandemic planning. During pandemics,
healthcare workers often face signicant exposure to infectious materials,
13 On Pandemic Planning and the Frontline Workers in Nigeria
298
and if there is no corresponding provision and/or clear indication of their
welfare and protection in the form of adequate provision of PPE supplies,
occupational health and safety training, compensation, rehabilitation,
mental health and counselling, conducive working conditions and prac-
tices among others, then health workers may end up becoming patients
themselves. To illustrate this, Madhav etal. (2018: 324) note that during
the rst Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in
1976, the Yambuku Mission Hospital at the epicentre of the outbreak
was closed because 11 out of the 17 sta members had died of the disease.
During the Kikwit Ebola outbreak in 1995in the same DRC, 24% of
cases occurred among known or possible healthcare workers. Similarly,
during the Ebola disease outbreak in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone,
health workers accounted for 3.9% (815/20,955) of all conrmed and
probable cases reported (WHO 2015: 4). is reveals that without ade-
quate welfare and protection, health workers may end up being causali-
ties of “pandemic war” and if this happens, health systems may become
overwhelmed as a result of scarce health workforce. Invariably, over-
whelmed health systems among other indirect eects may contribute to a
2.3-fold increase in all-cause mortality during pandemics (Madhav etal.
2018: 323).
So what lessons does this hold for pandemic planning in Nigeria? Our
discussion so far has revealed some critical omissions in the NPIPRP. It
has also shown the need for a review of the NPIPRP. While it is quite
essential that pandemic planning develops strategies for reducing
inuenza- related morbidity and mortality and mitigating pandemic-
related impacts on critical infrastructure, however, it is also expedient
that it recognises and highlights the rights and responsibilities of NHWs
as they are critical personnel in the ght against “pandemic wars”. Hence,
substantive recognition of the rights and responsibilities of NHWs as
well as the political will to implement this recognition must be at the core
of any emergency response plan for there cannot be an eective health-
care system without a health workforce that is protected and capable of
meeting the needs of the population (WHO 2015: 2).
D. V. Oduola
299
Conclusion
Much has been written about pandemic planning, and the recent corona-
virus outbreak has shown that much is still needed to be done. ere is
the need for the Nigerian government to welcome new perspectives,
adjustments and revisions as regards pandemic planning and prepared-
ness. As much as there is a need to pay attention to the operations of
healthcare delivery systems, the socio-economic systems and the political
systems in pandemic planning, it is equally crucial that the rights of
Nigeria healthcare workers at the forefront of managing the pandemic are
adequately protected. e recent WHO Coronavirus disease (COVID-19)
outbreak: rights, roles and responsibilities of health workers, including key
considerations for occupational safety and health (RRRHW) document,
which outlines the rights and responsibilities of health workers as well as
employers and managers in health facilities, is a step in the right direc-
tion. It is, therefore, advisable that the Nigerian government, in partner-
ship with the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control, come up with such a
document and also, take necessary practical steps to give it legal validity
in order to provide a rm legal basis for its implementation and enforce-
ment. Also, eorts should swiftly commence on the review of the Nigerian
national pandemic inuenza preparedness and response plan to accom-
modate the rights and responsibilities of the Nigeria health workers.
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14
Dialogism andPolyphony
intheInterpretations ofCOVID-19
Discourse inZimbabwe
TobiasMarevesa andEstherMavengano
Introduction
e genesis of the COVID-19 pandemic brought untold suering to
humankind the world over. e problematic nature of the virus is evident
in the emergence of multiple narratives and perspectives which dene the
pandemic discourse. e main contention in this study is that the
T. Marevesa (*)
Department of English and Media Studies, Great Zimbabwe University,
Masvingo, Zimbabwe
Research Institute for eology and Religion, College of Human Sciences
UNISA, Pretoria, South Africa
E. Mavengano
English and Media Studies Department, Faculty of Arts, Great Zimbabwe
University, Masvingo, Zimbabwe
Georg Forster Postdoc Research Fellow at Alexander von Humboldt, TU
(Techische Universistat Dresden) Institut of English and American Studies
Department of English, Dresden, Germany
© e Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023
F. Egbokhare, A. Afolayan (eds.), Global Health, Humanity and the COVID-19
Pandemic, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17429-2_14
304
COVID-19 pandemic narrative, just like any other human discourses, is
complex and multifaceted, and this calls for a multidisciplinary approach
adopted in this chapter through the interface of linguistics and religious
studies. Chugh and Sharma (2012) posit that language is the most salient
gift to humankind utilised to present worldviews. is observation is per-
tinent because even religious perspectives are constructed and presented
in language. Olimat (2020) also contends that words are powerful weap-
ons to shape the public views and perceptions about the coronavirus. It is
imperative to examine the linguistic framing of COVID-19 and religious
perspectives that shape the interpretations of the pandemic discourse.
e following research questions guide the claims, discussion and sub-
missions in this study:
• How does the language in COVID-19 discourse shape the perceptions
and interpretations of the pandemic?
• What is the interpretation of the COVID-19 pandemic from three
religions in Zimbabwe?
• How is the pandemic conceptualised from Bakhtin’s notions of the
dialogic and polyphonic?
Dialogic Theory andtheMonologic Sense
ofTruth inCOVID-19 Pandemic Discourse
Mikhail Bakhtin is a Russian philosopher whose ideas on language have
been used in linguistics, religious studies, philosophy, education, literary
criticism, among other disciplines (Mavengano et al. 2020). Bakhtin
(1981) introduces the term metalinguistics which is a philosophy of lan-
guage that celebrates multiplicity of worldviews and recognises the socio-
political and ideological dimensions of discourse (Mavengano 2020). In
other words, Bakhtinian metalinguistics framework focuses on languag-
ing in a particular discourse and heuristic problem due to polysemantic,
dialogic and polyphonic nature of language. Although Bakhtin made his
primary reference to poetics, particularly the novel genre, his ideas have
been extended to the understanding of human language in dierent
T. Marevesa and E. Mavengano
305
disciplines such as linguistics and religious studies in numerous contexts.
Dialogism underscores contradictions or conicting perspectives and the
unnalisability of sense-making in discourses. is is a departure from
mainstream linguistics and its monolingual closure of the text (Bakhtin
1981; Mavengano 2020). e interpretations of COVID-19 are moulded
in dialogic and polyphonic spaces of the pandemic discourse. Bakhtin
(1981) contends that language is dialogic by nature and using it is partici-
pating in dialogue in which divergent views compete with each other. He
arms that the multiplicity of conicting worldviews is realised in the
realm of language. Dialogism acknowledges the multiplicity of voices and
dynamics of the relations between individuals and society. Bakhtin (1984)
contends therefore that the meaning of an utterance or word (slovo) is
always half someone else’s. His observations have signicant implications
about the nature of human language and discourses such as COVID-19.
What Bakhtin underscores here is that meanings are not individually
constructed by the author /participant in discourse but rather emerge
from interactional relationships. is is a remarkable shift from tradi-
tional linguistics and religious studies because from a Bakhtinian sense,
the text is no longer the source of meaning production as established in
the structuralist perspective. Similarly, Mavengano (2020) comments
that Bakhtin’s concept of dialogism regards language as a porous, hybrid
and open-ended phenomenon. Interestingly, Bakhtin (1981/1984)
argues that languaging in discourse is a site for dialogic interaction and
contestation of multiple perspectives which thereby creates semantic dis-
sonance. is means that reality in a discourse is provisional, ever- evolving
and always contested through re-interpretation. Dialogic interpretation
of COVID-19 discourse is attentive to the interplay of a cacophony of
voices or plurality of unmerged autonomous consciousnesses or perspec-
tives. e most fascinating aspect is the emphasis on the coexistence of
dierent worldviews (polyvocal nature of texts or discourses), active
interaction involved in sense-making (addressivity and responsivity), and
an acknowledgement of the presence of other.
14 Dialogism and Polyphony in the Interpretations of COVID-19…
306
Polyphonic Theory andthePlurality
ofConsciousnesses
Polyphony, from Bakhtin’s (1981/1984) theorisation of language and dis-
course, refers to the existence and manifestation of several conicting but
valid opinions. Bakhtinian thinking refutes the idea of a single reality or
monolithic truth. is then raises the issue of multiperspectivality in the
understanding of reality, as well as the problematisation of the idea of a
single truth (Mavengano 2020). Bakhtin (1981) argues that human dis-
course is an interactive space in which diverse voices or worldviews “speak
back” to one another. Discourse captures and represents the human world
dened by dierence in interacting perspectives or worldviews (Bakhtin
1981/1986). His dialogic and polyphonic concepts refute any notion of
a xed truth. Explaining his metalinguistics theory, Bakhtin (1981/1984)
further postulates that meaning does not exist in isolation but rather
springs from historical, religious and social milieu in which language is
utilised. is argument signicantly points at the contextual or situa-
tional dimension of language in discourse which further provides several
avenues for sense-making.
What this suggests is that perceptions about COVID-19 pandemic are
not formed in a vacuum but rather inuenced by contextual factors, what
Bakhtin (1981) calls the outsideness of language. Such arguments make
a compelling case against Saussurean and Chomsky and linguistics in
which contextual factors are not accorded much attention in the study of
language. e signicance of context is emphasised in Bakhtinian frame-
work since a verbal utterance (slovo) is not merely lexical but also contex-
tualised (Mavengano 2020). For instance, John Mangwiro, the
Zimbabwe’s Deputy Minister of Health, cited what WHO stated at the
beginning of 2021, “the entire Zimbabwe has been declared a coronavi-
rus hotspot for a new variant of COVID-19in the second wave” (Moche
2021: 2). e Deputy Minister also argued that World Health
Organisation claimed that the infection rates rose drastically in all the
provinces of Zimbabwe. If one compares the statistics of new cases and
deaths in South Africa and Zimbabwe, not to mention the Western
world, the truth value of this statement from WHO is challenged and
T. Marevesa and E. Mavengano
307
refuted. Yet, WHO’s claim has some sociopolitical, health and economic
connotations. WHO’s utterance can only be relevant and meaningful
when the Zimbabwean’s prevailing sociopolitical, health and economic
conditions are taken into consideration. us, the meaning of this state-
ment is derived from factors beyond verbal (lexical) content. In other
words, mere linguistic and religious descriptions in interpreting the
COVID-19 discourse are insucient. e concept of polyphony is rele-
vant when examining the linguistic framing of COVID-19 and religious
perspectives present in the pandemic discourse. Polyphonic discourse
accommodates the plurality of independent perspectives and unnalis-
ability or open-endedness of meaning-making. In other words, the exam-
ination of COVID-19 discourse in this study is done in pursuit of various
perspectives.
Linguistic Landscape, Languaging
andSemantics ofMetaphorising
inCOVID-19 Discourse
e outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic brought some very interesting
linguistic items to describe the pandemic. Language plays an essential
role in communicating information and realities about COVID-19 pan-
demic. Language is employed by political gures as an instrument with
the intention to shape the public perceptions about the lethal coronavirus
disease. e political function of language when used by politicians is
described by Crespo-Fernandez (2007/2013). Former president of the
United States, Donald Trump, described the coronavirus as “foreign virus
and invisible enemy” that demands “aggressive and comprehensive” eort
coordinated by him as “wartime president.” By employing the adjectival
terms “foreign” and “invisible” the former president brings to fore the
controversial subject about the genesis of coronavirus and also stresses the
strangeness of the disease (Olimat 2020). Another critical possible read-
ing of Trump’s perception of COVID-19 speaks to the politics of repre-
sentation. e politics of representation is embedded in Trump’s linguistic
framing of coronavirus as a “China virus,” “Chinese virus” and Wuhan
14 Dialogism and Polyphony in the Interpretations of COVID-19…
308
virus (Su etal. 2020: 2; Aljazeera News, 17 March 2020) Marcus (2020)
observes that the battle between the US and China over the genesis of the
coronavirus is conveyed in Trump’s selection of linguistic items, revealing
his perception of the virus as a Chinese invention. In self-defence, e
NewYork Times on 19 March 2020 reported that China Spins a tale that
the “U.S Army started the coronavirus epidemic.” e Chinese govern-
ment dialogically refutes the allegation by the American president and
labelled COVID-19 as an “American virus” (e NewYork Times 2020;
Shanapinda 2020).
e foreignness of the virus, aggravated by the lack of epidemiological
information, magnies its threat and arouses public fear (Olimat 2020).
Cognisance of the fact that Trump is a prominent politician, his utter-
ances can be interpreted as circumlocutory language that is ambiguous
but politically charged. For politicians, language is a powerful instrument
to shape public perception (Olimat 2020). He implicitly but deliberately
inuences public worldview about the origin of COVID-19 by framing
the virus as a strange phenomenon in America (Shanapinda 2020). e
dysphemistic metaphor of war in the adjectival/noun phrase employed
by Trump foregrounds urgency and justies political actions taken by his
administration. Both e Guardian, e BBC and e NewYork Times
reported that Trump views himself as a “wartime president” and puts the
US on war footing to combat the outbreak (Smith 2020: n.p.). He
declares, “I am a wartime president. is is a war. A dierent kind of war
than we’ve ever heard” (Remarks 2020g cited in Smith 2020: 3). Bates
(2020) condemns Trump’s use of metaphors as a means to shape public’s
understanding of the coronavirus. Bates (2020) posits that war metaphor
is a strong frame employed to compel the public to support radical politi-
cal decisions from his government because, according to Trump, the
COVID-19 environment demands immediate political actions. In war
situations, presidents have obligation to defend their territories, and radi-
cal actions can be taken against the invading enemy. For Trump, the
coronavirus disease threatens lives the same way as wars.
It is imperative to note that Trump’s claim about the genesis of the
coronavirus is contested by the Chinese government in a dialogic space of
COVID-19 discourse. e public perceptions of the virus are shaped by
the two conicting truths because, according to Bakhtin (1981), truth is
T. Marevesa and E. Mavengano
309
located at the point of converge of multiple and divergent conscious-
nesses. Yet, this study problematises Bakhtinian argument because it is
also possible that what the American and the Chinese government’s claim
to be true could be false. is is so because the law of logic states that if
one of them is true, then the other must be false. So, the question is,
contrary to Bakhtin, is truth always what is involved in discursive dis-
agreements? In other words, the question of truth remains problematic
and contested. Signicantly, the political and socio-economic back-
ground provides shades of meanings to these perspectives from the US
and Chinese governments which have been in political and economic
conict for some time (Shanapinda 2020). is implies that the interpre-
tive process is informed by both the verbal content from the two govern-
ments as well as contextual dimension of languaging in discourse.
COVID-19 has created “a state of exception,” to borrow Agamben’s
(1998) term which justies the use of authoritarian mechanisms as dem-
onstrated through Trump’s COVID-19 policy when he blocked the dis-
bursement of scal aid to cash-starved states and cities. In the state of
exception, “the sovereign has legal power to suspend the validity of the
law, [and] legally places himself outside the law” (Agamben 1998: 15).
Interestingly, Trump did not initially believe the coronavirus was a grave
danger to Americans, only to take a turn around and declare himself a
“wartime president” (BBC News 2020; e New York Times 2020;
Shanapinda 2020), ready to ght the “invisible enemy” from China. It is
thus appropriate to argue that Trump politicised COVID-19 pandemic
discourse after he realised that he was becoming unpopular due to his
laissez-faire leadership style. In a dierent context but relevant to the
present discussion, Flusberg etal. (2018) argue that from a cognitive
linguistics perspective, the prototype of war as source domain of the tar-
get domain (COVID-19in this case) triggers emotional response such as
anxiety and fear. Such metaphoric framing of COVID-19 heightens anx-
iety in American citizens. For a more robust linguistic understanding of
the COVID-19 discourse, it is imperative to examine counter statements
about the pandemic from dierent presidents from Africa. For instance,
the Zimbabwean President Mnangagwa claims that the solution of
COVID-19 should come from the appeasement and veneration of ances-
tors who are perceived by the Zimbabwean President to be angry. e
14 Dialogism and Polyphony in the Interpretations of COVID-19…
310
appeasement according to Mnangagwa can only be done by traditional
leaders at Ematonjeni which is a traditional sacred place. Mnangagwa’s
remarks suggest that COVID-19 is a punishment from the ancestors.
Ironically, President Mnangagwa’s perception of the pandemic diers
greatly from that of Zimbabwe’s Minister of Defence, Oppah Muchinguri,
who claims that, “the coronavirus pandemic is the work of god punishing
countries that imposed sanctions on us [Zimbabwe].” She further alleges
that’ “[t]hey are now staying indoors. eir economies are screaming just
like they did to our economy” (www.news24.com). e minister views
COVID-19 pandemic as God’s punishment for the US and Europe. She
claims that the genesis of the coronavirus is traced to the Chinese labs
where “botched experiments” resulted in the deadly virus (https://www.
voanews.com/).
At the beginning of 2021, the minister also made further controversial
comments about China accusing the Chinese for manufacturing the
coronavirus in their labs. Muchinguri claims, “Isn’t it that there is a seri-
ous upsurge of COVID-19 cases in China? It’s them who had botched
experiments. Now that’s killing us. ey can’t reverse it anymore. Look at
where the people we call friends have taken us to” (https://www.voanews.
com/). In addition, the term “Chinese vaccine” captures scepticism
among Zimbabweans about the genuineness of the Chinese government
in donating the vaccine when WHO has sent the delegation to investi-
gate the Chinese’s involvement in alleged manufacturing of the coronavi-
rus. WHO (2021) also warns Zimbabwean government against the use
of “Chinese vaccine.” Looking at languaging that projects linguistic
understanding of COVID-19 pandemic, there is no agreement about the
genesis of the disease and how its menace can be stopped. Each under-
standing is motivated by political, economic or religious concern. A
Tanzanian President, John Magufuli posed that “coronavirus, which is a
devil, cannot survive in the body of Christ...It will burn instantly...,”
(Mutahi 2020: 1). Although the Tanzanian president acknowledges the
fact that the coronavirus is a deadly disease, his utterance suggests that
the virus only infects non-Christians. Both Mnangagwa and Magufuli
who are African presidents believe that the solution to COVID-19 pan-
demic should come from the spiritual realm, the ancestors for the former
T. Marevesa and E. Mavengano
311
whereas the latter believes that Christians will be saved through their call
to Christ.
As the coronavirus disease remains a grave danger to the public health
across the globe, it is fundamental to contemplate the pertinent role of
language in the COVID-19 discourse and how it inuences the public
understanding of the pandemic. e pandemic continues to be a great
calamity to humanity which strives to grasp the nature of coronavirus
and how it can be controlled. e COVID-19 discourse oers a salient
linguistic site for the examination of language employed with regard to
the public perceptions of the disease. is discourse is characterised by
sea and war metaphors, risk tropes, and personication among other
interesting linguistic strategies that deserve academic attention with the
intention to explore how the pandemic metanarrative is framed
linguistically.
Cognitive linguists such as Lako and Johnson (1980), Lako (2008)
and Gibbs (2017) view metaphor as pervasive in everyday language. In
this section, militant verbiage and warfare linguistic expressions employed
in COVID-19 discourse by the global news outlets and WHO are scru-
tinised in an attempt to understand how language is used to construct
dierent understandings and convey the meanings about the coronavirus
disease. What messages do militarised metaphors convey and how may
this potentially inuence the public perceptions of COVID-19 pan-
demic? In the year 2020, e Telegraph, Sky News, e NewYork Times,
BBC News among others mainstream media outlets presented militarised
lexicalisation from the semantic domain of war such as “curfew,” “self-
defence,” “healthcare workers are in the trenches,” ghting the “lethal
enemy,” waging a war against the virus (BBC News 2020), “battle-
ground,” “battle plan,” “winning a war, frontline soldiers” (Sky News
2020a,b) probably with the intention to elicit emotional response from
the audience and gain public attention. For instance, BBC News (2020)
reports that according to the Chinese President Xi Jinping, his country
was condent and capable of “winning the war against the virus.” For
Shanapinda (2020), Molnar (2020) and Olimat (2020) assume meta-
phors generate fear, anxiety, panic at the same time meant to magnify and
reinforce the idea of danger posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. e
military lingo employed draws from war lexicon to associate the
14 Dialogism and Polyphony in the Interpretations of COVID-19…
312
pandemic with war and achieve salience with regard to the virus.
Healthcare workers are perceived as frontline soldiers in a war situation
ghting the deadly virus that is threatening many lives. Metaphorisation
of health workers and war metaphors carry an emotional valence which
derives their function from tropes of human fragility in the context of
COVID-19 pandemic. e risk posed by the coronavirus thereby justi-
es the war eorts against it. It could be argued that some metaphorised
expressions are hyperbolic and they deform facts about COVID-19 pan-
demic (Olimat 2020).
In 2020, WHO issued a series of measures that deployed imperative
terms such as “we will win the battle,” “let us mask up,” “let us exercise
social distance,” “the victory in this battle is ours,” among others (WHO
2020: 2–3). e use of imperative language by WHO and top govern-
ment ocials across the globe compels and at the same time implores the
public to take collective action against the coronavirus. e prominence
and the aective values of such imperatives force on the public the
urgency of observing the mitigatory measures (Ra 2020). COVID-19 is
depicted in the mainstream news media asa threat to public health sys-
tems worldwide.It is also demonised in personied metaphors like “killer
disease,” “an enemy that is tightening its grip, “attacking people,” “caus-
ing mayhem” and “humanity is besieged” (Ra 2020; Olimat 2020). Sea
metaphors are used to describe COVID-19’s behavioural stages. WHO
(2021) also declared that the world has already gone through the “rst”
and in some countries the “second wave.” Sea waves are life- threatening
and destructive. e use of sea metaphors frames and foregrounds the
risk posed by the pandemic. Coronavirus disease is further framed gura-
tively as “a monster,” “Tsunami and storm” to foreground its destructive
nature (Alvarez 2020).is hyperbolic description springs from the idea
that the pandemic has disrupted many productive economic and social
activities through imposed social distancing and shutdowns/closures that
complicate the suering of many (Olimat 2020), hence its associative
semantic connotations with biblical “plagues” (Peters 2020). us, the
term demon conveys emotional valence in conceptualisation of a disease
that has greatly aected humanity’s existential conditions.
T. Marevesa and E. Mavengano
313
Religious Conceptualisation ofthePandemic
inZimbabwe
e following sections examine COVID-19 pandemic discourse from
three religions prominent in Zimbabwe: Christianity, Islam and African
indigenous religion. e analysis of the religious responses to
COVID-19in Zimbabwe will be guided by the following questions: how
are religions in Zimbabwe responding to the sociopolitical interventions
of COVID-19 pandemic? What are religious and theological signicance
behind the causes of COVID-19? What are theological considerations on
what could be done to do away with COVID-19 pandemic? is inter-
disciplinary approach to COVID-19 discourse resonates with Bakhtinian
theorisation of the nexus between language and truth which is complex,
multiple and conictual.
Christian Perspective
e Christian and Islamic responses to COVID-19in Zimbabwe are
centred on the themes of eschatology and apocalypse. is is because
Christianity and Islam are both Abrahamic religions with shared doc-
trines and teachings. Isiko (2020) denes eschatology as the study of the
end times or the nal destiny of humanity. Apocalypse also refers to “rev-
elations of secrets of a spiritual nature” (Isiko, ibid: 83). Eschatology and
apocalypse are two terms which have similar meanings that are associated
with futuristic expectations about the end of the world. Sean (2020)
observes that the outbreak of COVID-19 is portrayed by scholars such as
Isiko (2020), Koire (2020) and Niringiye (2020) as a sign of the end of
the world and humanity by Christians. Damir (2019: 7) also stated that
a number of clerics are interpreting the outbreak of COVID-19 as an
imminent sign of the end of the world. Niringiye (2020: 45) posits that:
the human quest for meaning in the face of a monstrous and inexpli-
cable natural disaster, catastrophe or plague, is a natural instinct. It is the
way to cope or deal with panic, fear and uncertainty by the catastrophe;
faith in the supernatural is an essential part of human arsenal to either
ght or ight.
14 Dialogism and Polyphony in the Interpretations of COVID-19…
314
Some Christians have the view that the COVID-19 pandemic may
have been caused by human sin evoking God’s anger. Similarly, some
Zimbabwean pastors of Apostolic Faith Church such as Madziva, Jinjika
and Ndoni argued that inasmuch as there were pandemics in the past as
a result of sin, a signicant thing about COVID-19 pandemic has been
preceded by a number of signs (D.Ndoni, personal interview, March 6,
2021). is end of the world signs that were experienced in Zimbabwe
includes HIV and AIDS disease for about twenty years, Cholera for a
period and now COVID-19. e argument here is thatthe tragicout-
break of COVID-19 pandemic does not mean the end of the world
butrather serves a sign that theend is going to take place in the near
future. It is viewed as God’s punishment upon the sinful people. Since
this study is informed by Bakhtin’s (1981/1986) theorisation of language
and human discourse, it is essential to recognise that each of the perspec-
tives discussed is treated as a valid consciousness that contributes to the
conceptualisation of COVID-19 as a complex reality that invites plural-
ity of consciousnesses. In other words, Bakhtin disrupts any interpretive
process that privileges absolutism in the understanding of human
discourse.
Such understanding of the pandemic is contested in dialogic and poly-
phonic construction of COVID-19 narratives. Despite this understand-
ing, it is evident that coronavirus is indiscriminate because both the
faithful and unfaithful face the dangers of COVID-19 pandemic.
Ignoring such valid reality has disastrous implications on humanity. e
coronavirus is not selective whether one is sinful or not. In a dierent
context, Sean (2020) made a claim that God was in charge of the Black
Death which took place in the fourteenth century, he was angered by sin-
ful acts such as indecent dressing, arrogance, promiscuity, immorality,
among others. is argument is proered in contemporary times by
Stearns (2009) who states that God could have unleashed the coronavirus
to humanity probably because people are no longer worshipping Him by
legalising homosexuality.
e above views are supported by biblical texts which are made refer-
ence to explain the outbreak of COVID-19 by Christians; these are
Numbers 16:1–35; 2 Chronicles 7:13–14; Jeremiah 17:14–18; Psalms
91:5–7; John 14:1; Matthew 17:14, among others. ese texts attribute
T. Marevesa and E. Mavengano
315
the source of disasters and pandemics to God’s wrath against the disobe-
dience of humanity. ese scriptures indicate that pandemics are caused
by sin and that humanity can only reconcile with God through prayer. In
the present context of COVID-19, this argument suggests that human-
kind needs to repent and seek forgiveness as a solution to the pandemic
problem. Reverend Mutume of Apostolic Faith Church in Zimbabwe
remarked that verses such as Numbers 16:1–35 is a text which pastors
can use in COVID-19 pandemic discourse to account for God’s anger
against the Israelites for their sinfulness and unfaithfulness in Zimbabwe
(Reverend Julius Mutume, personal interview, February, 2021). e same
text further alludes that God was prepared to destroy all Judeans because
of the disobedience committed by the three families of Dathan, Korah
and Abiram verse 21, and in the following verse 22, Moses’ “intercession
reversed God’s” initial plan to kill only members of the three disobedient
families. ese biblical texts refer to the time of Moses, when he (Moses)
interceded for the families of Dathan, Korah, and Abiram. e same God
can reverse the pandemic which is wreaking havoc in Zimbabwe by kill-
ing thousands of people. is Christian understanding informs the view
that Zimbabwean pastors should stand for the people of Zimbabwe
pleading for God’s forgiveness in order to be saved from COVID-19 pan-
demic. Furthermore, in the Zimbabwean context, it implies that the
nation should have illustrious church leaders such as the Moses and
Aarons of today who can intercede for the stressed and suering people.
is view is mentioned in an interview with an Anglican priest who said:
Another verse which is being used by other pastors is 2 Chronicles 7:14 to
imply that Coronavirus came as a punishment of sin and the anger of God.
I don’t think so. Nevertheless, the origin of COVID-19 is China. I would
say it’s a biological warfare but I disagree with the claim that the superior
God is spanking humanity through coronavirus. (Edward Ncube, personal
interview, March 12, 2021)
Whether the outbreak of the coronavirus disease is a punishment or not,
the Christian perspective suggests that the solution to the current pan-
demic comes from prayer for divine intervention. is is so because in
the New Testament, Matthew 17:14 discusses the importance of
14 Dialogism and Polyphony in the Interpretations of COVID-19…
316
humility before God who has supreme power to oer total healing of any
form of disease. In this text, prayer is again the key element in bringing
healing to an individual. John 14:1 and Psalms 91:5–7 deliver a message
of encouragement to the victims of disasters, aictions and pandemics
such as coronavirus. e cited scriptural texts would therefore be instru-
mental, according to the Christians, in bringing hope and encourage-
ment in times of distress and suering caused by COVID-19 pandemic
in Zimbabwe.
e proponents of the Christian perspective are of the view that this
was the reason that countries such as China, Europe and America experi-
enced so many COVID-19 related deaths when compared to African
countries. Basing on the Christian perspective, the dierences in death
statistics implies that the former countries are more sinful than the
African states that had low fatalities. At the end of April 2020, there has
been a world total of conrmed cases of 2, 667,526 which were recorded.
e United States of America had the highest cases of 849,094, China
had 82,798, Italy was third highest at187, 327 and Spain had 213,024.
Yet Africa had a total of 26,870 conrmed cases (Worldometers 2020). It
is against this background that scholars such as Isiko (2020) and Parsitau
(2020) have given attention to the explanation of these fatalities from the
perspectives of divine intervention. Page (2020) regards such perceptions
as scapegoating and politicisation of the pandemic which ignore other
explanations of the causes of coronavirus disease.
ere is also the 5G issue as a possible cause of spreading coronavirus
by radiation from the advanced technology of the mobile services.
Radiation can come into contact with the skin for instance, when one
puts a 5G mobile to their ear when receiving or making a call (Shanapinda
2020). It has been established that 5G is dangerous to humanity but its
association with the outbreak of coronavirus disease is yet to be proved
scientically. Clearly, each of these perspectives has no monopoly to
mean. is is in line with Bakhtin’s (1981/ 1984) views which suggest
that interpretation and comprehension of human discourses is an active
and inherently responsive process. However, the critical question is that
even within the Bakhtinian framework, how can one dierentiate between
the plausibly true statement and the pure nonsensical or even blatantly
false ideas and arguments? Another problematic question is that does a
T. Marevesa and E. Mavengano
317
purely stupid idea also nd its way into the discursive framework that
Bakhtin stipulates as potentially true? ese are essential questions that
trouble the Bakhtinian theorisation of truth. In other words, Bakhtin’s
arguments cannot be taken as the opportunity to consider all falsity and
gibberish.
e existence of incompatible interpretations in COVID-19 pan-
demic discourse advances the notions of dialogism and polyphony and
shows the constraint of a monologic reality. Regarding coronavirus dis-
ease as punishment from God could be valid and yet partial because there
is semantic dissonance in a cacophony of voices, narratives and percep-
tions in the religious realm when debating the genesis of the pandemic. It
is also incomplete to refute other angles of truths. Yet, further scholarly
conversations are needful to address how to dierentiate such angles of
truth from unfounded claims. In another context but relevant to this
discussion, Zuze, refuting the claim by a Zimbabwean high-ranking o-
cial that COVID-19 was a punishment for Western countries and the
USA, states that the pandemic is not a disease for a particular race, reli-
gion, nationality or ethnicity. e monological stance of perceiving that
coronavirus is a punishment from God is therefore insensitive to other
possible interpretations thereby closing dialogic and polyphonic spaces of
the pandemic discourse.
Islamic Perspective
e response of Muslims to COVID-19in Zimbabwe is mainly based on
the doctrines which are deduced from the Quran and the traditions
Prophet Muhammad. From the Quran, there are well-tabulated Islamic
guidelines which deal with pandemics. e Quran provides explanations
about the occurrence, cause and prevention of natural disasters and pan-
demics. For Muslims, pandemics and natural catastrophes come from
Allah. Mudhumi, a Muslim Imam said, “God is responsible for sending
disasters and epidemics to humankind. All the good and bad originate
from God. Muslims are admonished to accept God’s wishes for human-
kind” (K.Mudhumi, personal interview, January, 12, 2021). Koire (2020:
20) argues that “the COVID-19 [pandemic] is not an accident but an
14 Dialogism and Polyphony in the Interpretations of COVID-19…
318
incident which was predetermined by God, years before it struck human-
kind.” ere are three ways in which Allah expresses his anger to human-
ity: “God’s resolve to make humanity realize his supremacy over the world
through natural calamities beyond human control; Allah’s attempt to test
the faith of humanity; and nally, pandemics as a punitive measure to the
disobedient” (Isiko 2019a: 103).
From the Islamic perspective, COVID-19 pandemic was sent by Allah
to show his power over the whole universe. e fact that COVID-19 has
crippled the world economies, while science is still scrambling to make a
meaningful sense of the virus, seems to demonstrate the capitulation of
humankind. e pandemic, according to the Islam, serves as a reminder
to all humankind that Allah is in control of the universe. In spite of
humankind’s nancial and social position and standing, humanity is
powerless before Allah (Koire 2020). Isiko (2019b: 78) further argues
that “weakness and helplessness of human beings amidst COVID-19 fur-
ther demonstrate the unequivocal equality of humanity before Allah, the
supreme leader, for the virus aects the rich and poor, the young and old,
educated and the illiterate.”
us, from an Islamic perspective, natural calamities and pandemics
are meant to test humankind’s faith in Allah. According to Isiko (2020),
it is Allah who put people in panic, poverty, food shortage, fear and pan-
demics as trial for faith. Regardless of the predicament of the Muslims
they required to go back to Allah for guidance. For everything that tran-
spires in the Muslim’s life Islam prescribes a solution to it. Allah allows
troubles and suerings on humankind. is is supported by what the
Quran states:
“Allah touches you with harm, none can remove it but He, and if He
intends any good for you, there is none who can repel His Favour which
He causes to reach whomsoever of His slaves He will. And He is Oft-
Forgiving, Merciful” (Quran10:107).
Based on the above Quranic quote, Muslims seem to believe that
COVID-19 is one of the many natural calamities and pandemics that
Allah had been sending to humankind for ages. Reference is made to the
“… saints in paradise [who] experienced diseases of such a nature, but it
was their endurance that made them able to have their way to paradise”
(Isiko 2020: 90). is is reminiscent with what the Quran says: “No
T. Marevesa and E. Mavengano
319
calamity befalls on earth or in yourselves but is inscribed in the Book of
Decrees- (Al-Lauh Al-Mahfuz), before we bring it into existence. Verily,
that is easy for Allah” (Quran 57:22). In addition, the Quran says: “No
calamity befalls, but with the leave [i.e. decision and Qadar (Divine
Preordainments)] of Allah, and whosoever believes in Allah. He guides
his heart [to the true Faith with certainty, i.e. what has befallen him was
already written for him by Allah from the Qadar (Divine Preordainments)],
and Allah is the All-Knower of everything” (Quran 64:11). Allah will
ultimately come and liberate those that have persevered the trying times
and remain faithful to Islam. us, the Islamic belief requires persever-
ance, patience and faith in Allah as the spiritual ingredient that will
enable Allah to deliver humanity from pandemics or other natural calam-
ities. Lastly, pandemics are a form of punishment from Allah to the sin-
ful. is is in agreement with what Mlambo an Imam said, “the sinful
nature of humankind is responsible for epidemics like COVID-19”
(Henry Mlambo, personal interview, January 13, 2021). From the Islamic
perspective, the disobedience of humanity is responsible for epidemics
such as coronavirus. In the case of China, such sinfulness will include the
mass murder of Muslims through unjustied wars, violating human and
religious rights against Muslims, and the prevention of freedom of wor-
ship (Isiko 2020). ese views should be debated in the context of dia-
logic and polyphonic notions which displace rigid systems of thought
and sense-making but rather support pluralistic nature of reality.
African Traditional Religious Perspective
e African indigenous religious’ response to the outbreak of coronavirus
can be understood from what traditional healers and diviners have said in
Zimbabwe. According to African indigenous religious belief system, it is
the Supreme Being and ancestors who are responsible for inicting pan-
demics like the COVID-19 and natural disasters on humankind due to
disobedience (Parsitau 2020). Such ideas from scholars of African
Indigenous religious belief system are fundamental in the understanding
of COVID-19in Zimbabwean context. For instance, ancestral belief sys-
tem does not agree with conspiracy theories which advance the claim that
14 Dialogism and Polyphony in the Interpretations of COVID-19…
320
COVID-19 pandemic is a result of a biological warfare between the
United States and China. Shanapinda (2020: 12) argues that “conspira-
cists are suggesting that COVID-19 could have been a human error.”
Mwashita a traditional healer argued that COVID-19 pandemic did not
come as a biological warfare but “it came as a result of the anger of the
ancestors who are not happy with what Zimbabweans have done” (Daniel
Mwashita, personal, interview, February 13, 2021). Unfortunately,
African indigenous religious belief does not believe in conventional med-
icine, yet ancestors utilise people to achieve their will. African traditional
belief does not subscribe to conventional medicine but rather advocates
the traditional medicine (Adogame etal. 2015). Parsitau (2020) argues
that ancestors may not bring any ailment without its cure. e implica-
tion of this argument is that the ancestors give the traditional healers and
diviners’ power to nd medicine to heal all types of diseases, including
COVID-19. Another diviner argued that the ancestors visit the tradi-
tional healers through dreams instructing them to get the type of medi-
cine to give their clients (Sibanda, w, personal interview, January, 20,
2021). Although in the African traditional belief system the traditional
healers and diviners use traditional medicine, they also venerate the
ancestral spirits for healing.
In response to the coronavirus from an African traditional religious
perspective, the current Zimbabwean President Emmerson
Dambudzo Mnangagwa held a meeting with traditional and religious
leadership apprising them on the COVID-19 pandemic. e religious
groups that the President met include Zimbabwe Chiefs’ Council the
Supreme Council of Islamic Aairs in Zimbabwe (SCIAZ) among oth-
ers. roughout the meeting, each religious leader submitted to the
President what they want to do to lessen the eects of COVID-19.e
President told the chiefs that traditionally every time there is a problem,
the chiefs should be formally addressed being the guardians of the people
and the land. He appealed to them to consult the ancestors for a solution
to the pandemic in Zimbabwe Chief Charumbira argued that “it is our
responsibility as chiefs to lead and protect our people from the COVID-19
disease by being able to standing on the gap” (Chief Fortune Charumbira,
personal interview, December, 23, 2020). Fortunate Charumbira is a
leader of the chiefs’ council in Zimbabwe. In response to the president’s
T. Marevesa and E. Mavengano
321
plea, the chiefs in Zimbabwe visited Ematonjeni, a sacred place where
traditional rituals are performed.
From the religious perspective, the genesis of COVID-19 pandemic is
linked to oensive human behaviour to the Supreme Being (God for the
Christians, Allah for Muslims and Ancestors for African Indigenous reli-
gion). us, it is perceived that coronavirus is a pandemic which has been
unleashed by the ancestors to express their anger. Signicantly, the three
religions discussed in this chapter have a convergent point where they
view COVID-19 as some form of punishment for disobedience. At the
same time, there is a profound divergent point vis-à-vis the source that
unleashes punishment on humanity. In addition, all the religions dis-
cussed above in the context of coronavirus disease are futuristic in the
sense that what the adherents of each religion do in present time will
shape their destiny. e intervention of the Supreme Being that comes as
a result of the public outcry by the adherents provides a solution to the
pandemic or the natural calamities.
Reflections
e chapter has explored how COVID-19 pandemic is understood from
linguistic and religious perspectives. Unfortunately, each dimension falls
short of a multidimensional framework Bakhtin advocates. Drawing
from the linguistic construction and religious perspectives that explain
and shape public understanding of COVID-19 pandemic, novel seman-
tic avenues were highlighted in positions of conict and convergence in
dialogic and polyphonic spaces. Bakhtin’s dialogic and polyphonic con-
cepts problematise and unsettle traditional hermeneutical practices in
both linguistics and religious studies that ignore multidimensionality and
multiperspectivality in language and discourse. e discussion on lan-
guaging of COVID-19 pandemic discourse brought out a salient dimen-
sion of the pragmatic element in sense-making process. e pragmatic
quality of language and religion is emphasised in principle of contextual-
ism. us, Bakhtin’s metalinguistics takes into cognizance the pragmatic
dimension of language which is a shift from Saussurean langue/parole
distinction. Furthermore, COVID-19 pandemic discourse is nuanced
14 Dialogism and Polyphony in the Interpretations of COVID-19…
322
due to the presence of multiperspectivality and multidimensionality. In
view of the arguments and observations proered in this study, it is
proper to claim that the dialogically and polyphonically constructed dis-
course is a complex site of meaning convergences and divergences which
are embedded in languaging and religions. Language is instrumental in
shaping the public conceptualisation of COVID-19 and the language
users proer their worldviews, beliefs and attitudes through languaging.
It is apparent that the pandemic is perceived in various ways from both
linguistic and religious perspectives. is is so because in Bakhtinian
framework, attention is accorded to contextual embeddedness of lan-
guage. Furthermore, the dialogic and polyphonic understanding of
COVID-19 pandemic suggests that reality is complex and multiple.
Conclusion
e application of dialogic and polyphonic concepts has brought useful
insights in linguistic and religious re-reading and reconceptualisation of
COVID-19 discourse. e interface of linguistics and religious studies
has demonstrated the importance of multidisciplinary approach in
research in order to discover new sites of meaning-making. In view of the
above reections it is apparent that COVID-19 pandemic discourse is a
terrain of dierent consciousnesses. It has been observed from the above
submissions that dialogic and polyphonic concepts challenge and refute
traditional claims about the monopoly to mean in discourse. Most essen-
tially, reality cannot be limited to a single consciousness but is rather
generated from a polyvocal or multiperspectival discourse by all social
participants, religions because truth provisionally emerges from a point
of touching of diverse consciousnesses. It has also been observed that
COVID-19 pandemic discourse is constructed mainly through a milita-
rised lingo, sea metaphors which heighten the gravity of the pandemic.
Apparently, dialogism and polyphony unsettle traditional monologic
interpretive practices in linguistics and religious studies because these
Bakhtinian notions privilege the idea that semantic dissonance is ever
present in human discourse since there are always conicting views which
call for re-reading and re-interpretation. us, it is relevant and
T. Marevesa and E. Mavengano
323
appropriate to submit that linguistic and religious framing of COVID-19
provides numerous semantic entry points and diverse perspectives that
are open to further scrutiny and revision in an ongoing interpretive pro-
cess of COVID-19 pandemic.
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T. Marevesa and E. Mavengano
Part III
Representing COVID-19
329
15
Cartooning COVID-19 onFacebook
JamesYékú
Introduction
In April 2021, fans and followers of the Nigerian political cartoonist
Etim Bassey Asukwo (pen name Mike Asukwo) began sharing content
about the ‘arrest’ of the artist who had allegedly violated an order by the
Nigerian military restricting movement because of the pandemic.1
Although the Army authorities eventually discredited the story and
described it as fake news, the oppressive nature of state power in Nigeria
and the fact of the visual resistance of state power in his cartoons left
many legitimately concerned about Asukwo’s safety. When the cartoonist
later posted on his Facebook page and Twitter handle that he had been
1 Kingsley Omonobi. 2020. Nigerian Army did not arrest me over COVID-19 lockdown―Asuquo.
e Vanguard. Accessed February 8, 2021. https://www.vanguardngr.com/2020/05/
nigerian-army-did-not-arrest-me-over-covid-19-lockdown-%E2%80%95-asuquo/.
J. Yékú (*)
University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, USA
e-mail: jyeku@ku.edu
© e Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023
F. Egbokhare, A. Afolayan (eds.), Global Health, Humanity and the COVID-19
Pandemic, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17429-2_15
330
merely ‘invited’ based on his knowledge of an ongoing investigation,
state actors were expectedly forceful in their denunciation of what they
read as online misinformation. is episode demonstrates how social
media, despite its extrative capture of prots from users,has emerged as
an arena of tensions and contestations between state and society in
Nigeria in the last decade. As the history of African cartooning has con-
stantly thematized censorship in various ways, social media as the major
outlet for Asukwo’s most viral cartoons manifests as an invaluable space
in which the artist balances “the barbed playfulness” of his art with the
state power he constantly critiques (Limb and Olaniyan 2018: xix). But
the Nigerian state has also asserted its presence and narrative authority on
the social web through acts of interdiction as was evident with the Twitter
banof 2021 or by planting trolls through avenues such as the notorious
Buhari Media Center to disrupt the activist expressions and activistspeech
of Nigerian netizens who produce contents that challenge or ridicule
state power. is is besides several attempts to prohibit the voices of neti-
zens through legislative modalities that proscribe or regulate social media
platforms themselves. e most recent confrontation between the
Nigerian state and citizens who encounter it both as a violent regime of
coercion and a morbid “state of pathology” (Ebenezer Obadare and Wale
Adebanwi 2010: 3) is the #EndSARS protest which foregrounded the
power of young people to speak back against a culture of police brutality
and the larger structural conditions that generate it. e #EndSARS
movement also metaphorizes for protesters the viciousness of state domi-
nation and thuggery and, more broadly, Nigeria’s culture of prebendal
thievery that guarantees a gerontocratic hold on political and economic
power. Although Asukwo produced several cartoons to document the
#EndSARS protest, my analysis here attends to the pandemic-themed
cartoons he posted on Facebook in the months leading to the protest.
J. Yékú
331
Asukwo may not be the most popular social media inuencer online,2
but his cartoons, which make legible some of the most subversive repre-
sentations of postcolonial domination in present-day Nigeria, are rou-
tinely encountered by anyone who pay close attention to the production
and circulation of visual culture in the Nigerian digital ecosystem.
Asukwo is one of the most viral cultural producers in Nigeria as his car-
toons attempt to make sense of the interactions between state power and
citizens. As Asukwo engages his artistic sensibilities in depicting the harsh
realities of contemporary life in Nigeria, the strokes of his cartoons and
other visual elements become “counter-narratives against dominant gov-
ernmental narratives on sociopolitical issues,” according to Ganiyu Jimoh
(2019: 32), a leading scholar on Asukwo’s works. Unlike Jimoh, and
building on his several writings on the artist, my reading and approach to
Asukwo’s cartoons are specically in the framework of social media as I
contend that the archive of Asukwo’s works in the last decade exhibits
some of the most visually arresting documentation of the sociocultural
and political history of Nigeria, including the political elite’s relationship
with the 2020 pandemic. Asukwo’s skillful use of colors and graphic
strokes demonstrate an awareness ofnetwork culture andwhat I describe
in Cultural Netizenshipas social media’s “ontological visuality” (Yeku,
2022, 7),as the design and aordances of Facebook enable the seamless
circulation of his craft. After years of drawing cartoons in black and
white, his cartoons are draped in bold and beautiful colors that ironically
and graphically bear visual witness to the precarious colorlessness of the
postcolonial condition in Nigeria. In Asukwo’s cartoons, the reality of a
Nigerian postcolonial reality that lacks colors is well articulated! e eye-
catching and almost born-digital works he produces in recent years are
both evocative of the postcolonial drabness of Nigeria and tting to a
social media space in which his cartoons become circulated by friends,
fans, and followers who easily encode the suggestions and underlying
2 e gure of the social media inuencer in Nigeria is one that deserves scrutiny, as more people
perform prestige and symbolic power throughthe accumulationof followership and fame in the
attention economy of social media.While there are popular social media cultural producers and/or
netizens who are not inuencers, to be an inuencer means the ability to create cultural content
that generate fameand is contingent on their capacityto ‘brand’ their digital lives and monetize
their cult following.
15 Cartooning COVID-19 on Facebook
332
assumptions of the images(Yeku, 2022). e notion of virality is espe-
cially important for this chapter. Signicant for me is how the cartoons
of Asukwo spread virally on social media in response to the state’s engage-
ment with the global outbreak of a virus. I will examine the conditions
under which cultural netizens like Asukwo and his fans/friends make
sense of the state’s response to a viral outbreak,with the ultimate aim of
showing how social media stages and documents the pandemic perspec-
tives of members of the digital class in Nigeria. e chapter concludes on
the note that social media is a digital public sphere ambivalently prone to
uses and abuses.
Asukwo ontheSocial Media Stage
Social media technologies, as Jean Burgess etal. explain, include “those
digital platforms, services, and apps built around the convergence of con-
tent sharing, public communication, and interpersonal connection”
(2018: 1). My conception of social media as a digital arena of conver-
gence and sociality enabling participatory politics can be read as disparate
and performative voices appearing in a shared and networked space to
discuss issues of public concern. Despite this democratizing potential of
the participatory web, what Jodi Dean (2009) calls “communicative capi-
talism” continues to undergird social media as extractive and capitalist
spaces that capture monetary value from the data of users, aside from its
potential for the spread of hate speech and misinformation.
Despite its challenges,artistic practices and cultural productions on
the platformsare some of the means of expressing voice and may reveal
the ways in which those unconnected to state power tell their own stories
and decenter the hegemony of previous cultural forms. As hinted earlier,
the power of the social web consists in how it alerts citizensto the circula-
tion of state-sponsored narratives in various media, print or online, and
how it urges them to intervene as legitimate authorial actors. While the
consumers of the traditional media are productive subjects able to encode
media signs, they can now actively create and disseminate multiple media
truths and identities, entering the realm of authorship as producers of
meanings. Within the context of Nigerian political communication,
J. Yékú
333
social media enables a preponderance of individual narratives that chal-
lenge the hegemony of a highly regulated media environment. Social
media users in Nigeria who protested online against the government’s
explanation of an austere crude oil policy in 2012, or the state’s denial of
the famous extrajudicial killings at Lekki during the #EndSARS protests
were able, for instance, to produce their own counter narratives and alter-
native meanings both about the ‘true’ state of the energy sector, and in
the case of Lekki, what happened at the toll gate. ey were invested in
this process not only through text-based status updates and tweets
through which they organized rallies and protests, but also through visual
self-representations such as cartoons and viral memes and videos, texts of
cultural netizenship that oer oppositionalmeanings to the dominant
narratives of government.
Writing in the context of postcoup Chile, Nelly Richard asserts that
the production of contrary perspectives sometimes generates a radical
questioning and overturn of ocial systems of thoughts and power. To
have formulated meanings, Richard writes, “that were merely contrary to
the dominant point of view, without taking aim at the larger order of its
signifying structures, would have meant remaining inscribed within the
same linear duality of a Manichaean construction of meaning” (2004: 4).
Such view merely inverts the symmetry of what was represented, without
questioning the topology of the representation. e personal tweets and
Facebook posts of netizens, whether as visual popular arts or written
forms, are not mere expressions of counter perspectives to the grand nar-
ratives of the Nigeria state. ey likewise function to question and resist
asymmetrical power relations and their narratives of dispossession.
Cultural forms such as online cartoons and humorous images together
with the political commentaries that emerge from them challenge what
Richard refers to as “the fraudulent language spoken by the ocial power”
(2004: 5). In Nigeria, ocial power perpetually circulates fraudulent
speech, even creating on social media, as I have shown, structures among
unsuspecting young people to co-opt dissenting voices and disseminate
untruth. Produced and circulated online as dissident signiers invested in
the displacement of ocial knowledge systems, visual text such as the
cartoons I examine here have the potential to rupture and counter the
semantic force of such fraudulent narratives. I intend these illustrations
15 Cartooning COVID-19 on Facebook
334
to prove that signifying practices are always already modes of interrogat-
ing authority and resisting both state strictures and attempted monopo-
lies on meaning. A semioticcomponent inmy analyses is thus grounded
in the way Nigerian social media enact and present selves through the
staging of visual cultural forms like comicsthat signal the possibilities of
engaging with state power in various productive ways. Social media
expressions of resistance, it needs to be said, need not topple government
but importantly it can emerge as a practice of radical speech against the
impositions of power. is view is consistent with Francis Nyamnjoh’s
belief that we be critical of any suggestion that popular culture forms like
cartooning have little impact simply because they have “failed to bring
about a revolution or revolt against the status quo.” (2009: 97). Nigerian
digital subjects deploy social media like Twitter, Facebook, and even
WhatsApp to re-encounter the state as an entity to be decentered and
queried discursively. Although it may appear that the corrupt elite in
Nigeria pays little attention to the potentially disruptive spaces enabled
by the social web, a closer appreciation of the overarching picture reveals,
as in the case of the Buhari Media Centre I mentioned above, an unset-
tled and suspicious governmental presence online bent on co-opting and
disrupting dissident voices. Social media as digital networks of social rela-
tions illustrate new postmodernist performative dimensions of the self,
expressed through visual culture. Whereas scholars, such as Manuel
Castells and many other new media scholars, frame the discourse in terms
of the way social media are used by netizens to do and organize politics, I
signal attention to the social media users who do things with images as
cultural texts of resistance to power.
To borrow Chinua Achebe’s idea of the Ilo—a gathering place for play
and deliberations—in his anti-colonialist novel, ings Fall Apart, social
media exhibits the forms of a digital Ilo that envisions the possibility of a
cultural and collectivespace which stages privatized narratives and indi-
vidual subjectivity as a mode of public self-presentations and textualper-
formances. With the social web, social activism and the questioning of
traditional structures of power and nation-states take on a global intensi-
cation, manifest in the online reconstitution of the politics of dissent
and resistance around the world. Platforms such as social media became
the organizing mechanisms for coordinating and mobilizing protests
J. Yékú
335
activities of such notable social movements as the Arab Spring and
Occupy Wall Street. In Nigeria, Occupy Nigeria was a local version of
similar transnational movements around the world. From the
#BringBackOurGirls Twitter campaign of 2014 to the recent 2016
#SacktheSenate or #OccupyNASS movements therefore, what is evident
in the Nigerian political sphere is a new sociopolitical order constituted
by a virtual public that counters the hegemonic designs of the state by
mounting resistance through popular satirical texts and humorous images
on social media. I have argued elsewhere that these hashtags are archives
of Nigerian contemporary history, when considered in the sense that they
serve, alongside popular images, as documentary monikers of citizens’
digital engagement with power structures (Yeku 2018). Social media
might have been eective within the context of the Arab Spring and
indeed Occupy Nigeria, yet the inections and particularities of its work-
ings in dierent regions of the world need to be highlighted. As Paolo
Gerbaudo frames the argument, the problem of a techno-optimistic nar-
rative on social media becomes “a ‘fetish’ of collective action” (Gerbaudo
2012: 8) to the extent that social media becomes endowed with mystical
qualities that only obscure the actors using the media. Within the
Nigerian context, social media exerts a palpable inuence on society, as
much as society also shapes the kind of contents and genres that are evi-
dent on the platforms. Commenting on this point, Daniel Miller expli-
cates the essential nature of social media in relation to its working in
society by noting that it is not “that the world has made social media
completely dierent, or that social media has changed the world. It’s
obviously always going to be dialectical. But in this case, it provides a new
space for genres to occupy, which are not themselves particularly changed”
(Borgerson and Miller 2016: 523). In other words, and this is particularly
true of the social media culture in Nigeria, there exists a reciprocal inu-
ence between society and social media, with social issues supplying con-
tent for creative content producers whose work often serves to critique
the country’s political class.
Social media is central to the increasing role of Asukwo’s political car-
toons in expressing and conditioning a civic agency among Nigerians.
His cartoons demonstrate how everyday media practices such as the
decoding and duplication of popular culture texts online can challenge
15 Cartooning COVID-19 on Facebook
336
hegemonic structures. In Onookome Okome’s (2007) reading of the
popular audience of Nollywood, he underscores how citizens are forced
to convert their vulnerability to state power into creative and artistic
expression. Okome notes that “powerlessness in the roughly organized
political and cultural spheres is converted into a peculiar narrative power
in the realm of this existential disorder. What comes out of the various
narrative acts of this ironic chorus is what we may refer to as “popular
narratives” (2007: 9). Social media platforms likewise oer the opportu-
nity for the production and distribution of popular narratives, mostly
visual, through which netizens perform all kinds of subjectivities. Asukwo
mainly distributes his works, as the editorial cartoonist of Business Day,
on both Facebook and Twitter. His cartoons depict the abject conditions
of urban life in Nigeria and are some of the most profound satires of the
agonies and anguishes of postcolonial Nigeria. ese visual texts are
shared by the cartoonist and his many fans tocomment on everyday life
in Nigeria and push back against thehegemonic culture.
Covid Cartoons andCritical Infrastructure
Asukwo’s worksdemonstrate how the semiotics of cartoons and comics
on Facebook can supply insights into the infrastructural deciencies of
the state in the Covid era.Asukwo is among the most prolic political
cartoonist in contemporary Nigeria, and his many viral images inform
critical discussions online. His cartoons are disseminated both in digital
and print avenues across Nigeria. Digital media have become an impor-
tant location for the distribution of his works, as social media brings
Asukwo and his audience into a shared space in which they converge to
read, distribute and extend the political meanings and rhetoric of his
cartoons. As the coronavirus forced a global lockdown, social media
became the platform for another kind of viral circulation, that of creative
productions such as Asukwo’s cartoons. To illustrate, in Fig.15.1, Asukwo
oers a work that records the fatal consequences of Nigeria’s iteration of
the global pandemic lockdown on not only citizens but also on the state
actors themselves. Entitled on Facebook as “e Death Trap,” the car-
toon signals the infrastructural predicaments both propelled by the
J. Yékú
337
Fig. 15.1 The Death Trap (Facebook)
political class in Nigeria and imposed on the public. Travelling on a pot-
hole-ridden road, “Nigeria’s Healthcare Delivery Express,” a state ocial
who travels mostly in airlines, and their surrogate have ended up in a
ditch that swallows their vehicle. e ocial appears to be ignorantly
alarmed that the express has become “this bad” but is quickly reminded
by his accompanying passenger that their elite position as members ofthe
ruling class who hardly ply the country’s highway has blinded them to the
true conditions of the road.
Asukwo’s imagery is, of course, strategically ambiguous as it presents
the “express” both in the context of Nigeria’s healthcare crises and the
country motorways and the dangers they pose to everyday people. While
“It’s been like this for a long time” is the voice of the non-elite class
explaining a quotidian tragedy to a Nigerian state ocial, the statement
connects more signicantly to the anxiety across the country that the
pandemic would sweep across a country whose porous social
15 Cartooning COVID-19 on Facebook
338
infrastructureand amenities are essentially a death trap. e discursive
implications of this cartoon are even more dire when read in the contexts
of the work of the sociologists Ulrika Trovalla and Eric Trovalla. In their
work on the Nigerian city of Jos, the Trovallas note the ways in which the
presence, absence, ows and non-ows of infrastructure shape urban
character, becoming, and identity. Understood in this sense, infrastruc-
ture takes on important meanings in the everyday lives of people and
cities. Whether it calls attention to itself or withdraws from awareness,
“infrastructure,” they write, “can assume a wide register of visibility” and
connotations (2015: 44). is is essentially what Asukwo’s cartoons
unpack as they show the state of infrastructure in Nigeria as possessing
divinatory possibilities in the manner outlined by Trovalla and Trovalla:
“the wires, pipes, roads and signals, the water, electricity, transportation
and phone networks that connect people to and disconnect people from
society make up powerful instruments for analysing the nation” (2015:
54). Asukwo’s cartoon is, therefore, a visual sign that encodes other signs,
as it symbolizes an infrastructural code which itself signals other meanings.
e point here is to read infrastructure as a mode of interpretation
that, at an institutional and material level, has social and political mean-
ings. Understoodthis way, the representation of the absence and ruin-
ation of material infrastructure in the cartoons of Asukwo is made to
reveal the workings of corrupt state power in all its articulations. In other
words, infrastructure emerges in Asukwo’s Covid cartoons as a trope that
can be read critically to illuminate how material systems become impli-
cated in the consolidation of hegemonic corruption in Nigeria. To put
this in the words of a commenter3 on Asukwo’s Facebook page, the car-
toon’s narrative is “2in 1. Bad Healthcare and Bad Road. If they are not
forced to utilise the two now, they will never know how bad it is.” We see
that Facebook comments are pertinent as sources of cultural knowl-
edgebecause Asukwo’s network of friends and followers who share and
comment on the cartoon are central to the constitution of his visual texts
and their meanings on the social web. While it can be assumed, for
instance, that the cartoon is suggesting that border and land closure has
3 From the thread of the post on Asukwo’s Facebook Timeline: https://www.facebook.com/asukwo/
posts/10223010812879341.
J. Yékú
339
Fig. 15.2 Flattening The Curve in Kano (Facebook)
forced politicians to be on the ground to see things as they really are,
another commenter reads the characters as being underground—a word
that restates the cartoon’s title and thesis.
A week after this cartoon was posted, Asukwo followed with a similar
narrative that basically satirizes the politicization of the pandemic in
Nigeria, again linkingthe pervasive theme of infrastructural deciencies
in his Covid cartoons (Fig.15.1) with the state of corruption in Nigeria.
“Flattening the curve in Kano” provocatively employs what became the
dominant idiom of health ocials around the world, as countries pro-
posed dierent strategies like social distancing in addition to the initial
lockdown to stop the exponential rise in the number of the infection
globally. Figure15.2 delivers a powerful message about ignorance—a
theme in the rst example—although in this instance, the lack of knowl-
edge is on the part of the young residents in the Almajiri Islamic educa-
tion system in Northern Nigeria. Without food, masking, and other
15 Cartooning COVID-19 on Facebook
340
protective measures, the children’s precarious situation leaves them
exposed to the pandemic as they roam about as beggars, or as people that
are sent back to their state of origin because of the increase in COVID-19
cases, as this cartoon depicts.
What is more, the cartoon indicts the governor of Kano state as a state
agent of corruption whose curvy and potbellied stomach embodies a cul-
ture of political corruption which hinders economic development and
aect the health care capacity of the state. Asukwo’s artful deployment of
the mathematical elements of curves, straight lines, and graphs are inge-
nious representations that foreground the intersectionshe makes between
the thievery of the political elite and the precariousconditions in which
people like the Almajiri studentsnd themselves. e curve in the image
touches the straight line, intersecting in an unparalleled assertion that the
governor’s public history of diverting state funds, the dollars hidden in
plain sight in his belly are the generating canvas of Kano’s problem.
Asukwo invites the reader to read the attening of corruption’s curve in
Nigeria as a precondition for an eective campaign against the pandemic,
inderstood here in in both its literal and gurative senses.
ese cartoons are signicant commentaries on the state of Nigeria in
the age of Covid-19, and they graphically show the vulnerability of the
masses to state ocials whose endemic corruption are the conditions
under which abjection is produced. As they spread online, Asukwo’s car-
toons disseminate rhetorical vitality, serving as consciousness-raising
visual textsthat render graphic material realities of decadentpostcolonial
leadership. is perspective is informed by the ubiquity of visual culture
in Nigerian social media and suggests that we take social media more seri-
ously as a new media space in which cultural productions becomesome
of the most evocative andvital modes of performative engagements with
power. e vitality of images is what W.J.T.Mitchell’s alludes to in his
suggestion that an image “is not merely a transparent medium for com-
municating a message but something like an animated, living thing”
which has “feelings, intentions, desires, and agency” (2010: 27). ere is
implicit in this thinking the point that agential power in relation to visual
culture extends to images, an idea that is the subject of Laurie Gries’s Still
Life with Rhetoric. In her new materialist analyses of how visual forms can
be nonhuman entities that have rhetorical agency connected to the
J. Yékú
341
Fig. 15.3 Masks of The Beast (Facebook)
interior and external relations of meaning, Gries explores “how things
(ideas, texts, images, people, capital, artifacts, etc.) move within and
across and inuence public culture” (2015: xix). One only needs to exam-
ine the viral images that make the Nigerian public sphere a vital location
that accommodates anyone with access to an Internet-based mobile
phone to see how images come alive and possibly impact resistance to the
prevailing ruling norms and ideas. While resistance does not have to
completely overturn power, it sometimes emerges in cartoonsas arhe-
torical challenge toa power structures.
Hence, resistance in this context need not topple government but
importantly it can emerge as a practice of radical speech against the impo-
sitions of power. Figure15.3 is one of many of Asukwo’s viral images
whose vitality potentially provokes an awareness of corruption.
In this cartoon, there seems to be the suggestion that the pandemic has
been a metaphoric portal into Nigeria’s prebendal politics, as it reveals
not only infrastructural gaps and its morbid connection to corruption,
15 Cartooning COVID-19 on Facebook
342
but also, crucially, absurdities ofthe state ocials who infect the body
politic with misery and pain—much like the virus—through a patrimo-
nial culture that claims economic benets from state power. Richard
Joseph (1987) calls this system prebendalism, writing that a prebendal
system will be seen not only as one in which “the oces of state are allo-
cated and then exploited as beneces by the oce-holders, but also as one
where such a practice is legitimated by a set of political norms according
to which the appropriation of such oces is not just an act of individual
greed or ambition” but concurrently the satisfaction of the short-term
objectives of a subset of the general population (1987: 67). is practice
is aptly demonstrated by the corrupt government ocials in this text as
they see the pandemic, as one that “knocks once in 100 years,” as an
opportunity to steal from the state coers. While the irony here is that
access to the state coers is a regular reality for Nigerian state ocials, the
centennial reference probably accentuates the enormity of this particular
thievery. It is also pertinent that Asukwo on his Facebook pages calls the
face covering to be fastened “the mask of the beasts,” which, as it plays
into some of the various conspiracy theories about the pandemic among
some religiously conservative Nigerians, basically frames the Nigerian
political class as a horrid cohort of monsters who loot the country under
the guise of ghting the coronavirus. ey are the beastly virus that steals
the health of the nation and the mask they wear gestures as nothing but
a dance of corruption in the theater of power. e notion of the beast also
evokes Fela Kuti’s “Beasts of No Nation” in which the Afrobeat pioneer
references apartheid South Africa’s Pieter Willem Botha’s remarks to anti-
apartheid. Based on Fela’s lyrics, “is uprising will bring out the beast in
us,”4 Asuwko appears to suggest through his cartoon that the Covid era
brings out the beast in the ruling elite who mobilize the pandemic for
political gains.
Again, an important element of this cartoon is how social media
shapesits meanings throughthe multiplicity of users who share the post
and add new narrative layers and connotations. One of the comments on
Facebook suggests that the coronavirus in Nigeria “is dierent from what
obtains in dierent parts of the world” since “the one we have is
4 Fela Kuti, “Beasts of No Nation” (1989).
J. Yékú
343
COVID-419.”5 is is a comment several others make in the discussion
thread, suggesting that many people accepted the fact of government as
an institution of scam that speaks to what Daniel Smith (2007) refers to
as a culture of corruption in Nigeria.6 As Smith writes, “Nigerians see
themselves as complicit in corruption, and indeed it is this awareness of
collective responsibility for corruption that fuels hopes for change, even
as it paradoxically perpetuates cynicism and a sense of intractability”
(2007: 6). As the #EndSARSmovement and the Covid-relief palliatives
looting that resulted from it later showed,7 while the state is apparently a
rogue regime of scam and corruption, the representation of state looting
and thievery in cultural productions and spaces like social media expose
close networks and solidarity between state and society. While Asukwo
does not capture this idea in this cartoon, many symbolic and artistic
practices online do, including several social media skits and comedic pro-
ductions. What is, however, evident in most of the Covid cartoons is how
they are implicated in the narratives of corruption—which “in its many
valences in Nigeria, is a potent stimulus for cultural production, both as
a means for corruption’s pursuit and a method to combat its conse-
quences.” (Smith 2007: 6) As narratives about corruption dominate
political and symbolic discourse in Nigeria, cartoons and other visual
texts on social media becomeimportant asdisseminating outlets.
To return to the Facebook audience, the various online comments that
proliferate on social media threads as “narratives of complaint” generated
by corruption become primary vehicles through which Asukwo, Etim
Bassey fans and readers, like other Nigerians, visually imagine and create
the relationship between state and society (ibid.). e importance of
audience participation is signaled by the cartoonist in Fig.15.2 when
Asukwo writes on Facebook that “we can atten the curve.” e personal
5 From a commenter on Asukwo’s Facebook Timeline: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbi
d=10222872928632321&set=a.2058448341395&type=3&theater.
6 While not meant to be a homogenizing grid for the entirety of Nigerians, Smith’s anthropological
reading of culture here gestures at a practice that is both for and against the mechanisms of corrup-
tion in the country. While every day, non-state actors speak against corruption, they are also impli-
cated in its production and circulation among members of the ruling elite who themselves have
links and networks among ordinary people.
7 Asukwo tackles the narratives of the palliative in this cartoon here: https://www.facebook.com/
photo.php?fbid=10223078251805272&set=a.1451300003066&type=3&theater.
15 Cartooning COVID-19 on Facebook
344
pronoun indicates a collective approach to the ght against the pandemic
and emphasizes the general public’s need to ght corruption. But the
“we” is also a mode of address to his readers on social media who are
invited to collaboratively engage the text and take it in dierent interpre-
tive directions. e immediacy of responses and answers in the form of
Facebook comments suggest that as Asukwo visually records the pan-
demic, many in his network become active participants in this documen-
tary gesture to the coronavirus. What this implies is that Asukwo’s
cartoons provide an opportunity not only for his own challenge to power,
but also a public arena in which the ordinary, everyday digital subject can
appear in the public to share visual narratives as a form of performative
speech against the exertion of power.But is social media really an eec-
tive space for oppositional public discourses, given what some read as the
noise of its interventions? is is the nal point I wish to conclude with.
The Liberty toAppear inPublic
Despite social media’s entanglements with data violations that serve neo-
liberal actors, peopleas rational agents convert the platform into a public
sphere, producing political resistance that may be messy but not always
noisy.ough constrained by underlying digital structures and protocols,
agency on the social web may be conceived as the power to be heard and
seen by others and often manifests as directed, meaningful, intentional,
and self-reective social action (Patrick Chabal 2009: 7). It is the indi-
vidual capacity of everyday citizens to contribute to social processes with
these institutional and structural restrictions limited. Social media in
Nigeria often serves asa public sphere in which digital subjects and cul-
tural netizens perform a culture of refusal to conservative and normative
culture. Because the medium is ontologically visual, this resistance some-
times manifests as spectacles of outrage made visible in the performance
of civic agency on the social web. While the potentials for civic engage-
ments are potentially visible, there is also the obvious crude hostility
engendered by these images and which often degenerate into banal ethnic
exchanges that undermine the images themselves. Outrage is often a
product of the realization that so-called democratic institutions do not
J. Yékú
345
represent the interests of citizens because the ruling elite have, as in the
case of the Nigerian government, become “a self-reproducing cast cater-
ing mostly to their interests, and to the preservation of their monopoly
over the state” (Manuel Castells 2012: 42). is idea of the state as a
space in which elected actors encounter power as a performative site of
buoonery is apparent in several excellent works on postcolonial African
states that tease out the problematic outlook of the state in contemporary
African politics (Bayart 1993; Mbembe 2012).
My conception of the Nigerian digitalpublic sphere as a realm consti-
tuted by visual culture circulated by young people on social media is
based on the liberty of appearing in the public as a precondition for truth
and justice in a nation. e liberty to appear and be seen or heard, which
social media facilitates, is a mode of resisting a normative order that fos-
ters silence and, sometimes, discursive erasure. us, the rehabilitation of
cultural and political invisibility enabled by social media is itself a form
of resistance. is claim can be appreciated more through Hannah
Arendt’s description of the public realm as an intersubjective and depriva-
tized space in which speech and visibility are major expressive principles.
As Arendt puts it:
everything that appears in public can be seen and heard by everybody and
has the widest possible publicity. For us, appearance—something that is
being seen and heard by others as well as by ourselves—constitutes reality.
Compared with the reality which comes from being seen and heard, even
the greatest forces of intimate life—the passions of the heart, the thoughts
of the mind, the delights of the senses—lead an uncertain, shadowy kind
of existence unless and until they are transformed, deprivatized and deindi-
vidualized, as it were, into a shape to t them for public appearance…e
presence of others who see what we see and hear what we hear assures us of
the reality of the world and ourselves. (1989: 50)
It needs to be emphasized that the liberty of appearance often leads to the
appearance of liberty, a point that resonates clearly in the above passage
by Arendt. Her argument advances the notion of silence as an ineectual
mode of engaging in the public realm; it privileges speech as a productive
and essential mode of appearing in public. is view is potentially
15 Cartooning COVID-19 on Facebook
346
problematic as silence itself can be an ‘expressive’ communicative form
that can be profoundly political as a form of protest against the animating
logic of the political milieu and its underpinning ethos (Ebenezer Obadare
2016: 103). In other words, silence and speech are not oppositional cat-
egories, but rather exist in a dialectic in which they enact each other.
Appearance in the public, as Jürgen Habermas reckons, is predicated
upon a certain “kind of social intercourse that, far from presupposing the
equality of status, disregarded status altogether” (1989: 36). According to
Habermas, it is the force of argument and the content of public discourse
that is more signicant than the social or political status of participants in
the public arena. is disregard of status is something the social web
aords most netizens, especially minority groups such as women who,
through groups like the Feminist Coalition, are nowchallenging patriar-
chal culture and politics in Nigeria. e increasingly vocal challenge to all
kinds ofauthority is being facilitated partly by the access to social media
platforms where people constitutecounterpublics thatstanding in oppo-
sition to dominant culture. Without online gatekeepers, the authorial
possibilities social media grants its users exist in a horizontal sense with
few hierarchical constraints. Unlike the exclusion of particular sets of
people that constitute the discourse of the Habermasian public (for
instance, women), the digitally enabled public sphere in Nigerian social
media includes anyone with access to the Internet, as citizens now possess
the power of speech in the public arena. We see the manifestation of
speech not just in the millions of social media posts and comments pro-
duced daily online in Nigeria, but specically in cultural and visual forms
like cartoons, humorous videos and memes that serve as the counter-
hegemonic textsof culturalnetizens.
To return to Arendt, the constitution of the politics in this public
realm can be seen, for instance, in the ways social media enables networks
and communities of individuals who, “in the presence of others,” share
reality at a dierential, interactive, and multiperspectival level (Arendt
1989: 50). Even if their contributions in this public space are deindividu-
alized, the interventions of social media users are individuated, bearing
the persona, images of particular users, because of the ways in which user-
generated media serves to articulate the authority and agency of the indi-
vidual on social media. To critique this Arendtian framework of social
J. Yékú
347
Fig. 15.4 When Equity Forgets To Wash Its Hands (Facebook. https://www.face-
book.com/photo.php?fbid=10222867151567898&set=a.2058448341395&type=
3&theater)
media as a space of appearance, as do Nick Couldry and Jannis Kallinikos
in a recent discussion of the sociology of social media’s ontology, is to
restate a popular skepticism about social media that erases the agency of
users. ey argue that that there is on social media platforms no
appearance- in-itself but only ever appearance that is derivative of prior
processes of [economic] calculation that challenge the basis of
15 Cartooning COVID-19 on Facebook
348
understanding the social (Couldry and Kallinikos 2018: 234).True,social
media has the capacity to depoliticize radical voices and could serve as a
performative space of play and plasticself-projection in which the digital
labors of users are vulnerable to the neoliberal ideologies and values of its
owners. However, to focus only on this perspective harbors a pessimistic
approach to social media that occludes the meaningful social connections
and political engagements that also take place on the platformsin many
developing economies. It is useful to keep the ambivalence around tech-
nologies in mind.In my nal example in Fig.15.4, Asukwo is showing
the proverbial miscarriage of justice by, again, drawing from the language
of the pandemic to lampoon the Nigerian judicial system that is selective
in its treatment of ‘oenders,’ even popular ones such as a Nollywood
actress depicted.
A semiotic reading of this example uncovers the double standards
women oftenhave to publicly endure inNigeria’s patriarchal politics, but
to return to the argument before now,my point isnot whether algorithm
itself cannot be an agent of subordination in their distribution of cultural
meanings and voices; what I argue for, instead, is the possibility that the
voice of everyday people also occasionally gets legible in the public distur-
bance of oppressive power and oftech companies themselves.is capac-
ity to appear and register one’s voice is vital in a country where people
have limited avenues for democratic conversations and participation.
Because of social media, subjects whose representation in a nation’s pub-
lic sphere is limited can now indeed appear in both the public arena and
in the consciousness of the state and its actors. e Nigerian netizens who
appear in such digital public spheres indeed exercise speech as a “perfor-
mative power to lay claim to the public” (Butler 2015, 75) in a way that
is not always sanctioned by the established cultural and political hierar-
chy in the country.
Conclusion
Many other cartoons have been specically produced to capture the col-
orless realities of the Covid pandemic in Nigeria. e six-part cartoon,
“National Immunization Rollout” reveals how Asukwo’s works have
J. Yékú
349
evolved along with pandemic discourses worldwide while serving as local
archives of the Nigerian situation.8 e six cartoons in the series present
Nigerian government ocials being vaccinated, not with any of the
major Covid vaccines that are still largely unavailable in the country, but
with dierent popular elements of the country’s culture of corruption. In
another narrative in the series, a citizen’s thoughts are on bread, rather
than the jab itself, a pointer to the precarious conditions of many
Nigerians who seem to be less concerned about vaccination than about
the state of critical infrastructure, as well asthe persistenceof poverty and
hunger in the country. In all of these cartoons, Asukwo is rhetoricallynar-
rating the Nigerian state in the age of the pandemic, using his works to
document the response of the political class which he also excoriates.
ere is really no need, though, toromanticize the social media stage
from which these critiques are mountedsince digital technologies are far
fromperfectthemselves. at said, the amplication of old popular cul-
ture forms like cartoons and the production of new digital genres and
cultural productions on the social web makes digital and social media
signicant in understanding contemporary Nigeria. e Nigerian state as
a beastly and corrupt entity that continues to impose abjection and
despair on the masses contends with a digital public space in which polit-
icized and radial voices now vehementlydemand accountability of it. In
numerous cartoons and other digital genres and performances online,
many people with Internet access are producing and circulating narra-
tives that challenge the structures and actors of power. e articulation of
social media with new forms ofpopular cultureonline oers a rich archive
of knowledge that ambivalentlycaptures this tension.
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16
“It’s inYour Hands”: Communicating
aPandemic toaDisengaged Public
EyitayoAloh
In a viral online video posted on Igbere Television’s YouTube channel
(2020), two elderly women, being interviewed on the subject of the coro-
navirus infection in Nigeria, boldly declared in Nigerian pidgin: “at
corolla wey dem dey talk, no be for here e dey. Na for China e dey kill
dem and na only the people wey get money go China, na dem go catch
am. E no t catch us for here”. (Literally: e much-talked-about coro-
navirus is not here. It only exists in China, and it is only the rich and
auent who can aord to travel to China that can also be infected. Not
(poor) people like us). In their repudiation of a global pandemic declared
by the World Health Organisation (WHO) on 11 March 2020, the
women call on their state of poverty as their immunity against the virus.
at state of poverty is further enhanced by their seeming lack of formal
education and a visible malnourished state and an unkempt environ-
ment. In another viral video circulated on social media, a line of school-
aged children marched through the street of an unidentied Nigerian city
E. Aloh (*)
Trent University, Peterborough, ON, Canada
e-mail: eyitayoaloh@trentu.ca
© e Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023
F. Egbokhare, A. Afolayan (eds.), Global Health, Humanity and the COVID-19
Pandemic, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17429-2_16
354
singing: “Coronavirus, go back to China”. And they were being hailed by
passers-by who apparently also bought into the message of the children.
e two examples above demonstrate the impact that lack of proper
communication and correct information can have on a population that is
both misinformed and disengaged. Not only is it untrue that coronavirus
as a disease cannot aect people who are living in poverty, it is also impos-
sible to sing it away “back to China” in a denial that is premised on false
information. It must be noted, however, that there is a reason why the
population became disengaged to this point of denial and disavowal of a
global pandemic that has fatal consequence.
When the news of a novel coronavirus rst hit the media in Nigeria
towards the end of January 2020, it was heavily laden with jargons such
as “social distancing”, “physical distancing” “communal transmission”
and “social bubble”. Even the name of the disease was confusing as the
global health professionals could not agree on a name and as names such
as “SARS-Cov 2” and “Coronavirus” made their way into the public
domain and confused a lot of people. is led to a break in communica-
tion between the responsible agencies and the general populace who
believe that such a disease can only be for the elite in society since the
names are seen as elitist in nature. In the rst example above, as at the
time that the women believed in poverty as a sort of immunity to the
virus, it did not help that patient “0” in Nigeria was identied as an
Italian expatriate1 and the rst fatality was a former director in one of the
elite government parastatal,2 lending further credence to the false belief
that it was a disease that can only aect the elite and foreign residence of
the country. Unfortunately, initial communication eorts by government
agencies were slow in coming out and when they did come out, there was
no eort to break down the jargons for the majority of the people, which
arguably, further alienated an already disengaged public. Understandably,
1 Ironically, the rst case in Nigeria was also ocially conrmed on 11 March 2020 (though initial
reports had surfaced around 27 February 2020), the same day that WHO declared Covid-19 as a
global pandemic. e unidentied Italian expatriate, working in Nigeria, was said to have returned
from a trip to his homeland in Italy, which at the time, was the epicentre of the disease in Europe.
2 Engineer Suleiman Achimugu, a former Director at a subsidiary of Nigeria’s State oil company,
Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), was conrmed as the rst fatality in Nigeria
on 23 March 2020.
E. Aloh
355
there was a whole lot to learn about the new disease and the governmen-
tal agencies were equally processing the information as they were coming
out of WHO headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland.
It became obvious very quickly that to get the populace to take the
virus seriously as a health risk and take preventive action, a novel approach
must be made to communicate clearly to them the risks involved in being
lackadaisical. And that exactly is what a charity organisation, Akin Fadeyi
Foundation (AFF), did with the production of six 1-minute skits broadly
titled “It’s in Your Hands”. So, how successful was the AFF campaign?
What tools of communication did they use eectively and what lessons
can be learned for future campaigns? is chapter will use cultural and
communication studies lens to examine the AFF intervention in the
communication of the risks involved with an emerging pandemic to a
disengaged populace. My main argument will be that communicating
with people in languages that they understand and using a medium that
they are familiar with helps in making the message more impactful in the
attempts to inuence the actions of people.
First, I examine the theories that explain the lack of engagement with
the messages on the coronavirus from government agencies. I draw
broadly from cultural and Communication studies as both disciplines
employ interdisciplinarity as part of their research tools in the analysis of
social problems. en, I apply the theories to my dataset, the six skits
from AFF, and then provide an analysis of how the skits are designed to
address some of the identied problems of disengagement. I conclude
with preliminary results of how successful the campaign has been and
point to probable ways that the message can be enhanced to further
engage the populace in the quest to stem the spread of coronavirus and
any other disease that may come after it.
16 “It’s in Your Hands”: Communicating a Pandemic…
356
Theorising Disengagement: Language, Culture
andCommunication
According to Kim Johnstone, “engagement is a socially responsive
approach to communication practice with outcomes aligned with indi-
vidual, community, civic and individual benets” (2018: 19–20). is
follows that any form of engagement must have clearly dened goals
from the outset and call on the individuals and community to respond to
the message as sort of connection with the message being proered. In
communicating a pandemic, therefore, the goal is clear from the begin-
ning: get the population to take preventive action on a pandemic and
help save lives. is should really be clear enough as engagement must
also emphasise the “benets” that come to the community from acting
responsibly on the message. For this to happen, Johnstone identies three
levels of intervention: dialogue, advocacy and interaction.
However, the Nigerian condition presents its own set of unique chal-
lenges to communications in general and communicating a pandemic
specically. For one, Nigeria is a multilingual country with at least 250
ethnic dialects spoken within its borders. erefore, to be able to com-
municate with the populace, there must be an eort to overcome the
language barrier.
With English as a form of unifying language, it can reasonably be
expected that this should not be a problem. However, according to a
2018 UNESCO report on Nigeria, 65 percent of the projected 180mil-
lion population do not have access to basic education. erefore, this
creates a form of disengagement in itself as it becomes a critical issue how
to reach those not procient in English.
Added to this is the problem of the pandemic itself. e virus was
considered “novel” to indicate that it was not only new but more signi-
cantly that little was known about it beyond the fact that it can lead to
fatality within days of infection. With communication dened as the
“exchange of meaning” (Straubhaar etal. 2016: 21), it becomes a chal-
lenge to exchange “meaning” when meaning or a clear denition of the
pandemic is unavailable. As Shannon and Weaver (1949) theorise in their
linear communication model, the message from the source must be very
E. Aloh
357
clear for the receiver to decode appropriately. Barnlund (1968) builds on
the arguments of Shannon and Weaver by stipulating that the communi-
cation process is never complete without feedback from the receiver,
which then moves the communication from a linear to an interpersonal
one that truly engages with the recipient (Corey 2019). It is the feedback
from the receiver of a message that helps the sender to measure if the mes-
sage being exchanged has been communicated and received correctly. In
the case of the coronavirus disease, the meaning is unclear due to the
unknown nature of the virus, and it naturally follows that the message
cannot be clear and what follows will be the kind of feedback that we
have in the opening examples which typies a disengaged citizenry; a set
of people who are unresponsive to messages and refuse to work along
with the set goals and objectives that the message is out to accomplish.
e agencies of the Nigerian state with the primary responsibility of
informing and responding to a pandemic were cautious in putting out
information; perhaps in an eort to have adequate information. e
National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), Ministry of Information
and the National Orientation Agency (NOA), charged primarily with
dealing with and communicating with Nigerians, had nothing on their
websites as at 1 February 2020. e caution exercised by these agencies
meant that the social space was awash with misinformation such as “heat
kills coronavirus” and “coronavirus cannot survive in a tropical climate”.
With Paul Watzliawick etal. (1967) already indicating that you “cannot
not communicate”, the silence and caution on the part of government
agencies communicated misinformation. Attempts by these agencies to
correct information via media releases on their various websites did little
in the form of engagement. What could account for that?
For one, the releases put out were in English, and still using the jargons
mentioned above that characterized the initial introduction of the virus
to Nigerians. Understandably, English is the ocial language in Nigeria,
but a UNESCO (2012) report puts the literacy rate of Nigeria at 61.2
percent with further disparity in the rural parts of the country where it is
reported as low as 14 percent. e attendant outcome is a disconnect
from the meaning, through the heavy jargons, which the government
agencies sought to encode in English, and which Nigerians are expected
to decode. What followed was disengagement and a population that was
16 “It’s in Your Hands”: Communicating a Pandemic…
358
largely uninformed about a fatal disease despite the risk it posed to them
personally.
Speaking further on social engagements and its drivers, Johnstone
(2018: 20) postulates that social conditions “inuence the outcome of
the social and individual levels of engagement”. With the poverty level at
45 percent and a further 40 percent in the lower rung of the middle class
(AlJazeera 2020), economic survival becomes uppermost in the minds of
the people as opposed to a pandemic.3 e prevailing social condition of
poverty makes it impossible for any form of engagement to take place
and that proves true as the people would rather engage in improving their
socio-economic condition than engage with a pandemic no matter how
serious its consequence to their well-being may be. is fact is illustrated
by a Nigerian citizen who told American broadcaster, CNN, that he
would prefer to die of Covid-19 than hunger (CNN 2020).
Something further has to be said for the medium of communication,
with most of the messages being in English and available only on website.
Now, within a country that has only 35 percent power output for its
entire population—a situation that leads to constant power outage and
some areas not having access to any form of electric power for at least two
weeks successively—hoping that the message will eventually get to the
people was asking for too much on the part of the agencies. Simply put,
it becomes impossible to reach majority of the populace using this
medium. While the message is there from the agencies, it was not getting
to the targeted audience, and hence, was not instigating the required
action. is situation seems to hint at a negation of “biopower,” a con-
cept deployed by Michel Foucault (1978) who insists that it was possible
for government to establish a form of control on the population through
“an explosion of numerous and diverse techniques for achieving the sub-
jugations of bodies” (1978: 140). It may just appear that the techniques
were not as diverse and numerous as the philosopher prescribed to move
the population to take action against the pandemic.
3 In the AlJazeera report, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) puts the actual gure at about
82million people living below the poverty line that they set at an income of N137,430/household
in a given year.
E. Aloh
359
With the seeming gap in communication leading to a rise in the num-
ber of cases in Nigeria, it became apparent that for there to be a shift in
the perception of the disease amongst Nigerians, then there has to be a
shift in the communication methods being employed. Many private indi-
viduals and corporate organisations decided to step in nancially and
through other social interventions. However, a charity organisation, Akin
Fadeyi Foundation, decided to step in on the communications side of the
engagement in order to better inform the people and hence get them to
take responsibility for their own safety against the pandemic. First though,
let us briey look at the organisation and how its intervention was strate-
gic in the communication of the pandemic to Nigerians.
Partnership forCommunication
andEngagement: Akin Fadeyi Foundation
When the Akin Fadeyi Foundation was launched in 2016, one of the
organization’s key statements is to engage and communicate with
Nigerians at the grassroots as a way of rooting out conceived social prob-
lems (AFF website 2020). e major focus of the organisation at the time
was corruption. According to the organisation’s website, the campaign
against corruption has been largely focused at the “top”—politicians and
social elites who occupy the consciousness of the populace through media
presentations. Yet, corrupt practices that are carried out at the grassroots
and aect society more at the local level are largely ignored. erefore, as
a way of sensitizing the citizens of Nigeria on the corruption that takes
place at their local level, AFF launched a campaign tagged Corruption,
not in my country. e campaign employed regular and recognisable
Nigerian actors, mostly from the Nollywood lm industry, in short video
skits that focus largely on specic acts of corruption: a taxi driver who lies
to his customer in order to keep them waiting so as not to lose them; an
artisanal trader who employs illegal means to ripen his fruits for quick
sale; a student who tries to lure her instructor into sex for grades; etc.
since Nigerians already recognize the actors from several Nollywood
16 “It’s in Your Hands”: Communicating a Pandemic…
360
lms, it becomes easier for them to identify with the messages the actors
convey on anti-corruption.
However, all of these eorts by the AFF appears to be a mere act of
simply dumping informational materials in the public domain. Yet, for a
proper engagement to take place with an identied public, the feedback
channel must be fully engaged. As already argued, engagement is part of
a dialogue, the process of exchanging meanings between parties in a con-
versation (Taylor and Kent 2014), and if a society is to be fully engaged,
then the channel for feedback must be open. In fact, Taylor and Kant
argue that “engagement is both an orientation that inuences interaction
and the approach that guides interaction among groups” (2014: 384).
erefore, social engagement must allow room for social interaction, not
just as a form of feedback but also as a form of interaction amongst
groups who may hold divergent views. To full this element of engage-
ment, AFF partnered with one of the most maligned institutions of the
Nigerian state,4 e Nigeria Police in a public relations blitz under the
“Corruption, not in my country” campaign. However, rather than serve
as an image laundry exercise for the Nigeria Police, the campaign pro-
vided a platform for the police, and for Nigerians in general, to further
engage in a dialogue that serves mutual benet. A digital app, “Flag it,”
was launched as part of this dialogic process to make it easier and possible
for any member of the society to report any act of impropriety on the
part of Nigeria Police. An additional objective of this project was to
attract another government agency, Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC),
to this program. ese partnerships with agencies of the Nigerian state,
with public engagement as the clear goal, enabled the AFF to facilitate a
kind of social interaction between the state and the citizens. Nigerians
were able to drop their concerns on the “Flag It” app and resolution has
been reached for six cases at the last count.
With all the foregoing in place, it appears that when the coronavirus
pandemic eventually hit the shores of Nigeria, the organisation was well
placed with the manpower and infrastructure to engage the Nigerian
4 In October 2020, in the midst of the pandemic, a youth-led protest engulfed Nigeria to protest
police brutality especially by the subdivision of the police, Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS).
e protest would crystallize under the digital movement, #Endsars.
E. Aloh
361
public in an orientation process that will communicate the mortal dan-
gers that the pandemic portends to any citizen who refuses to take the
necessary precaution, with the goal of building social responsibility on
the part of all Nigerians and non-Nigerians alike. And it is here that we
must now turn to examine the things that they deployed in their com-
munication and measure its ecacy.
“It’s inYour Hands”: TheDynamics
ofEngaging thePublic
e AFF campaign addressed six key areas of engagement with the
Nigerian populace which were identied as necessary to pass on the ini-
tial message of prevention against a global pandemic. ese are denial,
hygiene, social distancing, misinformation, panic buying, and “believe it
or not”. Rather than adopt a top to bottom communication model,
something that has already been resisted by the majority of Nigerians, the
AFF decided to bring the population into the campaign program with
the theme “It’s in Your Hands”. e organisation produced six video
information skits that were uploaded on the “Corruption, not in my
country” YouTube channel, as well as the AFF ocial website, www.akin-
fadeyifoundation.org.
In adopting the theme, “It’s in Your Hands”, there is a deliberate
attempt to engage the population and show that they are part of the
entire process of preventing the spread of the pandemic. e theme is a
specically not only a creative play on the literal handwashing exercise
that medical experts have identied as a crucial action in the ght against
the disease, but also a gurative allusion to the responsibility that all the
people must bear in the ght against the pandemic. What follows is an
interrogation of each thematic skit to see how the message is encapsulated
for the purpose of communicating the pandemic in a way that not only
initiates a conversation with the Nigerian populace but also critically
engages them in ways that instigate actions against the coronavirus.
16 “It’s in Your Hands”: Communicating a Pandemic…
362
Denial
is is one of the most potent issues that heralded the advent of the pan-
demic in Nigeria and in most African countries. And the denial of the
coronavirus was heavily inuenced by religious belief under the sway of
Pentecostalism. e usual rhetoric, promoted by Pentecostal pastors,
especially, is either that there was no coronavirus in Nigeria or that faith
in God has the capacity to undermine the power of the virus.5 It does not
help that there were evangelical leaders who were peddling this kind of
information that faith can make the pandemic disappear. One of such
evangelical leaders, Pastor Kingsley Innocent of the Bible Believing
Mission Inc., Abia State, Nigeria, told his congregation: “at Coronavirus
cannot come here to Nigeria. What do you mean by ‘Coronavirus’ when
there are corrosive anointing in Nigeria? I tell you, Coronavirus is not in
this Nigeria” (Youtube Video2020). Buoyed by rhetoric like this that are
clearly based on insucient information and evidence (since the corona-
virus did get into Nigeria), it became necessary to tackle denial as part of
the communication process. And it would appear that the “It’s in Your
Hands” campaigns of AFF have this kind of mixed messages in mind
with the skit on denial.
e skit opens with a man calling his friend James on the phone for a
regular chat, but the phone was answered by a nurse from the hospital
where James has been hospitalised and diagnosed with Covid-19. e
nurse tells the friend that the hospital was just about to call him so he can
also self-isolate or get medical help if his case worsens. On hearing this
news, the friend changes tact and claims he does not know James and had
dialled the number in error, so he does not have Covid-19. He further
puts a religious spin on his denial, claiming that the only James he knows
“is in the bible” and so he cannot be infected with Covid. e skit then
cuts to a direct message from the actor to the audience about the dangers
of denial. He urges the people to take the disease seriously as “Coronavirus
is real”. He follows this with an exhortation to follow the safety protocols
5 It should be noted that the late president of Tanzania, Mr. Magufuli supposedly died of the coro-
navirus. Before his death, Magufuli insisted that the “coronavirus, which is a devil, cannot survive
in the body of Christ…. It will burn instantly”. “John Magufuli: Tanzania’s late president in his
own words”, BBC News, 18 March, 2021 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-56441421.
E. Aloh
363
required to stay safe. e skit shows a deep understanding of what is at
the heart of the denial by most of the populace—a deep belief in super-
natural spiritual powers and in Pentecostal leaders who appears to be
more concerned about prosperity than the health of their adherents
(Ayegboyin 2006), and addresses it without any form of condemnation.
Hygiene
Medical advancement has seemingly not replaced the key role of main-
taining proper hygiene in the ght against a virus. Even the World Health
Organisation (WHO) in its campaign tagged “ere’s a Hero in All of Us”
(www.who.int 2020) encourages proper personal hygiene as the rst line
of defence against the pandemic. erefore, it becomes one of the major
areas of engagement in the ght against the virus. And it is this awareness
that led to the second thematic focus of the AFF, and the skit on personal
hygiene.
In the skit, a wife is busy preparing dinner for the household and the
husband comes in from work and moves straight to get his meal directly
from the pot. e wife stops him and reminds him of the need to wash
his hands as part of the proper hygiene process required to combat the
Covid-19 pandemic. e husband dismisses the wife’s concern as unnec-
essary since he is immune. “Corona no dey catch Blackman” (corona
does not aect a black person), he declares to his wife in Nigerian pidgin.
e wife responds by wearing a facemask and gloves, applying hand sani-
tiser, and chasing the husband out of the kitchen with a spray sanitiser.
e skit once again cuts to the husband addressing the audience directly
on the need to take precautions. He emphasises the critical role of hygiene
in the prevention of coronavirus and ends with the catchphrase, “it’s in
your hands”.
Social Distancing
In a telephone conversation between two friends, one friend asks the
other if he was still coming to a “meeting”, a social gathering that is to be
16 “It’s in Your Hands”: Communicating a Pandemic…
364
held in his enclosed living room. e other friend reminds him that such
a meeting should not be taking place due to the pandemic. He further
explains that it might actually be against the lockdown law in operation
at the time. e friend hosting the meeting responds that it is in his living
room and so no authority can arrest or apprehend them. e cautious
friend suggests a viable alternative in the form of online platforms that
will keep them all safe from the virus that does not respect people and can
infect anyone. He proceeds to emphasise the message of maintaining
“social distancing” as a preventive measure against the virus.
With this skit, there is a shift away from the punitive approach that
underscores the dire consequences of underestimating the virus. e sub-
text of the skit is simple: even though we cannot overlook the often-fatal
consequences of contracting the coronavirus, an emphasis on the per-
sonal benets accruing from taking heed to the warning about the pan-
demic can lead to the willingness on the part of the citizens to be safety
conscious. e fact that the campaign is designed to be citizen-centred,
as opposed to law-oriented, is seen in the eort of the cautious friend in
suggesting an online platform for meeting without putting themselves at
risk. Interestingly, it is the careless friend who delivers the skit’s direct
message: “Not all infected persons show symptoms, but all infected per-
sons are contagious”. It further takes the message away from the punish-
ment to the responsibility that is expected of everyone in the joint eort
against coronavirus.
Misinformation
If anything can be described as a pandemic within a pandemic, then it
has to be the wave of false unveried stories around the pandemic itself,
mode of transmission, and prescriptive cures. is is what has been called
infodemic. It does not help that such misinformation, especially around
cures, are being propagated by eminent leaders, especially political and
religious, with huge inuence across a wide demographics. is has led to
unsavoury outcomes such as the reported death of two people who
ingested an overdose of a largely untested, yet highly touted medication
by the President of the United States of America, Donald Trump (York
E. Aloh
365
2020). ere is also the case of the popular Nigerian Pentecostal leader,
Pastor Chris Oyakhilome, making a spurious connection between the
coronavirus pandemic and 5G.erefore, it becomes very clear that tack-
ling the pandemic also implies tackling misinformation about it.
In the skit on misinformation, a man keeps knocking on the door of
his visibly disinterested neighbour with fabricated and unveried news.
First, he knocks to tell him that a fumigation process in the neighbour-
hood will contaminate the air and everything around, and so he urges his
neighbour to quickly go remove his clothes from the clothes line. e
neighbour simply closes his door. Seconds later, he knocks again to tell
his neighbour of a cure involving a multiple dose of “cough medication”.
Again, the neighbour closes his door. e camera shot on the neighbour
tells the story of a disinterested individual who wishes the neighbour
would stop spreading false and fake news around the virus. In making the
neighbour silent throughout the one-minute skit, there is a clear message
that silence is golden. In other words, it helps to be the stoic brick wall
that prevents the spread of a rumour and false information than be a
conduit. is is then reinforced in the direct message by the same neigh-
bour to the wider audience to “shun fake and unveried information”.
Panic Buying
One of the measures that governmental authorities across the world
undertook to stem the tide of the pandemic was to impose a lockdown
on all citizens, limiting their activities and keeping them at home. is
gave rise to panic buying and some ugly scenes at supermarkets all over
the world. e Internet was soon awash with videos of massive brawls
over items such as toilet rolls, canned food and sanitary items. Nigeria
was not exempted from the ugly scramble for household essentials as
people punched their way through supermarket aisles to get their hands-
on supplies to last them through the lockdown, which had no end date.
It became necessary to engage the citizens of Nigeria on their shopping
habits as part of the pandemic information drive.
To address the issue of panic buying, the “It’s in Your Hands” skit spot-
lights a wife and her husband. e husband had gone to the store to get
16 “It’s in Your Hands”: Communicating a Pandemic…
366
his wife a loaf of bread, only to come back home with a carload of stu
from the market. e surprised wife asks why the husband had bought so
much stu that the family apparently does not need at the time and he
answers that it is because of coronavirus and the impending lockdown.
e visibly unhappy wife chastises him and oers the wise nugget of mes-
sage: “If you create scarcity, you create panic. Stock up on supplies, don’t
panic buy”. A comic element is added when she asks for the bread that
was his original reason for going to the store. His exclamation reveals that
he forgot to get it! is skit demonstrates that the coronavirus as a disease
wasn’t just a health challenge; on the contrary, it has a fundamental
impact on the collective psyche of the people. What else could have made
a husband engage in the panic buying of less essential materials while
forgetting the main reason he visited the supermarket?
Believe It or Not
e sixth and nal skit will seem to be an all-encompassing message on
the need to be vigilant against the virus. is can only happen if the
people acknowledge the existence of the virus and take responsibility for
stemming its spread. e skit opens with a customer at a newspaper
vending stand trying to greet the vendor with a handshake. e vendor,
on the other hand, extends his elbow for a bump as advised by WHO. e
customer asks why he refuses not shake his hands as is customary and he
says it is because of the virus that is spreading fast. “So, you believe that
thing? Look, if you like, gather the whole Naija [Nigeria] make dem
cough, the thing no go catch”. e vendor simply shakes his head in
astonishment at the denial of his customer. When the customer demands
his change for the payment, the vendor calls on a bystander to help give
the customer his change. To see if the customer believes in his denial of
Covid, the bystander coughs on the currency note and extends it to the
customer who declines in shock. e camera cuts to the direct message by
the same bystander: “is virus no get leg, na we dey carry am. Protect
yourself” [e virus has no legs; we are the one spreading it]. A simple
and direct message for the people.
E. Aloh
367
Analysis
In communicating the message of the pandemic to the populace, three
elements were inserted to engage the citizens and instigate action: repeti-
tion, direct and simple messaging, and the deployment of a common
language. I will now examine these three elements to demonstrate how
they engage the population in a communication process.
As a cultural tool of communication, repetition helps reinforce a mes-
sage and literally imprints it in the consciousness of the target audience.
Henry Louis Gates Jr. states that repetition serves as a form of signifying
for cultures in Africa, helping them achieve a form of cooperation (1988:
12).6 If we extrapolate, cooperation is the goal of the message and a form
of required action and as such, to ensure that a message is acted upon, it
must not only be clear, but repeated. In the skits, the clear message of
“denial is dangerous” is repeated across ve of the skits. While denial gets
its own themed skit, that message is reinforced in the skit on “hygiene”,
“misinformation”, “social distancing” and “believe it or not”. In fact, the
same statement which most Nigerians understand—“Corona no dey kill
Blackman”—is used in varying forms in all of the skits as a way of ensur-
ing that Nigerians get the message and act on the reality that the virus
exists and can aect all. Repetition also reinforces the message as one that
requires the urgent attention of every audience, with a demand for imme-
diate feedback which, again, comes in the way of action on the part of the
audience.
e technique of direct messaging is noteworthy as all the skits cut to
such messages from one of the actors to the audience. e message is
simple, in clear language and directs attention to the overall theme of the
skit. As stated above, the jargon-heavy approach that was initially used by
government agencies failed with most Nigerians who were not educated
enough to decode the meanings. In a way, there was no communication
between the agencies and Nigerians on coronavirus. erefore, it became
necessary to package the message in a simple and matter of fact manner.
6 e other strand of signifying in the book is oppositional and can help resist any form of hege-
monic oppression. However, as the thrust in this chapter is “engagement”, the oppositional strand
of signifying is not required.
16 “It’s in Your Hands”: Communicating a Pandemic…
368
In any communication process that intends to engage, there must be
“intentionality”, which Frank Dance describes as “purposeful message
sending and receiving” (1982: 9). It therefore becomes pertinent to make
the message as clear as possible. And to achieve intentionality and pur-
posefulness, it is best to directly address the audience and eliminate any
sort of ambiguity. e lack of attention to ambiguity was how the mes-
saging on the government websites lost all the people the government was
trying to engage. On the other hand, by keeping the messages short and
“intentionally” direct, the AFF was able to deliver their message straight
to those who are required to act on it within one-minute video skits.
Closely linked to simple messaging is the language in which the mes-
sage is presented. In a country as linguistically diverse as Nigeria, it is
challenging to present a message in all the languages simultaneously. Yet,
language plays a major role in communication as “talk is linked to prior
talk, not only within turns but also to one’s previous statement and those
of other speakers” (Bonvillain 2014: 40–41). e breakdown in commu-
nication highlighted above came about because the jargons were like for-
eign language to a majority of the people and so the link required for
communication to carry on was broken. ere has to be a unifying lan-
guage of communication for a proper “exchange of meaning” to take
place. Nigerian Pidgin has been identied as an eective means of com-
munication as it is widely used amongst Nigerians. Even religious groups
have started translating their materials into Pidgin to have a wider reach
(Ojomoyela 2018). Hence, it is not surprising that the “In your hands
campaign” had a mix of pidgin elements in its original production. is
helps in the process of facilitating a wider reach that increases the level of
engagement in their quest to collectively combat the disease.
However, beyond delivering some of the original materials in Pidgin
English, the desire to reach more Nigerians inuenced the organisation
to translate all six skits into pidgin language for eective communication
with the Nigerian public. Further, with support from an international
funding organisation, the MacArthur Foundation, all the skits were
E. Aloh
369
further translated into the three major Nigerian languages.7 is further
aided the spread of the messages to the furthest part of the country and
to additional people who may not have the benet of formal education.
ese three key elements of repletion, direct messaging and language
were eectively deployed so much so that the skits drew over four thou-
sand positive comments within their rst week of release. Other organisa-
tions, recognizing the ecacy of the approach that the AFF had adopted,
quickly incorporated the skits and provided further evidence that the
campaign is a success. While there is not enough data to make a pro-
nouncement that the dip in the cases in Nigeria between July and
November 2020 has anything to do with this campaign, it can be safely
assumed that it contributed to getting Nigerians to take the disease seri-
ous and act to prevent its spread.
Conclusion
ough it started out as a public health crisis that engulfed the world, the
novel coronavirus disease (Covid-19) soon became a social-political and
economic crisis that required multiple levels of approaches in the eort to
deal with it. One of the major challenges was communication: engaging
the wider public in ways that they understand so as to take the requisite
action to protect themselves and their community. In Nigeria, it became
imperative that due to the diversity of the country, a novel disease
demanded a novel communication approach. While the action of the
governmental agencies was commendable, it became apparent very
quickly that more needed to be done to fully engage the population in a
way that will ensure their hearkening to the message with actions that
match the spread of the disease. e “It’s in Your Hands” media cam-
paign of the charity organisation, Akin Fadeyi Foundation, provides a
snapshot of the kind of extra push from the private sector that comple-
mented government eorts at getting the people to take responsibility for
7 I owe this information to a personal conversation with the founder/Executive Director of the
organisation, Mr. Akin Fadeyi and I will like to acknowledge his cooperation in writing this
chapter.
16 “It’s in Your Hands”: Communicating a Pandemic…
370
their actions in dealing with the coronavirus disease in Nigeria. It dem-
onstrates how interventions, with humanities methodologies, can be a
key process in communication that save lives.
at the National Orientation Agency (NOA), an arm of the federal
Ministry of information, and the Lagos State Government can quickly
endorse and co-opt the campaign into their plan of action is a proof that
such a public-private partnership can work with proper orientation and
direction. is for me also represents a level of success for the campaign
approach that AFF adopted in communicating the pandemic to Nigerians
as well as the method of engagement chosen.
And, as the deployment of the various vaccines continues to push the
boundaries of the virus back, it will still require all the best kind of com-
munication and engagement with the public to ensure that the populace
take action and make themselves available for vaccination. is becomes
even more imperative as not only the anti-vaxxers campaigns across the
world has demonstrated, but news coming out of Nigeria reveals that
many have become sceptical about taking the vaccines. It is at this level
that keeping healthy and safe become a civic responsibility that keeps the
entire Nigerian society safe.
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16 “It’s in Your Hands”: Communicating a Pandemic…
373
17
Musical Representations ofCOVID-19
onSocial Media Among Young People
inNigeria
ToyinSamuelAjose
andJeremiahOluwadaraOmotayo
Introduction
e outbreak of COVID-19 witnessed various human responses both
scientically and socially to the pandemic. Several medical and non-
medical interventions were employed to manage and/or combat the
virus. For example, personal hygiene like regular hand-washing with soap
and water, the use of alcohol-based hand sanitizers and wearing of face
masks were recommended as safety measures. Social distancing also
became one of the most eective ways to reduce the spread of the virus
that is easily transmissible through coughing and sneezing (Agusi etal.
2020; Melo and Sousa Soares 2020; Quian and Jiang 2020). Social
T. S. Ajose (*)
Department of Music, University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria
e-mail: ts.ajose@ui.edu.ng
J. O. Omotayo
Department of Political and Governance Policy, Nigerian Institute of Social
and Economic Research (NISER), Ibadan, Nigeria
e-mail: jo.omotayo@niser.gov.ng
© e Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023
F. Egbokhare, A. Afolayan (eds.), Global Health, Humanity and the COVID-19
Pandemic, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17429-2_17
374
distancing is described as a set of methods for reducing frequency and
closeness of contact between people in order to decrease the risk of trans-
mission of disease (Centre for Disease Control [CDC] 2020). Social dis-
tancing further facilitates “remaining out of congregate settings, avoiding
mass gatherings and maintaining distance from others where possible”
(Agusi etal. 2020, 2). In this chapter, social distancing and physical dis-
tancing are used interchangeably.
e eects of social distancing, amongst other measures in managing
COVID-19 pandemic, have been discussed (Agusi et al. 2020;
Kalahikhina 2020; Melo and Sousa Soares 2020; Quian and Jiang 2020).
On a positive note, social distancing oers, among other benets, one of
the safest ways of minimizing disease infection rate, and consequently
reducing death rate (Jacobson etal. 2020), alleviates the burden on medi-
cal facilities, and allows for ample clinical time for health workers to
respond to infected patients (Quian and Jiang 2020). Conversely, loss of
livelihood, domestic violence and poor mental health have been associ-
ated with social distancing as occasioned by the lockdown directives of
the government in many countries (Kalahikhina 2020; Melo and Sousa
Soares 2020; Santiago and Smith 2020). With the lockdown orders, eco-
nomic activities were severely aected as oces and businesses were shut
down. Many businesses had to migrate to the digital space to continue
transactions. In order to mitigate the severe eects of the social distancing
strategy, many people including young and old, sought for alternative
and viable means to contact and connect socially in the face of the extreme
diculty with physical interactions. Hence, the social media oered such
opportunity for people of the world irrespective of distance to seamlessly
communicate and interact during the heat of the pandemic. e reason
for people to nd a means at all cost to socialize is not far-fetched: humans
are social beings who must interact irrespective of the dangers.
e importance of the social media during the COVID-19 pandemic
cannot be underestimated. It serves as an active tool for dierent social
engagements among various people in dierent societies (Obi-Ani etal.
2020). Also, it oers a space for information gathering and sharing espe-
cially as it relates to the pandemic. Besides the use of social media for
socializing, we should also note its complementary roles in healthcare
services, including spreading of public health awareness and advocacy
T. S. Ajose and J. O. Omotayo
375
during the pandemic (Obi-Ani etal. 2020; Sahni and Sharma 2020). In
India, for example, Sahni and Sharma (2020) found that the social media
was used as an eective means of disseminating COVID-19 health-
related issues because of its rapid and wider access by the citizens. Since
proximate physical interaction is strongly discouraged, the social media
served as an eective alternative for health workers to access patients
under a regulated situation. e UK Nursing and Midwifery Council
operates a Facebook page in sharing health information to members of
the public. In Nigeria, the Lagos State government set up a telemedicine
initiative to help people access medical care using a toll-free line. Globally,
many of the CDCs have and manage their social media platforms in an
up-to-date method for the dissemination of information on the state of
the pandemic in their countries.
Scholars have discussed the merits and demerits of social media during
this global pandemic. While extant studies agree that the social media
provided a quick time information access to a wide spectrum of social
media users, the credibility and reliability of the information generated
and circulated are of great concern to many (Ahmad and Murad 2020;
Obi-Ani etal. 2020; Sahni and Sharma 2020). In their observation of the
social media space during the pandemic in Nigeria, Obi-Ani etal. (2020)
argue that social media was used largely to disseminate wrong informa-
tion about COVID-19. ey also found that social media was used as a
space for propaganda and misinformation among the citizens. e wide-
spread dissemination of wrong and misleading information about the
pandemic made the World Health Organization (WHO) declare that
social media has precipitated an “infodemic” that have to be combated if
there must be a headway with dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic.
Not only was infodemic a “virus” that was spreading so fast, cyber-
crimes also spiked during the pandemic. As Mahadevan notes, “as the
virus spread, so did the scale of cybercrime exploiting it” (Mahadevan
2020: 7). e stay-at-home orders and the increase in remote work space
led to the rise in the number of online users for both economic and social
purposes. e shift to the virtual space is reportedly accountable for the
increase in cybercrimes globally (Hawdon etal. 2020; Mahadevan 2020;
Naidoo 2020). In America, for example, while physical crimes such as
burglaries, murders, robberies and assaults were declining, cybercrimes
17 Musical Representations of COVID-19 on Social Media…
376
were reported to be on the increase during the COVID-19 pandemic
(Hawdon etal. 2020). In other words, “as we spend more time online,
our cyber-routines change, and we would anticipate that these changes
would alter cybervictimization rates” (Hawdon etal. 2020, 547).
Cyberfraudsters did not only take advantage of the inux of the digital
space users during the pandemic, they also used COVID-19 themes in
reaching out to those that Hawdon etal. described as “suitable targets”
(Hawdon etal. 2020, 549). For example, Mahadevan (2020) found that
cybercriminals used phishing emails to reach out to people on COVID-19-
related matters including soliciting for funds to aid medical assistance or
provide welfare supports to communities ravaged with the pandemic. He
explains,
e sophistication of internet-enabled scams directed at non-government
entities, such as private companies and individuals, varied considerably.
Several reports have mentioned phishing messages spoofed to look as
though they originate from national healthcare authorities, such as the
Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in the United States. ese messages
solicit donations for COVID-19 vaccine development. In other cases,
internet advertisements have oered face masks and hand sanitizer, and
occasionally even ‘cures’ for COVID-19. Buyers are required to make full
payment in advance, but the product never arrives. (Mahadevan 2020, 7)
While the negative activities of the social media during the pandemic
is replete in extant literature on COVID-19, the positive and creative
engagements of its users especially in coping with the psychological and
physical stress associated with the pandemic during the lockdown is yet
to be fully examined particularly among young people who are arguably
the largest users of the social media. is is particularly so with the explo-
ration of the place and space of music as a site for social interaction in a
pandemic. Only few studies exist on the agency of music to inspire hope,
resilience and solidarity among young people in Nigeria during the pan-
demic. e big question here is: if the social media is a viable means for
spreading public health awareness and advocacy especially about
COVID-19, how did young people in Nigeria joined in the conversation
through the deployment of music as an expressive form of art?
T. S. Ajose and J. O. Omotayo
377
As earlier mentioned, social distancing provides a life-saving strategy
during the pandemic; however, its attendant negative psychological con-
sequences including loneliness, panic and restlessness abound (Gupta
2020). As a coping strategy during quarantine and stay-at-home period,
the creative arts—music, dance and visual arts—proer a suitable and
therapeutic alternative to the negative psychological eects of the pan-
demic. Gupta notes that “art is available for all people to participate in as
a tried-and-true ‘vaccine’ of sorts, working its therapeutic magic to pro-
tect the physical, social, and mental health of the human species as we
struggle together to confront COVID-19 with simultaneous distance
and solidarity” (Gupta 2020, 2–3). Suce to say, then, that the various
artistic undertakings by dierent people during the lockdown has been
described as “quarantine arts” or coronavirus art (Gupta 2020). ese art
works provide some sort of psycho-social empowerment for many people
while positively shaping their reaction to the pandemic. e arts possess
the capacity to transform worrying experience by turning collective anxi-
ety into collective support and action (McNi 1998).
With reference to music as an art form, its therapeutic character has
been well established in literature (Sheppard and Broughton 2020;
Macdonald 2013; Mofredj etal. 2016). Across dierent cultural and geo-
graphical contexts, music helps people to “remain motivated, resilient
and united in the face of collective challenge” (Gupta 2020, 3). In spite
of the isolation occasioned by the social distancing regime, music oers
social bonding and solidarity. us, “musical solidarity has the therapeu-
tic ability to puncture the isolation of social distancing, to foster resil-
iency by lifting the collective spirit, and to move people’s emotions toward
spirited action—even if that action, in these circumstances, means stay-
ing home to save the lives of others” (Gupta 2020, 3–4).
Globally, music-making was experienced in diverse manners in physi-
cal and virtual spaces during the pandemic. Physically, people who were
fed up with the boredom of staying locked down in their homes turned
to making music, as well as singing and dancing, from the balconies of
their homes. Digital forums and platforms—Facebook, YouTube, Tiktok,
Instagram and Twitter—became the preferred site for creative perfor-
mances that replaced concert halls, worship centres and clubs. ese plat-
forms thus became the combustible spaces that brought the lockdown
17 Musical Representations of COVID-19 on Social Media…
378
energies of bored youth into contact with the creative dynamics of music.
Music plays an important part in the lives of young people; it inuences
their thoughts, preferences and aspiration (Arnett 1991; Brown 2006;
Ross 1994). As Arnett observes, “it is not just a music preference to them,
but intense avocation that shapes their view of the world, their spending
habits, their moods, their friendship, their notion of who are what is
admirable, and their hopes for what they might become” (Arnett 1991,
445). Young people engage with music more often than other structured
activities in the society including education and religion (Mickel and
Mickel 2002 cited in Brown 2006; Ross 1994). And they deploy music
in a number of ways—social, religious, political, economic, linguistic and
psychological. For Roberts and Christenson,
music can relieve tension; provide escape or distraction from problems;
relieve loneliness; ll the time when there is nothing much to do; ease the
drudgery of repetitive, menial tasks and chores; ll uncomfortable silence;
provide topics of conversation; make parties more lively; teach new vocab-
ulary; articulate political attitudes; and perform many other uses for lis-
tener. (2001, 134)
As a representational art form, music presents a most suitable form for
representing COVID-19. Music can represent and be represented as a
subject or an object (Berenson 1994; Bohlman 2005; Scruton 1976).
Bohlman notes that “when music serves ‘as representation,’ we are wit-
nessing its subjective potential; when music is a ‘representation of’ some-
thing, we recognize its objective functions” (2005: 206–207). Scruton
also agrees that “if music is to be representational, then its subject must
be not only picked out, but also characterized” (1976, 276). For Berenson,
“as long as music conveys something/anything to us then that something
is represented. … If we can talk about something in the music, then we
have a subject-matter the representation of which is in some way there, in
the music” (Berenson 1994, 65).
In this chapter, we examined how COVID-19 was musically repre-
sented among young people on social media in Nigeria. is study seeks
to contribute to the growing scholarship on COVID-19 pandemic by
exploring the interdisciplinarity of musicology, media studies, public
T. S. Ajose and J. O. Omotayo
379
health and social sciences. We purposively sampled six music videos from
Facebook and YouTube. Globally, Facebook is one of the leading social
network sites and YouTube is a known online video-sharing platform. In
a survey by NOIPolls, Facebook is the most widely known social net-
working site in Nigeria and more than 90 percent of Nigerians who have
access to the Internet know of Facebook (NOIPolls 2019). Some of these
music videos created were uploaded on YouTube channels and then
shared on Facebook to reach out to a larger audience. e music videos
selected (a) are replete with COVID-19-related themes, (b) are performed
by young Nigerians, and (c) were shared between March 30 and July 31,
2020 (which spans the peak period of the stay-at-home order by the
Nigerian government). In selecting the six music videos, search lters
were used, including trending hashtags such as #covid19music,
#covid19songs, #coronanigeria, #coronavirusmusic, #coronaija, and
#covid9ja. Furthermore, the online engagements—views, likes and com-
ments—generated from selected music videos were analyzed.
Music-Making, Social Media andCOVID-19
Music, like other forms of art, oer the space for creative expressions
among people including young people. Music, vocal or instrumental or
combination of both, can be experienced through “live” or recorded per-
formances in mediated forms such as cassette tape, compact disc, DVD
and the Internet. e advancement in the world of Internet technology
has opened up a plethora of opportunities for music-making, production
and circulation. Digital streaming platforms which allows for seamless
access to music videos are increasing daily. ese platforms have signi-
cantly transformed the ways whereby musicians negotiate musical perfor-
mances. For example, musicians can reach a much wider audience with
their performances outside the conventional performance spaces.
Listeners alike now have access to a broad range of musical performance
across styles from the comfort of their homes whenever they choose to do
so. Beyond providing information about and on the coronavirus pan-
demic, the social media also engendered dierent creative activities such
as skits, comedy and music videos.
17 Musical Representations of COVID-19 on Social Media…
380
Studies have explored the connection between social media use and
creativity in dierent settings. e negative impact of social media on
creativity including cyber-bullying, reputation risk and information
security threats have been established (Aula 2010; Everett 2010; Whittaker
and Kowalski 2015). However, the numerous potential benets of social
media for creativity has been examined. As a “platform for the creation
and exchange of user-generated content” (Kaplan and Haenlein 2010:
61), social media oers the site for participation and collaboration in
various creative expressions. It provides the market space for creative
transactions where “anyone can access and share ideas at low or no cost to
gain acceptance and support” (Acar etal. 2019: 40). Due to accessibility
and aordability social media and other digital platforms provide their
users, young people were motivated to put forward their creative ideas or
projects to the virtual audience which they believe will appreciate the
ideas. Acar etal. (2019) believe that one good reason people are creative
on the social media is that they know that some people will see, read,
watch or test out their work. It therefore implies that social media users
may be more creatively productive since they know they will get recogni-
tion in such spaces.
Acar etal. (2019) explored the relationshipbetween social media and
creativity from three perspectives: time spent using social media, fre-
quency and nature of SM use and purpose of social media use. ey
found out that time spent using social media has positive relationship to
ideational behaviour and the creative activity and accomplishment. In
order words, the more time people spend on social media, the more cre-
ative ideas they are likely to generate. is confers on social media a kind
of currency for negotiating creativity among humans. As earlier noted,
the lockdown necessitated human interactions largely through the use of
social and digital platforms thus increasing the amount of time people
spend on the social media. As Acar etal. argue “the use of social media for
a longer time, and more frequently, fuels user’s ideational capacity”
(p.48), it therefore suggests that young people who spent most of their
time on the social media during the lockdown must have increased their
creative abilities through the use of social media. is explains why many
creative activities including music increased during the lockdown.
Despite the negative accounts about the use of social media during the
T. S. Ajose and J. O. Omotayo
381
lockdown, the creative opportunities it provides for young people
remains novel.
Whether or not the passive or active use of social media also has cor-
relation with creative behaviour in people have been probed. Robinson
etal. (2019) investigate the eect of social media on human creativity by
discussing how exposure to social media can enhance creative thoughts
among girls in university setting. While the study reveals that there is no
correlation between use of social media and creativity, the authors argue
that passive social media use may have negative impact on psychological
functions such as creativity. In their study, Acar etal. (2019) found that
frequency of social media use improves creative activities. ey observed
that the higher frequency of passive and active use of Twitter and active
use of Facebook and YouTube were positively related to creativity mea-
sures. Little wonder why many of the creative activities among young
people during the lockdown were on Facebook and YouTube.
People use social media for various purposes which aects their
creative- related activities. For example, “those who use social media pri-
marily for ‘expressing their ideas and opinions,’ ‘gleaning topics and
information to talk about,’ and ‘self-education and learning’ had higher
creative-related variables than those whose primary purposes were ‘enter-
tainment’ or ‘relaxation’” (Leung and Kier 2008; Acar etal. 2019: 47).
Young people in Nigeria employed social media to express their ideas and
opinion especially about the coronavirus on one hand and to serve as a
tool for entertainment or relaxation during the lockdown on the
other hand.
Given the creative potentialities it oers, young people in Nigeria
explored the various social and digital media platforms that provides
them with unlimited access and uncensored content. Unlike the tradi-
tional media platforms with control processes, social media created the
space for personal expression where “individuals have almost complete
freedom in posting and reading what they want” (Acar etal. 2019: 48).
As observed in this study, young people found social media as perfor-
mance sites where they can create and circulate their music from their
local context to a global audience. Social media provides an “ongoing
‘audience’ for creative expression at any moment of the day” (p. 48),
which the lockdown would not have allowed in a physical setting. So,
17 Musical Representations of COVID-19 on Social Media…
382
music-making comes almost at a cheaper rate in reaching a wider audi-
ence on social media given its aordability and accessibility. Young peo-
ple, individual or groups creatively and aectively deployed social media
in communicating their messages—through music—to the world using
their local narratives about and around the coronavirus.
Music-making provided the arena for solidarity among young people
in the heat of the pandemic by creating and sharing their music on social
media. e connection between music and solidarity is known. Nicholls
(2014) believes that music has the emotional ability to bind individuals
together in solidarity and to build alliance for a course. And for Laurence
(2011, 5), solidarity is “the harmony of interests and responsibilities
among individuals in a group, especially as manifested in unanimous
support and collective action for something”. As creatives, music enables
young people to come together as individuals to form a group thereby
showing their collective resolve to survive the stress associated with physi-
cal isolation and to express their concerns during the lockdown.
Musical Representation ofCOVID-19
As earlier mentioned, music can represent and be represented. Critical
observation of the selected music videos on social media with COVID-19-
related themes reveals that various representations were given to pan-
demic by dierent the young people. COVID-19 was represented in
three prominent ways: public health awareness, spiritual/religious and
sociopolitical. In what follows, we shall discuss the representations.
Public Health Awareness Representation
e role of public health awareness in managing the pandemic is consid-
ered a vital one. It helps in containing the spread of the virus and reduces
mortality rate (Ali and Bhatti 2020). In managing the virus, several stake-
holders employed various information modes in disseminating health
tips among the populace. Like other forms of communication, young
people used songs to complement the eorts of these stakeholders in
T. S. Ajose and J. O. Omotayo
383
passing messages related aboutthe pandemic on the social media. An
example is “Stay at home” by the Oyedeles:
Stay at home, stay at home
Corona dey for road o [Corona is out there]
stay at home
Stay at home, stay at home
Corona no dey look face [Corona respects no one]
stay at home
Stay at home, stay at home
For you to live a long life
stay at home
Call Response
No wedding stay at home
No school o stay at home
No go church stay at home
No visit stay at home
No hangout stay at home
Just prayer For your house
Only prayer For your house
Serious prayer stay at home
For you to live a long life stay at home
e music video performed by a quartet, —two females and two males
inside a motionless car, was posted around April 13, 2020, a period when
the stay-at-home order and the social distancing rule followed by many
countries including Nigeria were strict. e song, performed in a four-
part—soprano, alto, tenor and bass (SATB)—western choral style, artic-
ulates the public health awareness on the need for self-quarantine and
stay-at-home as viable measures in attening the curve of the virus. is
information is captured in warning phrases such as “corona no dey look
17 Musical Representations of COVID-19 on Social Media…
384
face” (corona respects no one), “corona dey for road” (corona is in the
public space), and “for you to live a long life”, listeners are therefore
admonished to “stay at home”. Listeners were reminded to avoid large
gatherings including religious events.
Music example: Stay at home (SATB transcription by the first author)
As social actors, the Oyedeles seem to have outed the government’s
directive of stay-at-home and the use of face masks in the public during
the making of the music video. As seen in the video, none of the singers
wore a face mask and they sat in a very close range to each other. Research
have examined the ignorant or deant attitude of people towards the
social distancing orders during the lockdown. In Nigeria, for example,
Agusi etal. (2020) observed that social distancing directives was partially
or not observed at all both at individual and cooperate level. One impor-
tant question to ask is: how eective can the public health awareness
eorts of the Oyedeles be if they themselves are seen as deviants in the
music video?
Another song that oered public health awareness, while highlighting
the various COVID-19 protocols as recommended by health practitio-
ners, is “Covidus 1 vs 9” by the Kabusa Oriental Choir—a popular music
group on Facebook known for imitating the indigenous-choral style
common among church choirs, particularly inSouth East, Nigeria. eir
music employed Igbo choral dance style with instrumental accompani-
ments such as keyboards, drums, guitars and few Igbo percussion instru-
ments as well as the use of parody. With the use of digital recording tools,
the three-man singerswere able to produce akind of large choralperfor-
mance. Besides their sonic representation, the music video also presented
some Christian visual aesthetics such as choir robes and clergy dress.
e song started with a note of caution to Okoro (a name of a person)
to be careful of not getting infected by Coro (colloquial form for the
T. S. Ajose and J. O. Omotayo
385
coronavirus in Nigeria). It expresses the concern that the virus cannot be
facially identied but can be prevented by taking necessary hygiene pro-
cedures such as regular hand-wash and avoiding physical bodily contact.
Okoro be careful make you no catch Coro
Okoro be careful make you no catch Coro
Corona, e no dey show for face
Go wash your hand and say hello
No more hand shake, no more hugging
No more until further notice
Corona e no dey show for face
Cover your mouth when you are coughing
Even when you’re sneezing, when you’re yawning
e song employs satire in its bid to attract listeners to itsmessage. In the
second section of the song, the coronavirus is represented as something
that stigmatizes whosoever contracts it, and such person(s) may have
“Coro” added as a suce to their name(s):
Aunty if you catch am o, Aunty if you contract the virus
Your name go change to Aunty Coro You will be called “Aunty Coro”
Iya if you catch am o, Mother if you contract the virus
Your name go change to Iya Coro You will be called “Mother of Coro”
Baba if you catch am o, Daddy if you contract the virsu
Your name go change to Baba Coro You will be called “Daddy of Coro”
Mama if you catch am o, Mama if you contract the virus
Your name go change to Mama Coro You will be called “Mama Coro”
Research has shown that humour is associated with stigma creation
and reduction (Corrigan etal. 2014). A closer examination of the second
section of the song text above reveals a form of stigma that Mahmud and
Islam (2020) refers to as humour-prone stigma. In a study on the eects
17 Musical Representations of COVID-19 on Social Media…
386
of social stigma in responding to COVID-19in Bangladesh, they identi-
ed “humor-prone stigma, residential stigma, organizational stigma,
community stigma, and apathetical stigma” (Mahmud and Islam 2020:
1) as the various forms of social stigma associated with COVID-19.
Furthermore, they found out that “health-risks, harassment, discrimina-
tion, life-insecurity, psychological disorder, loss of social capital and emo-
tion capital, shattering family bond and social solidarity that work as
barrier to community well-being” are many of the eects of social stigma.
Although Mahmud and Islam did not explain what exactly a humour-
prone stigma is, we consider it as a kind of stigma resulting from jocular
or funny conversations or commentaries. e use of humour/satire by
the Kabusa Choir in the song above is signicant in two ways: rst, it
signals the subtle expression of societal perception of the virus as a capa-
ble of causing stigmatization. In the music video, for instance, a clergy-
man held a water hose at a distance for someone to wash his hand.
Second, it provides the creative “hook” to attract listeners while dissemi-
nating the necessary information. is is evident in the part where they
satirized about how illegal collection of money on the road by Nigerian
Police men could be a potential way of them being infected. e last part
of the song is even more poignant:
Protect yourself and protect Africa
Coronate yourself and coronate Africa [Infect yourself and infect Africa]
Simple!
Religious/Spiritual Representation
Beyond representing COVID-19 as a public health matter which the
populace needed to be sensitized, it was also given religious/spiritual rep-
resentation. e reason for such spiritual representation demands some
explanation. In the African ontological worldview, sicknesses and diseases
are linked to both natural and spiritual factors. Medical imbalances are
believed to be caused not only by transgressing certain hygienic require-
ment, but also a result of some supernatural forces. is makes it
T. S. Ajose and J. O. Omotayo
387
necessary therefore to seek divine intervention that undermine the sick-
nesses. is ontological perspective on diseases and the spiritual well-
being of humans also crept into the musical representationofCOVID-19.
e Holy Trinity Church Youth Choir, Mushin, Lagos, represented
COVID-19 as a matter of religious/spiritual concern:
Lord we ask for your mercy and grace
Heal the nations of this world
Show us your glory and loving face
Let your love direct and lead
COVID-19 who art thou?
Ravaging this sinful world
By the name of Jesus Christ
Surely we shall overcome
e music video, which was posted on Facebook on April 10, 2020,
was presented in a four-part choral style. e performance venue, genre
and text of the song have both religious and spiritual representations. e
song, performed by a group ofve singers dressed in choral robes in front
of the chancel (altar) area in a church, is an adaptation of a Christian
hymn—“Pleasant are y courts above” written by Henry Lyte with the
tune “Maidstone”. e song text above presents a prayer of penitence,
direction, healing and resilience during a time of crisis. It therefore high-
lights the signicance of religion in responding to and coping with epi-
demics. e foregoing corroborates research ndings that religious
explanations thrive during natural disasters and that religious practices
including prayer oers coping strategy during adversity (Bentzen 2019;
Dein et al. 2020). During the COVID-19 pandemic, many people
sought for divine intervention through prayers especially when there was
no vaccine to cure the virus. Coppen (2020) observed that the number of
people who prayed increased during the pandemic.
e phrase, “COVID-19, who art thou? Ravaging this sinful world”,
signals the intrusion of apocalyptic reference which has been the response
of some Christians to coronavirus disease. While some believe that the
virus is part of God’s plan as earlier prophesied by John in Revelation
6:1–8, others see it as divine punishment for an erring world. For
17 Musical Representations of COVID-19 on Social Media…
388
example, Dein etal observed that “recently fundamentalist Protestants
and radicalized Catholics have taken to the internet to propagate the
views that the pandemic is a punishment for a variety of sins ranging
from gay marriage, abortion, blasphemy, environmental pollution,
paganism and witchcraft….” (2020: 5). e phrase “by the name of Jesus
Christ, surely we shall overcome” in the song corroborates ndings in
previous studies on the role of religion as coping strategies during the
coronavirus pandemic.
In another music video titled “Just one plague” by Esther Igbekele—a
renowned Nigerian female gospel musician, coronavirus was represented
as a spiritual plague. During the instrumental intro to the song, the musi-
cian instructed her listeners to make some declaratory statements: “Can
somebody say after me, I dwell under the shadow of the Almighty and I
possess divine immunity against all plagues and inrmities … Amen and
amen!” Furthermore,Esther Igbekele narrated how the COVID-19 pan-
demic brought the whole world to a standstill. In the chorus section of
the song, she sings:
Just one plague, only plague
Just one plague and world stood still
ey call am [it] coronavirus
ey call am [it] coronavirus
Just one plague and world stood still
In the video, the artist, with the aid of motion and still images, narrated
how global activities were halted by the pandemic:
e world government was humbled
e world powers got confused
Everyone scampers for safety
All economies shut down
Mecca sent down worshippers
Jerusalem sent back their tourists
Vatican City was closed down
All churches are shut down
All mosques at closed door
All sports are postponed
T. S. Ajose and J. O. Omotayo
389
All clubs are sealed o
And the entertainment industry groaned for peace
Olympics is shutting down
e musician reminded her listenersof how several civil unrests and pro-
tests in dierent countries were put on hold by the coronavirus. According
to her, COVID-19 isa plague that is beyond the eorts of medical scien-
tists, hence the need for divine intervention. She prayed:
We need Divine intervention
because of this deadly disease
em [they] call am [it] Coronavirus
O Lord, we don’t want it again
After singingthe rst and second stanzas of the hymn “y Kingdom
Come O God”, she continued by citing a portion of the Bible, Psalm
18:45, wherein she reappropriated the virus as a “stranger” that should be
expunged from the society—the world. She submits:
Psalm eighteen verse forty-ve o
Na em [it] tell me say [that]
“e strangers shall fade away and
Be afraid out of the close places”
Coronavirus common hear the word of God
Na stranger you be for our land
Na stranger you be for the world
Pack your load, come dey go!
We don’t want you anymore
We need our peace, Covid-19!
Coronavirus, pack your load oo dey go!
Coronavirus, pack your load oo dey go!
e personication of coronavirus by Esther Igbekele calls our atten-
tion to the correlation between religion, culture and personication of
human and non-humans. Cohen (2011) argues that conferring the status
of “person” on human or non-human is largely psychological and is inu-
enced by the religious and cultural dispositions of the individual. For
17 Musical Representations of COVID-19 on Social Media…
390
Esther, the virus is anthropomorphic in nature with sensory compo-
nents—of sight, touch, taste and ear thus attributing personhood to the
virus which can be instructed to “pack and go”. In Christianity, particu-
larly inCharismatic settings, it is beleived thatthe spiritual world con-
trols the physical reality. Little wonder why the musician believed that
the virus is a physical manifestation of the spiritual and should be com-
municated with has a human entity. Rendered with a mix of English and
the Nigerian Pidgin English, the song featured Nigerian-calypso style
with some caller-response patterns. Like the Kabusa choir, Esther Igbekele
realized almost all the musical instruments through digital sampling.
Although she is from the south-western part of the country, she imitated
the Igbo vocal style in her song. We encountered three-part voices in
harmony at the chorus section and during the verses.
Sociopolitical Representation
For many people, the COVID-19 disease was not just a public health
concern, it also facilitates some sociopolitical commentaries, especially
about the infrastructural decit in postcolonial African states. e pan-
demic exposed the bad politics that remains the bane of the underdevel-
opment predicament on the African continent. In Nigeria, the
government’s response to the outbreak of the virus was at best lukewarm.
For example, it took the government a long time to shut its borders even
when many countries had earlier taken such vital decision. Instead, top
government ocials travelled out of the country to attend functions in
countries with very high infection rates. e pandemic also exposed the
poor medical infrastructure that could have made a dierence in the clin-
ical management of the virus. is is the context which M-Josh’s song
“Coro Dagbo” is meant to represent:
When coro never show Before the coronavirus was discovered
Dem say e don show It was already announced
Say Italian man enter Lagos at an Italian man entered Lagos
Country get plenty doctors e country has many doctors
Money come y ere was no money
T. S. Ajose and J. O. Omotayo
391
Doctors con cure Doctors can cure
When coro con show When corona was eventually
discovered
Hospitals close Hospitals were closed
Everybody run, church shut down Everybody run, churches were
shut down
Professional doctors enter ghost mode Professional doctors are nowhere
to be found
Gbege con show for the Bigi man house ere is trouble in the big
man’s house
M-Josh reports the state of aairs of the nation which the pandemic
has further exposed. He decries the poor state of the health sector “which
has plenty doctors,” but with hospital where even “professional doctors
were nowhere to be found”. Like many others, M-Josh believes that the
virus has revealed deciency in the nation’s healthcare system that lacks
qualied medical personnel and inadequate specialized hospitals to man-
age epidemics and pandemics. Isolations centres required to admit and
treat infected persons were either moribund or non-existent. e out-
break of the pandemic from the rst conrmed case by an Italian man in
Lagos, the economic capital of the county, necessitated the eorts by
both the federal and state governments to build new or in some cases
renovate existing isolation centres.
e eorts by the government to compulsorily respond by providing
necessary medical facilities in managing the pandemic, such as construc-
tion of isolation centres, have received criticism by some social commen-
tators who believed that the interventions were mainly in the interest of
the political class than for the masses. To better understand these critics,
a brief survey of the healthcare system of the nation will be necessary. In
Nigeria, the political class very often seek medical help outside the coun-
try, thus paying little or no attention to the healthcare system of the
nation. e Nigerian political class is noted for its medical tourism, a
state of aair that constitutes an open indictment of the country’s policy
incapacity. A news report notes:
17 Musical Representations of COVID-19 on Social Media…
392
In terms of time spent abroad getting medical help, Nigeria's President
Muhammadu Buhari, 74, is the rst among equals, but in the past year all
these heads of state have travelled overseas for health reasons. In many cases
they are leaving behind poorly funded health services, which most of their
citizens have to rely on. As for Nigeria, the public health system is "terri-
ble" because of poor funding. … A health insurance scheme for govern-
ment workers and some private employees has given some people access to
private medicine, but most people have to rely on government-funded ser-
vices. In both countries, good private healthcare is available to those with
money but in some cases there is a feeling that things are better abroad. e
Nigerian president has spent more than four months in London this year
getting treatment for an undisclosed illness, causing considerable disquiet
at home. Unlike one of his predecessors, Umaru Musa Yar'Adua who went
to Saudi Arabia to see a doctor, Mr Buhari did leave his deputy in charge,
but this has not dampened the criticism. (BBC 2017)
e logical deduction from this political insensitivity is that the political
class has no sense of governance direction, especially in terms of infra-
structural development that Nigerians can benet from. For M-Josh
therefore:
Hospital na dagbo Hospitals are fake
Facilities dagbo Facilities are fake
Education na dagbo Education is fake
Power supply na zero Power supply is zero
e infrastructural decit of the Nigerian state speaks to a develop-
ment situation where whatis available is not what is expected. And the
pandemic has further made that reality starker. Following the declaration
of the virus as a global pandemic by WHO, many countries suspended
international ights, and this made travelling extremely impossible for
whatever purposes, including medical tourism. is restriction left many
top government functionaries with no choice than to seek medical ser-
vices in private health facilities. For example, the death of the Chief of
Sta to the President, Abba Kyari, followed a string of incidences that
speak to the government’s lackadaisical attitude to the pandemic. While
other countries were frantically closing their borders and putting mea-
sures in place, Nigeria was slow to do the same. Kyari was reported to
T. S. Ajose and J. O. Omotayo
393
have been on an ocial trip to Germany sometimes in April 2020, where,
according to the Garba Shehu, the senior special assistant to the Nigeria’s
president, he possibly contracted the virus. And because there was no
possibility of traveling for medical treatment abroad, he lost his life. His
demise caused lots of consternation in political circles. In an Afro hip-
hop accompaniment style, this is how M-Josh represents it:
Now coro don show for area Now there is corona in the community
News headline don talk am It is reported in news headline that
Say Chief of Sta don carry am e Chief of Sta has been infected
Say Governors don carry am Governors have been infected
Say Ministers don carry am Ministers have been infected
Say Senators don carry am Senators have been infected
E be like President don carry am It’s like the President too has been
infected
e unsubstantiated news of possible infection arguably can be linked
to the social media space where information goes viral without any sig-
nicant attempt at verifying their authenticity. However, the insincerity
on the part of the Nigerian government in informing its citizens about
the infection status of its ocial was also accountable for the“fake news”
which circulated the social media.
For young people like M-Josh, the coronavirus pandemic was not just
a matter of public health concern but also an urgent call for the complete
overhauling of the social, economic, educational and the political systems
of the country. For instance, when schools reopened in many countries of
the world, they remained closed in Nigeria for long time. e reason is
because the necessary tools to facilitate remote learning such as eective
Internet broadband, electricity and computers are non-available or inad-
equate and obsolete where available. In addition, traditional classroom
pedagogy is still widely practiced in Nigeria even when others in devel-
oped climes have migrated to virtual learning spaces.
M-Josh employed Afrobeat style in his music. Afrobeat, an urban pop-
ular music in Nigeria which developed in the late 1960s, is characterized
by African percussion rhythms with a blend of jazz and funk. is style is
reputed to be popularized by Fela Anikulapo-Kuti and scholars have
observed how contemporary popular musicians in Nigeria appropriate
17 Musical Representations of COVID-19 on Social Media…
394
Fela’s sound, text and symbols in their musical work (Osiebe 2020).
rough electronic recording technology, M-Josh invoked the sonic
components of Afrobeat style-groovy percussion and bass line with brass
ris. Using yabis, an abusive epithet of Fela’s artistry through which he
interrogates the socio-economic scandal of Nigeria governance (Salawu
2019: 14), M-Josh, like many of the performers sampled in this study,
used Nigerian Pidgin English in his commentaries on the pandemic. As
seen in his music video which is captured in gure 4, M-Josh performing
almost half naked calls our attention to Osiebe’s (2020) discussion about
how Afrobeats musicians not only appropriate the text and sounds of Fela
but also manifest his appearance in proliferating their art.
Conclusion
is chapter contributes to the growing corpus of scholarship on
COVID-19 pandemic through its focus on the musical representation of
the virus by young Nigerians on social media. In theface of public health
crisis, young people found music-making not only as a form of entertain-
ment but also as a means of coping during the lockdown. It was evident
from the music videos analyzed that the coronavirus was musically repre-
sented under three prominent themes: public health, spiritual/religious
and sociopolitical themes. Western choral and Nigerian choral dance as
well as Afro hip-hop styles were creatively employed in these instances.
Nigerian Pidgin English with code mixing featured prominently in the
text of many of music videos selected for this study. As way of drawing
viewers’ and listener’s attention to the message contained in the songs, the
authors employed parody/satire in their music. Music for young people
during the lockdown contributed to quarantine arts in Nigeria on one
hand, while also oering public health awareness in curbing the spread of
the virus on the other hand. erefore, we assert that young people made
music not just as entertainers, they equally served as health educators in
public awareness on COVID-19 disease. e musical representation of
COVID-19 by young people on the social media not only oered a space
for social solidarity and resistance, but also served a sustainable means for
public health advocacy in Nigeria.
T. S. Ajose and J. O. Omotayo
395
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18
COVID-19, Food andFreedom
toWorship: AnAnalytic Approach
toNigeria’s Religioscape
BensonOhihonIgboin
Introduction
In late December 2019, the rst experience of the novel coronavirus,
later code-named COVID-19, was announced by the Chinese govern-
ment. e rst instance was in Wuhan province, in a market where dif-
ferent kinds of meat were sold. e World Health Organization (WHO)
declared COVID-19 a pandemic in January 2020 and announced pre-
ventive measures such as social distancing, wearing of face mask, regular
washing of hands, use of alcohol-based sanitizer, avoiding crowded places
and so on. In February 2020, an Italian man from Milan brought the
coronavirus to Nigeria, and the eventual spread resulted in the initial
lockdown as a measure to curtail further spread and to trace those who
had contracted the disease. On 29 March, President Muhammadu Buhari
announced the total lockdown of Lagos, Ogun, and Abuja, the Federal
B. O. Igboin (*)
Department of Religion and African Culture, Adekunle Ajasin University,
Ondo, Nigeria
e-mail: benson.igboin@aaua.edu.ng
© e Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023
F. Egbokhare, A. Afolayan (eds.), Global Health, Humanity and the COVID-19
Pandemic, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17429-2_18
402
Capital Territory, for two weeks in the rst instance. e president
announced that all public and private establishments including religious
worship centres should observe the lockdown. Only those on essential
duties like medical personnel, the police, journalists and so on should
cautiously go about their assignments. Markets were partially locked
down in the sense that rst, some were relocated to places considered to
be more spacious and safe, and second, they were to operate on certain
days of the week and within specied hours (Olukoya and Mohammed
2020; Bishi etal. 2020).
e reason for the partial lockdown of markets was to enable citizens
have access to food. e government believed that it would be unreason-
able to completely lock down the markets as other public and private
spaces since people would not have access to food. Food was essential to
human beings; in fact, without it, many people would die despite the
coronavirus. As Agatha Chikelue, the Executive Director of the Cardinal
Onaiyekan Foundation and Coordinator of Religious for Peace’s Interfaith
Women’s Network observed, “people are afraid of dying of ‘Hovid’—the
hunger caused as a result of loss of livelihoods from the lockdown” than
COVID-19 itself (Karam and Ali 2020). Bolarinwa (2020: 32) shares the
same observation: “the resistance of people against the government direc-
tives on lockdown was predicated upon lack of means of survival as some-
one warned that the government should ease the lockdown so that after
the Pandemic, people will not suer ‘hunger pandemic.’” Both Chikelue
and Bolarinwa raised concern on the immediate and post-COVID-19
eects of COVID-19 on food and its accessibility in the country such as
deaths and increased rate of criminality. eir interest apparently lies
heavily on human survival rather than human freedom. But implicitly,
their position reies freedom because freedom of movement to places or
sources of food has been tampered with by the order of staying at home.
Nothing else sharply brought it to people’s consciousness than the lock-
down when everyone could feel the very presence taken for granted in
pre-COVID era (Zizek 2020). In the same vein, the presidential order
also brought the stark realization that freedom of, or restriction on, cor-
porate worship can be tampered with by the government.
e argument or reaction of some of the religious leaders, particularly
some Pentecostal pastors, which forms the fulcrum of this chapter, is that
B. O. Igboin
403
not only would government have considered them as essential workers as
those who minister to human souls (like medical personnel who minister
to human body), but also the churches should not have been closed down
because they are the ‘theaters’ for ministering to the souls. Bishop David
Oyedepo, the founder of the Living Faith Church Worldwide (aka
Winners’ Chapel), is one of the most vociferous voices against the lock-
down. Oyedepo questions the continued lockdown of churches whereas
the markets are open. According to him, there is no evidence that people
who congregate in market places observe the COVID-19 protocols such
as washing hands, keeping social and physical distancing, wearing face
masks and so on. Oyedepo satirically reacts thus: “Everyone is in the
market running over each other every day of the week and there is no
outbreak but there is now outbreak, perceived outbreak from the
church…. Now, freedom of worship is no longer a constitutional right
but now determined to buy some individuals” (Royal 2020). Oyedepo
further maintains that by shutting the churches, the government has
infringed on the fundamental human right of the Christians to worship.
Oyedepo believes that the lockdown is ‘anti-church’ rather than a mea-
sure to stop the spread of the coronavirus. He adds: “the church is God’s
banquet hall where we are fed with spiritual food to keep us alive and
strong. So, whatever stops the church from fellowshipping is out to
destroy what God is building. ere must be a devil behind it. It is not
virus, it is demon” (Olukoya and Mohammed 2020). Oyedepo further
posits that healing does not take place in the markets but in churches.
us, allowing the markets to be opened was to tacitly ensure the spread
of the disease, whereas if the churches were not shut, the disease would
have been curtailed more eectively because of the healing power of God.
Oyedepo holds that closing the church is synonymous with closing
hospitals. Since hospitals and markets were not closed during the lock-
down, he proceeded to hold Sunday service in deance to the presidential
lockdown order. Curiously, while the police prevented some churches
from holding services, arrested some pastors during the worship, Oyedepo
was neither prevented from holding services nor arrested (Ogundipe
2020). is raises critical questions about the relations between church
and state, which will be considered shortly. Interestingly, Oyedepo’s
reconsideration of his position on holding services during the lockdown
18 COVID-19, Food and Freedom to Worship: An Analytic…
404
was not essentially due to the fear of government enforcement of the
lockdown order, but apparently due to the fear of losing his clientele,
most of whom, though believed in him, were afraid of being either
arrested for violating the order or actually contracting the disease in the
church (Ogundipe 2020). However, in apologizing for outing the lock-
down order, Oyedepo carefully argues that the church could be a verita-
ble medium for the dissemination of information to the public about the
pandemic. He submits that the church complied substantially with the
directive as its universities and other schools immediately shut down.
ere has (sic) been diverse responses varying from well-meaning concerns
to uncharitable insinuations, misinterpretations, and unfounded allega-
tions that the service was held in deliberate deance of Ogun State
Government ban on high-density gatherings, in the wake of COVID-19
pandemic. Nothing can be further from the truth. For avoidance of doubt,
as stakeholders and as a responsible organisation, the Living Faith Church
fully supports and encourages compliance with all initiatives of govern-
ment to combat the spread of this dreaded virus. However, information has
to be strategically disseminated to the grassroot, noting that the Church is
a family and not an industry, it is for this reason that enlightenment and
sensitization from the church platform is a most eective way to get people
involved in playing their part in terms of prayers and intercessions and not
just staying away from Church without knowing what to do…. To show
how law abiding our organisation is and in compliance with government
directives, all our primary and secondary schools across the nation have
been directed to close down. Also, our students at Landmark University…
were sent back home, while Covenant University Students (sic)… were
instructed to stay back at home…. (PM News 2020)
For many of the pastors, the Nigerian markets, unlike the grocery
stores in Europe and America, are not as organized as the churches. To be
sure, a typical Nigerian market scene cannot eectively ensure the obser-
vance of social and physical distancing just as some rituals (e.g. praise and
worship, dancing and thanksgiving) in many Pentecostal churches. In
other words, according to these pastors, churches are more organized and
could meet the standard of physical distancing than any local market
during the lockdown. It is for these reasons that a few of them (initially)
B. O. Igboin
405
resisted and deed the presidential order, which resulted in the questions
whether food or freedom to worship was more essential and benecial to
the citizens at the time of the lockdown or whether the pastors who dis-
obeyed the order were forming an alternative state. While many
Pentecostal churches criticized the government for the lockdown, they
also donated food and gave nancial support to their members, govern-
ment and general public (Irekamba and Taiwo 2020). e resort to
donate food, Ayeni (2020) argues, is to nd alternative way of feeding
their congregations. Many Pentecostal churches oer food to members,
especially new entrants every Sunday. is practice has kept many people
in the church as they are sure that, at least, a meal awaits them on Sundays.
e lockdown was therefore a move to take away their free meal, a reason
among others, the congregation supported their leaders in opposing the
lockdown order in addition to the benets they derive from corporate
worship.
In what follows, we shall conceptualize food and freedom: the relation-
ship between food and freedom and how one aects the other in choice-
making and how food as an instrument denes one’s position in the
polity. e following section will espouse theological issues bordering on
food and freedom within specic context; the context of exodus because
it clearly depicts contexts in which a person or group of people may pre-
fer food to freedom or vice versa, or even both. But the exodus experience
is placed with a somewhat theocratic government where rules are dictated
by a divine authority other than man. is thus leads to the discussion on
the nature of Nigeria’s secularity. It is argued that Nigeria’s secularity is a
peculiar one because of the inuence of dierent religious traditions that
have impugned on it. ereafter, we will examine how food and freedom
played out during the lockdown, and the last part will be the conclusion.
Conceptualizing Food andFreedom
Food is important for the survival of all living things from birth to death.
us, food is a basic human need. Akanji (2002: 13) denes food as “all
substances or mixture of substances both solid and liquid which are
intended for human consumption or ingestion for nutritional and/or
18 COVID-19, Food and Freedom to Worship: An Analytic…
406
pleasurable benets.” He argues that it is not just to eat at a point that
makes a person healthy, but the continuous availability of food gives psy-
chological and physiological satisfaction. According to Aktas-Polat and
Polat (2020: 280), food is “a glorious thing in the center of biological and
social life, [which] expresses that we eat for days, seasons and years to
satisfy our physical hunger, our emotions and to feed our bellies.” Apart
from the biological and social meaning of food, Albala (2013: 1) asserts
that “Feeding people has always been the primary concern of our species,
and more than any other factor, nding, growing and trading food prod-
ucts has been the prime catalyst in human history.” Albala traces the his-
torical and cultural development of foods across dierent continents.
Briley and Jackson (2016) conceive food as medicine as well as poison.
ey add that food has historical, social, cultural, religious, spiritual and
political dimensions and roles it plays in human society. For Chinea etal.
(2020), “the meaning of food is determined by learning and cultural
transmission.” us, food carries cultural, identity, symbolic and moral
import, which varies from culture to culture. Aktas-Polat and Polat
(2020) further posit that food has correlation with human rights.
e issues of food and freedom have been sources of conicts in his-
tory. Sen’s (1987) seminal thought on food and freedom as social ethical
issues presses home the signicant roles food plays in human freedom.
According to him, even though food and freedom may seem not to have
a relationship at rst, a deeper study will reveal that both do aect how
humans relate with the consequences of availability and lack of both. Sen
holds the view that
e provision of food is indeed a central issue in general social ethics, since
much in human life does depend on the ability to nd enough to eat. In
particular, the freedom that people enjoy to lead a decent life, including
freedom from hunger, from avoidable morbidity, from premature mortality
etc., is quite centrally connected with the provision of food and related
necessities. Also, the compulsion to acquire enough food may force vulner-
able people to do things which they resent doing, and may make them
accept lives with little freedom. e role of food in fostering freedom can
be an extremely important one. (Sen 1987: 1)
B. O. Igboin
407
Sen further avers that freedom is critical to food accessibility and healthy
life. He argues that freedom can be conceived in dierent ways such as
negative and positive freedom. In its negative form, freedom means inde-
pendence or non-interference from other people, agencies, institutions
and so forth. Positive freedom is thought of as what “a person is actually
able to do or to be” (Sen 1987: 3). ese two forms of freedom are inter-
related in practical ways. For instance, if an individual lacks food, there is
the tendency that he may not be able to enjoy positive freedom. In other
words, to be negatively free does not automatically guarantee achieving
positive freedom. Sen again elucidates this point as follows:
If a person is not free from hunger and lacks the means and the practical
opportunities to feed himself or herself adequately, then that person’s posi-
tive freedom must be seen as having been thoroughly compromised. On
the other hand, his or her negative freedom may be completely unviolated,
if this failure to acquire enough food is not a result of his or her having
been stopped by interference from others. (Sen 1987: 3)
Sen’s view can lead to conceptualizing freedom as both intrinsic and
instrument; in the former, freedom has value in itself and it is constitutive
of what it achieves. Instrumental freedom implies that it is a means to an
end. Although food has been a tool for power and empowerment, it is
also an instrument for control and negotiation. As a political instrument,
food has been used to manipulate the will and wishes of people who
would have acted otherwise. e widespread use of food as political bait
during elections in Nigeria is a case that elicits a systematic study. Staples
such as garri, rice, beans and so on in ridiculously small quantities are
always being oered to electorates by politicians to secure their votes
(Olu-Adeyemi 2018). Joanna Macrae and Anthony Zwi (1992: 299)
argue that “the use of food as a weapon of war by omission, commission
and provision has contributed to the creation of famine in recent decades”
in Africa. By omission, they mean occasions deriving from government’s
refusal or inability to monitor food and plan for food security for the
country. Commission implies acts of direct or indirect attacks on the
sources and means of production and procurement of food. In addition,
provision speaks to situations where government deliberately supplies
18 COVID-19, Food and Freedom to Worship: An Analytic…
408
food to those who support it to the detriment of those who oppose it,
especially in a conict or war situation.
Many scholars have interrogated the role that food played in the deter-
mination of the Nigerian Civil War (1967–1970). Iwuagwu (2012: 284),
for instance, posits that the Nigerian federal troops’ continuous bom-
bardment on sources of food for the Biafran soldiers and people was a
tactical and decisive strategy that, among other factors, led to the surren-
der of Biafra. “By the end of 1968, virtually all the major food producing
areas of Igboland have come under the federal troops…. It has been
argued that it was the loss of major food producing areas … to the federal
troops in fact, more than any other factor that led to the collapse of
Biafra.” Starvation therefore became a veritable weapon of war. William
Schanbacher (2010: vii) expresses the view that the weaponization and
politicization of food by such powerful institutions as World Bank and
International Monetary Fund have generated many global reactions.
According to him, “riots protesting the World Trade Organization
(WTO) on the streets of Seattle in 1999, global demonstrations against
the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and civil
unrest around the world due to rising food prices … all speak to a grow-
ing global awareness of and discontent with the fact that the basic neces-
sity of food is not reaching hundreds of millions of people around the
world each year.” Schanbacher emphasizes that ghting for food is syn-
onymous with ghting for freedom as these institutions’ policies on food
are geared toward actual denial of food to millions of people, while mak-
ing huge prots.
In her “Food for Freedom,” Potorti (2015: vi) argues that hunger in
the midst of superabundance of food in the US during the civil rights era
was the cannon fodder for the proponents of black freedom who aptly
recognized “the capacity of food to perpetuate oppression and to promote
human equality.” Potorti further stresses that food is inherently political,
and it has the propensity to change political action and narrative depend-
ing on how it is utilized. e politics of food, dened around whether to
eat or deliberately refuse to eat, is a powerful tool for political organizing
and negotiating. Accordingly, “the politics of food—here dened as per-
sonal, local, organizational, and national power struggles driven by fun-
damental concerns of who can eat what and under what conditions—came
B. O. Igboin
409
to be viewed by movement activists as both a means of social control and,
conversely, as a call to arms to recruit the hungry for political organiza-
tion at its most basic level” (Potorti 2015: 2). Food, she avers, has politi-
cal, cultural, racial, social and religious dimensions, all of which have
impact on personhood and identity. Food does not only dene person-
hood and identity; hunger not only denes one’s place in the social order,
it also marks one’s exclusion from the polity.
Theology ofFood andFreedom
eologically, the relationship between food and freedom is a complex
one. It can be argued that human beings, as free moral agents, are prone
to making critical moral choices depending sometimes on exigent or ulti-
mate considerations. is applies to freedom and food in the case of the
Israelites before, in Egypt, and shortly thereafter. e biblical account
posits that there was famine in Canaan where Jacob and his family had
settled for a period of time. As shepherds, they tended their animals and
lived “freely.” e freedom enjoyed in Canaan weanedand waned when
there was famine in the land and critical decision had to be made whether
or not to remain in Canaan and die of hunger or migrate to Egypt and
lose their freedom. Jacob really had his fear, especially the safety of his son
Benjamin. But the ultimate decision was taken in favour of migrating to
Egypt where there was food in order to survival. It would appear that the
Israelites at the time of migration to Egypt did not contemplate the place
of freedom in their existence (Gen. 41–46). In any case, the children of
Israel lived in Egypt for 430 years. At Goshen, where they settled in, they
had access to fertile land where they catered for their cattle. Considering
where they were coming from and the exigent reason—famine—for their
migration, freedom was not a premium to them. In fact, right from their
arrival in Egypt and their settlement in Goshen, it is clear that they were
segregated. By their very occupation—shepherding—the migrant
Israelites could not be fully integrated into Egypt. “So it shall be, when
Pharaoh calls you and says, ‘What is your occupation?’ that you shall say,
‘Your servants’ occupation has been with livestock from our youth even
till now, both we and also our fathers,’ that you may dwell in the land of
18 COVID-19, Food and Freedom to Worship: An Analytic…
410
Goshen; for every shepherd is an abomination to the Egyptians”
(Gen.46:33–34 Emphasis added).
What this implies is that during the time of Joseph, the Israelites appar-
ently sacriced freedom on the altar of food. eir freedom was com-
pletely lost when Joseph, who had facilitated their migration from Canaan
where there was famine to Egypt where there was access to food, died and
a new regime was instituted in Egypt that did not take cognizance of the
contributions of Joseph to Egypt’s economy (Ex. 1:8). e resultant treat-
ment meted out on the Israelites made them to realize that they needed
their freedom rather than food. With this realization came the fundamen-
tal question of whether they would continue eating in bondage. is is
not only a normative question, but also a political one. Here, the Israelites
would later be faced with a dilemma: should they return to Egypt and eat
or to go to Canaan and live freely? e decision was taken in favour of the
latter, at least while still in Egypt. is decision was activated by the strug-
gle for liberation, hence the exodus. But not long thereafter, the Israelites
were faced with the vicissitudes of life in the wilderness. e reality of the
newly gotten freedom was put to test when there was attack, lack of water
and food. Again, decision had to be taken: whether to go back to Egypt,
that is, bondage and yet enjoy food or hold on to freedom without food
and possibly die. At this point, there was a division among the people:
some believed strongly that food was better than freedom while some held
that freedom was better than food, yet another small group believed that
food without freedom was vain and freedom with food was tempting.
Rijneveld (2003: 11–12) sums up the Israelites’ experience thus:
e problem was the attack of the Egyptians, the second was the water
problem in Mara, now a food problem, the fourth will be a water problem
again at Redim and the fth attack again. is is a chiasmic structure
(attack—water—food—water—attack), in which the middle element is
often meant to receive emphasis: the food problem…. ey remember
Egypt obviously with rose-tinted glasses…. Egypt is to be seen as the pot
with meat. ey did not really get so much meat every day, but the security
of food being present for the day and morrow was what they longed after.
e security stands for comfort, brick quotas are forgotten. is is the
essence of salve mentality…. God delayed to assist them, ‘because he will
rst try their fortitude and the pleasure they take in their freedom, that he
B. O. Igboin
411
may learn whether they have souls great enough to bear the want of food
or whether they rather love to be slaves.’
From the narrative above, it can be suggested that freedom and food
dialectics has some contextual underpinning. In other words, dierent
contexts determine whether food is more important than freedom. In
Egypt, the value of freedom seemed not to be initially realized and priori-
tized; it was an ideal that was anticipated without actually contemplating
the price and hardship that would be endured to gain and sustain it. Of
course, the Israelites were all happy leaving Egypt, with hope of a better,
freer and prosperous future. e enthusiasm of freedom was almost com-
pletely lost in another context where there was no water or food: “they
preferred the eshpots of Egypt above their newly gained freedom”
(Rijneveld 2003: 1). In the wilderness, food seems to be more protable
and valuable than freedom for the Israelites. In fact, they seemed to sug-
gest that you have to live in order to have freedom. What is the value of
freedom to a dead person anyway? e absence of food at the moment
greatly contrasts with freedom from the oppression in Egypt (Igboin 2018).
e second thought has to do with the management of freedom.
Freedom is not free; it has responsibilities. e Israelites most clearly
undermined the struggle that culminated in their freedom. ey did not
estimate the full realities and dimensions of the values and benets that
freedom could and would aord them afterwards. How do we gauge this?
Despite the colossal losses and the nation-wide pain and mourning in
Egypt, Pharaoh and his cabinet understood what freedom for Israel
meant for the economy of Egypt. Pharaoh must have compared the
amount of food consumed by the Israelites against the economic values
that they generated. For Pharaoh, the political economy of food is critical
to the sustenance of his country. He came to the astute decision that it
was more protable to keep the Israelites in bondage with food than to
allow them enjoy their freedom and its prosperity, which, of course, was
not immediately visible to the Israelites (Igboin 2018).
What we can possibly infer from the foregoing is that food is critical in
freedom discourse and vice versa. But dierent contexts made the
Israelites to make dierent choices. Shortly, it will be shown how context
aects the government decision to open markets and close churches and
18 COVID-19, Food and Freedom to Worship: An Analytic…
412
how the reactions of the latter impact on the secularity of the country. In
so doing, it is important to undergird our thought by realizing that the
exodus experience took place within a theocratic order where instructions
were given by a divine authority—Yahweh—the same theocratic order
Pentecostal churches have recourse to in their conception of secularity.
But that does not also preclude human free choice. As we have seen,
despite the divine order, the Israelites still attempted to make decisions
on the basis of what they believed best suit their condition. It would
therefore seem that divine authority does not completely rule out human
moral agency.
Secularity inNigeria’s Religioscape
According to Onishi (2018: 4–5), while “secularism is an ideology that
adheres to the idea of a modern project of emancipation based on the
strict regulation of religion in the public sphere,” secularity “is not an
ideology to enact, but a mode of comportment to the world.” In this
sense, secularism implies that religion should be consigned to private
practice. Secularism theory states that religion constitutes an obstruction
to order, truth, meaning and so on in society. Casanova (1994: 1) argues
that secularization thesis is founded on three fundamental components,
namely; decline of religion generally, privatization of religion and increase
in institutional dierentiation of modern society. Warner lays it out more
clearly when he states that secularization is “understood to be both a pro-
cess of social change, closely intertwined with the evolution of the mod-
ern world, and also a theory of increasing religious marginalization not
only descriptive of present and past transitions, but predictive of a future
society where religion would have little or no public inuence, social util-
ity or plausible claim to a revelatory authority that in any sense tran-
scended reason” (Oong and Ekpo 2020: 151). Scholars like Peter
Berger, omas Luckmann, Harvey Cox, Jose Casanova among others
have at one time or the other maintained that religion would decline
from the public sphere and secularism would take over. However,
Cox(1995) sprang a surprise when in 1995 he published his Fire from
Heaven: e Rise of Pentecostal Spirituality and the Re-shaping of Religion
B. O. Igboin
413
in the Twenty-rst Century. Cox seems to have converted from the ‘death
of God’ thesis to the abundance of God’s presence in a secular world. In
1999, Berger also reversed his thesis to accept the reality of a ourishing
religious inuence in the public sphere. He states: “My point is that the
assumption that we live in a secularized world is false. e world today,
with some exceptions… is furiously religious as it ever was, and in some
places more than ever” (Onishi 2018: 3). In fact, Jerey Hadden would
add that “secularization theory had not been subjected to a systematic
scrutiny because it is a doctrine more than a theory” (Onishi 2018: 4).
Although the secularization thesis once predicted that religion would
fade out of the public sphere, the events of 9/11 have resurged interest in
the study of the inuence of religion in politics at both national and
international levels. In fact, Toft, Philpott and Shah (2011: 2) describe
the twenty-rst century as “God’s Century.” What this means is that reli-
gion is as furiously present in the public sphere as it was in the pre-
Enlightenment era. ere is hardly any news item today that is not
coloured with religious sentiment, motivation, belief or idea. In the case
of Nigeria, Obadare (2018) argues that the rise and inuence of
Pentecostal Christianity poses a challenge to the dominant argument
hitherto held about the relationship between the state and religion. e
Pentecostal Christianity appears to be a militant wing of Christianity at
the turn of democracy in 1999.
e nature of secularity in Nigeria is complex because of the dierent
opinions Christians and Muslims have maintained about it. For the most
part, some Muslims view the concept of secularism as godlessness or
atheism. Lateef Adegbite, one of the prominent and articulate Muslim
scholars, vehemently rejected secularism as connoting godlessness and
atheism. According to him, “No Moslem will support a secular state. I
want to say it with all the emphasis at my command because as far as we
are concerned, secularity means ‘godlessness’, and Moslems will never
support it” (Ogbu 2014: 5). Some Muslim scholars have expressed that
Adegbite’s view is an extreme one. Abdulrasheed Muhammad, for
instance, argues that rather than conceive secularism as godlessness and
atheism, it should be thought of as an ideology that promotes the view
that the state should not be concerned about religion in the public sphere.
e political authority is to be seen as instituted independently from
18 COVID-19, Food and Freedom to Worship: An Analytic…
414
religious or supernatural forces. e state does not have recourse to extra-
neous authority beyond the provisions of its constitution (Ogbu 2014:
5). Some others who do not align with either of the two positions can-
vassed above describe Nigeria simply as multi-religious country, a term
they consider most appropriate since the Preamble of the constitution
and the National Anthem have recourse to God (Igboin 2014). At the
heat of the sharia crisis in 2000, President Olusegun Obasanjo had to
cautiously avoid the use of the term—secularity—preferring to describe
Nigeria as a multireligious state. For him, the sharia was purely a political
one, which he argued would zzle out naturally after some time
(Igboin 2014).
Although Christianity has been gured as originating and spreading
secularism, Christians do not conceive it as depicting godlessness. Ogbu’s
(2014) etymological exploration of the term unravels the context within
which Christians conceived it: it was used to dierentiate the divine from
the mundane, the time-bound values and eternal values. erefore,
Christians conceptualize secularism as pertaining to the world rather
than being godless. But with time, the application of the term extended
to sharp boundaries between eternal and mundane values. By the time of
the Enlightenment, secularism had assumed a radically dierent meaning
that appropriated godlessness within its borders. us, there was to be a
dichotomy between the supernatural and the mundane, the state and
church. But in Nigeria, one of the most telling dierences between the
Christians and Muslims is that whereas the former see secularity as not
occluding God, but that the state should be neutral with reference to
religion, the latter hold that any sovereignty that contradicts the Islamic
faith is tantamount to godlessness. Nkwoka (2006: 328) puts it suc-
cinctly: “whereas the Church is basically demanding for a secular state in
Nigeria so that the double citizenship can be maintained by Christians,
Muslims especially in Sharia states contend that the best is a theo-
cratic state.”
is is clearly brought to the fore during the implementation of sharia
in 1999–2002in the northern part of Nigeria. e sharia issue compli-
cates the positions both Christians and Muslims hold in secularity dis-
course. In fact, Fox (2011), Ogbu (2014) and Oong and Ekpo (2020)
conclude that the constitution of Nigeria is a peculiar one in the study
B. O. Igboin
415
and exercise of secularity because it both bans and approves of state and
federal governments adopting religion. Ogbu apparently maintains that
constitutionally Nigeria is a secular state despite the praxis of sharia and
government involvement in religion. For Fox, such a straightforward dec-
laration of Nigeria’s secularity is dicult because the paradox (of not
approving a state religion and yet allowing a sharia court to an appellate
level) needs to be resolved in the constitution, which, of course, requires
a great deal of political will. Oong and Ekpo (2020: 168) assert that
Nigeria cannot be regarded as a secular state but a “theocratic diarchy,”
that is, “a dual religious state with clear canons on what constitute the
state, the Gods, the law, the people, the checks and the balances.”
As noted earlier, the rise and inuence of Pentecostal movement is
redrawing the map of secularity argument in the country. Pentecostal
churches, particularly the megachurches, have traversed the ‘split’ or gap
between the state and church. Obadare (2018), Marshall (2009), Vaughan
(2016), Ukah (2020) among others have explored how Pentecostal faith is
challenging the hitherto religious terrain dominated by Islam and ortho-
dox Christianity. In fact, rather than maintain some distance from the
state, the Pentecostal Christians are pushing to the center of political
authority and trying to dominate and use it to their advantage, on the one
hand. On the other, they hold tightly to their churches as the base for their
public or political interest and inuence (Igboin 2020). Igboin argues that
many Nigerian Pentecostal pastors attempt to form an alternative state
within the nation-state. ey tend to build a state that more or less allows
participation of members in their communitarian unity. He observes that
is kind of political theology thinks of a contrastive parallel to the secular
political ideology that births and fosters injustice and oppression. In
conceiving its political theology, Pentecostalism is actively engaged in set-
ting up an alternative state, though one without a physical military…. is
form of contrastive politics is borne out of the realisation that the church
cannot eectively manipulate the power structure of the secular politics for
its advantage, especially in a multi-ethnic and religious country like
Nigeria. (Igboin 2020: 10–11)
18 COVID-19, Food and Freedom to Worship: An Analytic…
416
is is not without resistance, and/or parallel from Islamic religion, espe-
cially the rise of Nasrul-lahi-li Fathi Society of Nigeria (NASFAT), which
is adopting similar Pentecostal strategies in their spiritual and public
engagement (Obadare 2016).
e vision of ‘converting the world for Christ’ and dominating it as a
Christian mandate tends to blur the line of demarcation between the
church and state. Pentecostals, as Togarasei (2015) observes, have not
only fought against secularism but are secular themselves in many ways.
He states that “secularisation in Pentecostal churches is seen in how they
have undermined the traditional values in favour of modern, secular val-
ues” (Togarasei 2015: 60). Acolatse (2021) shares a similar opinion when
she argues that rather than secularization being a bane of Pentecostalism,
it has become an instrument or partner in imagining the acts of God. e
dichotomy between the other-worldly and this-worldly is collapsed
because of the belief that both dimensions are not only composite, but
also belong to the same divine being and/or order, which they, the
Pentecostals mediate. It is the same God that animates the secular and the
religious and as such, the Pentecostal believes that rugged separation
means ceding apart of creation to God and the other to man. Borrowing
from Nimi Wariboko’s thought, Acolatse believes that Nigerian
Pentecostalism focuses more on the material, secular goal than spiritual,
even though spiritual capital plays an important role in achieving the
former. e political and the spiritual are embedded in one: “Pentecostalism
and secularization in Nigeria have found a happy medium in the soil of
the penchant for the commodication that drives both…. We are hard
press to follow the optimistic voice that leads through the terrain espe-
cially when it comes to civil society and the claim of Pentecostal theology
in preaching and teaching about what sometimes sounds like a return to
theocracy” (Acolatse 2021: 234). e Pentecostal recourse to God’s
imprimatur in the public sphere is quintessentially a theocratic air. It is
this theocratic penchant that is exuded during the lockdown.
B. O. Igboin
417
The Lockdown, Food, Worship andSecularity
Availability and accessibility to food are important to any population.
is is more acute during the lockdown occasioned by the COVID-19.
With the coronavirus and second recession in ve years in Nigeria, food
prices have risen astronomically. PwC (2020: 11) sums it up thus:
Prior to COVID-19, Nigeria’s agricultural sector is aected by several chal-
lenges ranging from drought and ooding occasioned by climate change,
and widespread instabilities including Boko Haram crisis, cattle rustling in
the North and farmer-herder clashes across the South and Middle Belt….
By the end of the rst half of 2020, the number of people from the 16
Northern states suering from acute food insecurity is projected to increase
to seven million people. In March 2020, Nigeria was enlisted among 44
countries globally that require external food assistance.
Of course, with COVID-19, the rate of depletion of food reserves will
denitely accelerate faster than its replacement. Partial eect of
COVID-19 on food resonated in October 2020 when hoodlums across
many parts of the country invaded warehouses and charted away
COVID-19 food palliatives allegedly hoarded by the government. e
rising rate of criminalities and civil unrest may give vent to the old
Chinese proverb: “you cannot lead a people you cannot feed” (Igboin
1997: 57). e government must have considered this when it decided to
open markets so that people could access food and also provided some
palliatives meant to ameliorate the eects of the lockdown.
Even though the Nigerian government claims that there was sucient
food to cater for the food demand during the lockdown, the Economic
Community of West African States (ECOWAS) states that with the
COVID-19, there could be “increase in the number of people at risk of
food insecurity and malnutrition from 17million to 50million people
between June and August 2020” (Olukoya and Kamara 2020). Although
government oered some palliatives to the people, apart from the corrupt
practices that surrounded the distribution such as hoarding and diver-
sion, the manner of distribution could lead to hundreds of people con-
tracting the disease. e rowdiness and the scrambling for food resulted
18 COVID-19, Food and Freedom to Worship: An Analytic…
418
in stampede in some instances. According to Folashade Samuel, “We
were scrambling for food when my sister with a young baby was pushed
away, and she had to give up” (Olukoya and Kamara 2020). For most of
the people, according to Benjamin Jeje, a resident in Lagos state, “food is
more important than corona…. We are running away from the virus, but
lack of food must not kill us. We must not go hungry” (Olukoya and
Kamara 2020). is resolve not to go hungry resulted in many contra-
vening the lockdown order.
e opening of markets by the government became necessary, not
because the government did not know the nature of the markets, but
because it considered food and access to it as critical in indirectly maintain-
ing the lockdown order. In not allowing the churches to reopen when the
markets did, it can be argued that the government was not frontally out-
ing the rights of freedom of worship. On the contrary, the government
weighed the implications of access to food vis-à-vis access to corporate wor-
ship. As Wild-Wood etal. (2021) note, the COVID-19 is not rst and
foremost a medical issue; it is indeed a political health issue that requires
political decisions to address its health eects on the population. In their
own words, “the pandemic is not simply a health matter, nor is it being
managed or controlled by health leaders. It is a geopolitical phenomenon
where the authority to act is determined not just by medical knowledge but
by the political and societal inuence” (Wild-Wood etal. 2021: 66). e
implication of this is that opening markets and closing places of worship is
part of the political decision to manage and control the spread of the dis-
ease. us, the medical personnel and facilities that were functioning then
were indeed at the service of both secular and religious spaces.
Worship is central to Pentecostal ethos and practice. In fact, Warrington
(2008) and Asamoah-Gyadu (2021) describe worship in Pentecostalism
as an encounter with the divine. It is a place, an event, an experience, a
suspense, an intervention, a sacrament, or a contact zone that produces a
tension and a meeting between God and humans. rough worship, a
worshipper can be at once with God and other worshippers. Wariboko
(2018) brings out the essence of worship more eectively when he states
that worship makes grace tangible, material, concrete, visible, experien-
tial, a feeding on the word of God; and it also makes it a possibility for
“all other practices integrate and cohere as a crazy quilt of pulsating
B. O. Igboin
419
divine-human relation” (Wariboko 2018: 15). e mood of worship elic-
its the intervention of the supernatural in human world; it makes “the
power of Jesus Christ come alive” in concrete form (Asamoah-Gyadu
2021: 198). is simply captures the importance Pentecostals place on
corporate worship and why they believe that the churches should have
been reopened as markets and hospitals. Truly, corporate worship pro-
vides an opportunity for worshippers to learn the word of God. After all,
“One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes forth
from the mouth of God” (Matt. 4:4 e African Bible).
Commenting on this verse (Matt. 4:4), e African Bible states that
humans cannot devote all their energy toward the struggle for material
bread alone, but they must counterbalance it with the word of God; and
in fact, “the word of God should be ‘eaten’ within the church.” is is
pertinent to the call by the Pentecostals for the reopening of the churches.
Maritain brings this out in a philosophical tone when he writes: “Men do
no live only by bread, vitamins and technological discoveries. ey live
by values and realities which for their own sake; they feed on that invisi-
ble food which sustains the life of the spirit and which makes them aware
not of such or such means at the service of their life but of the very reason
for their living and suering” (Olu-Owolabi 2011: 11). In this sense, one
can appreciate the position of the Pentecostals who called for the reopen-
ing of the churches in order for the members to be fed spiritually. But
that does not seem to vitiate the legitimacy and authority of the govern-
ment given its role in human society and the theological basis for its
existence as well as the command to obey it (Rom. 13:1–7).
e COVID-19 pandemic created a nuanced context for further
examination of the secularity of Nigeria. Interestingly, for most part of
the lockdown, there was no virulent religious divide among the compet-
ing religious traditions in Nigeria, especially Christianity and Islam. In
other words, unlike previously when adherents of these religions would
either support or kick against a certain government policy, the lockdown
was ‘unanimously’ resisted by religious leaders to a large extent. In the
north, however, many Muslim leaders outed the government order and
conducted services. In fact, some of them went to praying grounds for
prayers at the end of Ramadan. A pocket of violence erupted between
some Muslims and the police, and in the process a police station was
18 COVID-19, Food and Freedom to Worship: An Analytic…
420
torched (Yusuf et al. 2020). According to Al-Amin Albarra, a Muslim
worshipper, Muslims “observed the prayer according to the Islamic teach-
ings and the teachings of the Holy Messenger of Allah and were not
observing any social distancing which was not recognized by the teach-
ings” (Yusuf etal. 2020). Yusuf, Brisibe and Bello report that in Ughelli,
Delta state, the police did not stop or disrupt the Islamic prayer because
they did not want violent reaction from the worshippers. However, in
Yola, Adamawa state, attempt by the police to prevent the prayer resulted
in violence from the worshippers.
Among the reasons for the resistance is the nature of Nigeria’s secular-
ity. Most Muslims believe that Nigeria’s secularity means that Islam is
placed second to government whereas it should have been the other way
around. “Muslims also feel threatened by perceived attempts by secular
powers to regulate their religion. Some even think that this is a conspir-
acy to prevent Muslims from praying” (Olukoya and Mohammed 2020);
that Western powers (often associated with Christianity) were plotting
“to stymie the practice of Islam” (Hoechner 2020). Hoechner notes that
the contravention of the lockdown order was also due to the eschatologi-
cal belief of an imminent end of the universe. Many Muslims believe that
since the world was going to suddenly end, imposing a lockdown would
prevent them from living “extra-righteously” (Obiezu 2020), particularly
during the holy month of Ramadan. However, Nasir Umar, a Muslim,
who nds it dicult to make ends meet as a result of the lockdown, avers:
“Food is basic for life and important during fasting, but without food, [I]
cannot fast” (Obiezu 2020). Sharafadeem Abdulsalam, a Muslim scholar,
expatiates: “ere’s nothing like online Jumat, you can’t do that. You can’t
ask people to form a row in their respective homes and follow you while
you lead them in prayers. No, you can’t do that. e Jumat service has to
be physical” (Obiezu 2020).
e greatest resistance to the lockdown order seems to have come from
the Pentecostals. In his Pentecostal Republic, Obadare (2018) views the
second coming of President Olusegun as either coinciding with the rise
of political Pentecostalism or the impetus for the ourishing of a
Pentecostal politics. Obasanjo’s overly romance with the ‘big’ leaders of
Pentecostal movement engineered a Pentecostal bloc that came power-
fully into the political stage with a strong voice. Vaughan (2016) also
B. O. Igboin
421
recognizes the kind of revolutionary ascendancy of Pentecostal move-
ment in the Nigerian body politic. e emergence and growth of mega-
churches that dot the Lagos landscape has made some to refer to the city
as “the Pentecostal capital of the world” (Moyet 2020), which capital is
now being harnessed for political inuence. In the context of COVID-19,
Moyet (2020) argues that it is only where a state has failed or is weak that
religious authorities like the Pentecostal movement can almost perfectly
resist government order as witnessed in Nigeria. For instance, Oyedepo’s
response to public outcry that the church is a more eective mechanism
of disseminating information suggests that the church can do better than
the state in circulating information about COVID-19. is is not only
audacious, but also an attempt to indict the government as incapable of
rendering eective services.
Ukah (2020) describes Oyedepo’s response as “proud and arrogant” just
as his claim to possess “prophetic power and anointing above political
leaders” is false. He adds that Oyedepo’s apology for outing the lock-
down order demonstrates that government still has the powers to enforce
its order. “COVID-19 has shown that there are no ‘pentecostal republics’
in Africa” (Ukah 2020: 459). Moyet (2020) also concludes that “this
might suggest that the state, although weak, has not completely collapsed,
and that Nigeria has not entirely become a ‘Pentecostal republic’ after all.”
Although there were instances of outing the lockdown order, it is true
that the government substantially maintained the order. It was an emer-
gency situation that required some strict action. After all, “a strong state is
needed in times of epidemics since large-scale measures like quarantines
have to be performed with military discipline” (Zizek 2020: 10). If the
government had grant more freedom as demanded by the religious bodies
generally, there probably might have been an escalated number of
infections.
In conclusion, the lockdown was a litmus test for church and state
relations, especially as it relates to Nigerian secularity. Although food and
freedom of worship are important to religious adherents, many worship-
pers preferred food to corporate worship. e religious leaders preferred
freedom of worship to food. However, their provision of food to their
members is a good evidence to suggest that food was critical at that
time—in the context of the lockdown. It cannot be said that right to
18 COVID-19, Food and Freedom to Worship: An Analytic…
422
worship was completely eroded; only corporate or congregational wor-
ship was seriously aected. In order to exercise this right, that is, right of
corporate worship, and also to reconnect with their members, church
leaders embraced e-worship model. Despite the pressure on government
to reopen churches, its refusal to give in is indeed a huge demonstration
of strength and secularity of the country in the context of the COVID-19
lockdown, and that Pentecostal theocracy has not been established.
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19
Analysis ofCOVID-19 Risk
Communication andCommunity
Engagement onSocial Media inNigeria
AbiolaI.Odejide andOlayinkaA.Egbokhare
Introduction
On 30 January 2020, the World Health Organisation (WHO) Director-
General determined that the outbreak of Coronavirus disease
(COVID-19) constitutes a Public Health Emergency of international
concern (WHO 2020). Unlike other SARS, MERS and inuenza,
COVID-19 is distinct and has a high case fatality especially among older
age groups and people living with disability (Ohia etal. 2020). Many
features of COVID-19 are novel or unknown, such as its community
spread, severity and impact. At the time this study was conducted in
2020, there was no universally approved treatment. Information about
preventive measures was constantly evolving and vaccines were in the
developmental stage. Consequently, the belief was that the coronavirus
had come to stay and would likely cause more u-like epidemics after the
initial epidemic (Kissler etal. 2020). Since the threats to public health are
A. I. Odejide (*) • O. A. Egbokhare
Department of Communication and Language Arts, University of Ibadan,
Ibadan, Nigeria
© e Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023
F. Egbokhare, A. Afolayan (eds.), Global Health, Humanity and the COVID-19
Pandemic, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17429-2_19
428
rooted in human behaviour (WHO 2009), a major problem is not in the
pandemic itself but how humans respond to it. Given the gradual devel-
opment of vaccines and tentativeness of proven treatment regimes, indi-
viduals’ preventive measures such as wearing of face mask, handwashing
and physical distancing are essential for reducing the speed and extent of
the virus’ spread (Sleator etal. 2020; Sunjaya and Jenkins 2020).
Although governments play a central role in combating pandemics,
individual actions are also crucial to the success of eorts to prevent the
spread of infectious diseases and limit their transmission. us, the social
and behavioural sciences, as well as communication models, can provide
valuable insights for managing the pandemic. Access to accurate informa-
tion via appropriate channels, adequate knowledge of its causes, mode of
spread and containment, advocacy for the benets of taking action and
agency of individuals are key. Health promotion is therefore fundamental
to disseminating clear messages about the virus, as is the recognition of
the fact that one-size-ts-all communication campaigns that do not
acknowledge the social and political contexts will fail. us, collabora-
tions among health care professionals, communication experts, linguists,
anthropologists and other researchers can provide the technical basis and
content for the behaviour change campaign.
In a multilingual and multicultural country like Nigeria, with 38%
record of illiteracy, it is essential to develop home-grown messages on
COVID-19 so as to reach the masses with the right message in the right
language. Since indigenous knowledge is well preserved in the historical,
social and cultural domains such as the languages, oral literature, folk-
lore, traditional practices and beliefs, health promotion messages that
take cognisance of these are likely to resonate more with the target audi-
ence. Globally, the media have played a critical role in creating attention
about the pandemic although an evaluation of the nature of its impact is
still evolving. Some scholars have suggested that while the true risk from
COVID-19 might be low, the broad mainstream media attention as well
as the social media discussions may have induced more perception of risk
among people (Lennart 2000; Huynh 2020). In eect, the higher the
frequency of using social media, the higher the risk perception of the
pandemic.
A. I. Odejide and O. A. Egbokhare
429
Health promotion messages often focus on how to reduce risky behav-
iour and promote healthy living by inuencing what people know about
diseases. Media framing of the messages may determine the success or
otherwise of health interventions since the audience may underreact or
overreact to information. us, survival may be determined by the access
to information, sucient knowledge and skills and adherence to sug-
gested behaviour (Reuben etal. 2021). Eective communication between
message provider and consumer ensures the success of health services and
is aected not only by the contents, but by the encoding process and
choice of communication channels. Community leaders, persons of
inuence, medical experts are signicant encoders who have interper-
sonal inuence on receivers. eir messages may limit the chances of
misunderstanding and misinformation, especially when they are well
guided or knowledgeable about the issue. Media eects research suggest
that any eect of media content is enhanced or reduced by what the
recipients make of it (Valkenburg etal. 2016).
Statement oftheProblem
e Nigerian public has been exposed to myriads of information about
COVID-19in terms of formats and sources. However, the volume of
information appears not to have translated to desirable attitude, practice
or compliance, if people’s behaviour in public places and their denial of
the existence of coronavirus in Nigeria are indicators. e proliferation of
conspiracy theories about the pandemic has been counterproductive.
People have pushed and spread political, economic and religious postula-
tions and beliefs about the pandemic especially because of the involve-
ment of China and the USA (BBC News April 25, 2021). Some of the
beliefs are that: it is the fullment of Biblical prophecies about the end
times and the beginning of the new world order; it is borne out of China’s
apparent quest for global economic and political dominance; it is the
after eect of the launch of the 5G network and an attempt at global
depopulation through the mass administration of genetically produced
vaccines. Also prominent are several claims about the superiority of local
treatment options over western medicine, especially, the ecacy of
19 Analysis of COVID-19 Risk Communication and Community…
430
self- cure with home-made potions and remedies. e capacity of the pan-
demic to generate dangerous infodemic constitutes a major challenge.
e Nigerian government’s pronouncements about COVID-19 came
at a time of intense societal distrust of the nation’s leaders and the politi-
cal elite which manifested in the people breaking the rules of curtailment
and isolation. While many regarded the daily statistics on COVID-19
released by the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) as an alarm-
ist measure, others believed that the gures were fabricated to deceive
organisations and philanthropists to donate money and provide Public
Preventive Equipment (PPE) and palliatives. e economic hardship
caused by the lockdown, coupled with lack of transparency in govern-
ment’s provision and distribution of palliatives, increased the scepticism.
Running a successful communication campaign against such a com-
plex political and social background demands expertise in message devel-
opment. is study attempts a content analysis of a representative sample
of COVID-19 messages to assess their thematic structure and message
development elements. e study is driven by the Health Belief Model
and the agenda setting theory and the following research questions:
1. To what extent do the selected messages present salient issues on
COVID-19, drawn from the Health Belief Model and Agenda
Setting eory?
2. What appeals are employed in the selected messages?
Literature Review
Health Belief Model (HBM) suggests that a person’s belief in the personal
threat of an illness or disease together with a person’s belief in the eec-
tiveness of the recommended health behaviour or action will predict the
likelihood that the person will adopt the behaviour (Sijbesma 2010).
According to Carpenter (2010), HBM is one of the most inuential and
widely used theories to explain health conditions and health-related
behaviour. Reviews and countless applications of the theory abound to
explain and predict a variety of behaviour associated with positive health
A. I. Odejide and O. A. Egbokhare
431
outcomes and many successful health communication interventions.
HBM suggests that a person’s beliefs in both a personal threat of an illness
or disease, and in the eectiveness of the recommended health behaviour
or action, will predict the likelihood that the person will adopt the behav-
iour. It is a value-expectancy model developed to explain an individual’s
health actions under conditions of uncertainty (Maiman and Becker
1974). e expectancy can be the individual’s estimate of personal sus-
ceptibility to, and the severity of, an illness as well as the likelihood of
being able to reduce that threat through personal action (Tatyana and
Jim 2015).
e major constructs that predict why people would take actions to
prevent or screen for disease are perceived susceptibility, perceived sever-
ity, perceived benets, and perceived barriers (Orji etal. 2012) and are
categorised into two main aspects of an individuals’ representations of
health and health behaviour, namely perceived threat and behavioural
evaluation. In addition to these constructs, diverse variables like demo-
graphic, sociopsychological, and structural factors may indirectly inu-
ence health-related behaviour and improve adherence and encourage cue
to action and self-ecacy. Knowledge of these enables public health pro-
fessionals to provide training and guidance in performing action, use pro-
gressive goal setting, give verbal reinforcement, and demonstrate desired
behaviours (Glanz and Rimer 2005). Critiques of the HBM focus on its
perceived high level of abstraction (Fitzpatrick etal. 1984 cited in Tatyana
and Jim 2015), the inuence of non-health-related factors (the environ-
ment, the economy, societal beliefs and the degree of access to informa-
tion) on adoption of desired behaviour and the fact that beliefs do not
necessarily lead to action (Sijbesma 2010). Notwithstanding these limita-
tions, HBM still provides the most appropriate theoretical framework for
this study.
e second theory is the Agenda Setting theory which explores how
the mass media attempt to change the pattern of political behaviour dur-
ing elections, colour events for audiences (Matsaganis and Payne 2005,
Schultz 2005, McQuail 2010, Arowolo 2017), promote change (Pierce
et. al 1987), and set public agenda for healthcare reforms (Hacker 1996).
e argument is that the mass media not only inuence how audiences
think but also what they think about. Many scholars (Zain 2014; Zhang
19 Analysis of COVID-19 Risk Communication and Community…
432
2020; Msughter and Phillips 2020) arm that the mass media is proven,
through research, to be inuential in setting up audiences on what to
think, especially when they believe the information to be credible. Some
scholars conclude that the new media is more inuential in setting the
agenda in comparison to old media (Zhang 2020; Msughter and
Phillips 2020).
e agenda setting theory suggests that how an issue is presented to
the audience inuences the choices about processing the information.
Framing, the second-level agenda setting, contributes to shaping the
audience’s perception for events covered in the media (Scheufele 1999).
Media organisations adopt framing not only to select and present content
but also to produce various perspectives for the purpose of enhancing the
important issues and events (Msughter and Phillips 2020). Social media
have become an integral part of public health as a tool for mass message
dissemination to audiences and for multiway interaction with sizeable
audience segment (Neiger etal. 2012). In view of the way news about
COVID-19 broke, the role played by the social media was pivotal to
building a block of knowledge around the virus.
As Korda and Itani (2013) contend, the social media enable anonym-
ity, social networking, easy and cost-eective access to a large number of
people across geographical distances. is may lead to information over-
load and the spread of fake news. In fact, Wakeeld etal. (2010) point
out that there is strong evidence which indicates that public health social
marketing campaigns conducted through mainstream media can have a
direct and positive eect on behaviour. In addition, even though the tools
of public health are changing, and older models of health communica-
tion are becoming inadequate, public health needs a strong, eective
voice to be successful in the world of social media (Teutsch and Fielding
2013). us, despite the social media’s broad reach and inexpensive plat-
forms, the message must be customised and tailored to the needs and
preferences of dierent audiences (Korda and Itani 2013). For social
media messages to command attention, the encoder must be thoroughly
briefed on the objective of the communication.
A cautionary note is that the deployment of social media must be inte-
grated with traditional public health communication channels. In that
way, the interactivity of social media has to be explored for synchronous
A. I. Odejide and O. A. Egbokhare
433
communication and collaboration with other media forms. According to
Heldman etal. (2013), social media conversations need to be listened to,
and inuencers engaged with. Furthermore, Freeman et al. (2015)
observes that though the social media are unlikely to be the sole solution
to changing behaviour, they can play a valuable role in contributing to
campaign objectives. Similarly, Korda and Itani (2013) argue that with
the rapid and innovative advances in participative Internet communica-
tion, social media oer opportunities for modifying health behaviour.
Sucient evidence about social media’s impact on health knowledge,
behaviour and outcomes show that it can be eective in meeting indi-
vidual and population health needs (Neiger et al. 2013; Valkenburg
etal. 2016).
Much as social media has been proven to be viable for setting health
agenda even in the face of an epidemic, the two theories, HBM and
agenda setting, suggest that substantial focus should be on the message.
While information alone is not sucient to change behaviour (Teutsch
and Fielding 2013), it does help to set the right agenda and promote the
desired health behaviour. Notwithstanding the deluge of information
about COVID-19, what is required are messages that will break through
the clutter, contents that are novel, creative, well-executed, comprehen-
sively developed, culture-centric and mindful of the demographic and
psychographic variables of the target audience. e message strategy is
key; it is not just about knowing what to say but how best to say it. Loss
of message control and proliferation of junk science and fake news have
to be eliminated.
According to Farmer (2019), there are three fundamental components
of communication for eective health advocacy: use of appropriate lan-
guage to ensure messages are understood, incorporation of several forms
of media to increase acceptance of the message being conveyed, and lastly,
and perhaps the most important, careful consideration of social and cul-
tural determinants of health. Messages delivered in a manner that meets
the needs of the target audience and includes the perspectives of those
who will benet from health services can have a powerful impact. is is
important because individuals and communities can play an important
role in determining their health. In other words, message development
19 Analysis of COVID-19 Risk Communication and Community…
434
should account for user characteristics, information preference and mode
or type of social media.
As Korda and Itani (2013) arm, priorities for all health promotion
initiatives include the following: understanding target audiences and
their information preferences, developing tailored messages for dierent
audience segment, basing programme design and evaluation on theories
of social behavioural change and dening process and outcome measures
to access intervention impacts, intermediate outcome, and health status
outcomes. ese are priorities for all health promotion initiatives. e
most powerful messages are communicated in a short period of time and
must be culture and age-appropriate. is has been proved by the eec-
tiveness of HIV/AIDS prevention behaviour messages designed for the
masses and disseminated through edutainment programmes which had a
wide reach and had a prolonged impact (Babrow and Mattson 2003).
Like Obregon and Airhihenbuwa (2000) argued, messages which are
tailored, based on the cultural traits of the audience increase the likeli-
hood that the messages will have optimal reach, impact and recall. ere
is so much about health messages that is culture-bound and the success
or failure of the message may be because of the application of adequate or
inadequate knowledge of the culture in message development. ese cul-
tural values are embedded in and inuenced by notions of community
rules, traditions, beliefs, socioeconomic ability, power structures, educa-
tion, religion, spirituality, gender roles, exposures and pathways to nego-
tiate health issues—individually and collectively. When messages are
culture-centric, they reect a within-culture view, portraying valid cul-
tural essence by drawing directly from narratives of cultural members in
naturalistic interactions. us, culturally consistent messages factor in
the values, traditions, roles, rules and power structure of the target audi-
ence and thus yield result.
In order to ensure the appropriate use of culture-centric messages,
scholars have reported that the use of narratives is an eective means of
conveying messages because they are a natural form of communication
which people can comprehend easily, and which can be easily adapted to
motivate and support health behaviour change. Being a representation of
connected events and characters within an identiable structure, bound
in space and time and containing implicit or explicit messages about the
A. I. Odejide and O. A. Egbokhare
435
health topic being discussed, they can transmit culturally grounded
health messages with underlying cultural values and norms consistent
with cultural practices (Kreuter etal. 2007; Larkey and Hecht 2010). So,
they move from story to the world of interaction as story elements and
norms embedding cultural identity are woven into discussion to create a
sense of resonance with the audience (Larkey and Hecht 2010).
e socially shared symbols and systems that express group member-
ship make these personal stories, exemplars, anecdotes and testimonials
have the unique ability to involve audiences mentally by transporting
them into the world being talked about and arousing emotional reactions
through integrative melding of attention, imagery and feelings and
becoming meaningful to listeners by providing “good reason” that justify
actions based on the dominant stories with the group (Shen etal. 2015).
ey replace arguments for readers to judge and invite readers into story
actions and immerse them in the real or plausible life experiences of oth-
ers that are often dicult either to disagree with or dispute. e addi-
tional use of audio or video messages for such narratives enables them to
contain more vivid information and make them more eective than
print-based information (Green 2006; Larkey and Hecht 2010).
Methodology
More than two hundred COVID-19 messages were collated and pre-
viewed from various social media and online platforms. e data was
collected over a period of three months: June, July and August 2020. e
search words included but were not limited to COVID-19 video clips,
COVID-19 messages, COVID-19 jingles, health messages on
COVID-19, and sensitisation messages. ereafter, 40 videos and 20
posters were selected for analysis. e selection favoured comprehensively
developed, well-executed and publicly available samples only. e inclu-
sion criteria were that the message must be on COVID-19 and must be
locally generated. Further exclusion was done if the message appeared too
similar to others or lacked originality. Two experienced and qualied
research assistants were trained to code independently, using an instru-
ment that was designed by the researchers. Inter-coder reliability was
19 Analysis of COVID-19 Risk Communication and Community…
436
calculated based on percentage of agreement between two coders, and the
result (0.88) indicated that reliability was attained. Analysis of each video
or poster was recorded on a content coding sheet. e ndings were then
cumulated and represented using simple percentages to delineate fre-
quency of occurrence. Qualitative reports were also made from ndings
using descriptive discourse.
Results
Figure 19.1 Breakdown of the videos according to type.
Figure 19.2 presents the types of messages used in the selected videos.
e commonest forms were drama (45%) followed by straight announce-
ments (40%). Song and music constituted 12.5% of the videos, while
2.5% were documentaries. us, 85% of the messages were in the form
of drama and straight announcements.
Figure 19.3 shows the percentile distribution of identied sponsors.
Federal and state governments sponsored close to a third of all the selected
messages while public-spirited individuals and various companies
together sponsored more than half of the messages. Non-governmental
31
9
40
77.5%
22.5%
100%
other Videos Animation Total Video
Fig. 19.1 Video types
A. I. Odejide and O. A. Egbokhare
437
Straight
Announcement
40.00%
Drama
45.00%
Song/Music
12.50%
Documentary
2.50%
Fig. 19.2 Type of message
Government
32.50%
NGOs
15.00%
Individuals
27.50%
Companies
25.00%
Fig. 19.3 Identified sponsors
organisations, including Faith-Based Organisations, sponsored the
remaining 15%. Given the public health dimension of the epidemic, it is
understandable that most of the sensitisation messages would come from
government.
19 Analysis of COVID-19 Risk Communication and Community…
438
8
27
5
20%
67.5
%
12.5%
Yoruba
Englis
h
Pidgin
Fig. 19.4 Languages used
Figure 19.4 shows that 67.5% of the messages were crafted in English;
20% of the messages were in Yoruba while 12.5% of the messages were in
Pidgin. It is not surprising that the most commonly used language of
engagement was English, Nigeria’s ocial language, through which a
wider audience across indigenous language groups can be reached.
Most of the selected adverts combined emotional appeals, in the form
of fear arousal, hope, positive or negative appeals. Humour featured
prominently in some of the appeals as the qualitative analysis shows
(Fig.19.5).
Figure 19.6 shows elements of dierent aspects of Nigerian culture like
the use of indigenous music, language, dressing, beliefs and religion.
Analysis
A total of 40 video and 20 e-posters were analysed for the study. e
content coding sheet was divided into sections: A, B and C.In Section A,
the coders recorded the message title, social media platform, number of
views and the date released. In Section B, the coders identied name of
the sponsor, language used, factors of cultural and religious resonance,
A. I. Odejide and O. A. Egbokhare
439
5
2
1
3
1
3
1
6
7
7
2
1
1
Fear-arousal
Humour
Hope
logical/factual appeals
emotional appeal
positive or negative appeal
Fear-arousal & Hope
Hope & Emotional appeal
Emotional appeal & Positive/negative appeal
Fear-arousal & Positive/negative appeal
Fear-arousal, Hope & Emotional appeal
Fear-arousal &Emotional appeal
Fear-arousal & logical facts,
Fear-arousal, Hope, Emotional appeal &…
Fear-arousal, Hope& Positive/negative appeal
Fig. 19.5 Types of appeal
17
4
1
1
8
3
1
2
1
1
1
Language
Music
Slang
Religion
MYTHS
Dressing &Language
Language &Music
Dressing &Religion
Language& Religion
Dressing, Music& Religion
Dressing, Language& Music
Music &Religion
Fig. 19.6 Cultural resonance
19 Analysis of COVID-19 Risk Communication and Community…
440
target audience, message type, appeal, message presenter, description of
the video, duration, unique features of the mention of preventive mea-
sures and call to action. In Section C, the coders analysed each message
to show if and how encoders demonstrated the threat and severity posed
by the pandemic, the benets and barriers of taking action, message accu-
racy and agency of the audience. Section A shows that majority of the
messages appeared across various social media—Facebook, Instagram,
WhatsApp and Twitter with the highest frequency being on Facebook.
Research Question 1: ToWhat Extent Do theSelected
Messages Present Salient Issues onCOVID-19, Drawn
fromtheHealth Belief Model andAgenda
Setting Theory?
To answer the rst research question, concepts were drawn from the tem-
plate presented by the Health Belief eory and Agenda Setting theory.
e messages to a great extent covered salient issues relating to COVID-19.
e message sponsors, as identied in the credits, belong to four major
categories; government agencies sponsored more messages (32.5%) than
any other group as shown in Fig.19.3. ese were the Federal Ministries
of Health, Information, Youth and Sports and State Ministries of Health
(especially Lagos State, the disease epicentre in Nigeria). Non-
governmental agencies sponsored 15% of the messages. Some other
sponsors included WHO, UNICEF, UKAID and the Nigeria Medical
Association. A quarter of the messages (25%) were sponsored by private
companies (e.g. the oil company, Oando). Other sponsors included
media organisations (i.e. News Agency of Nigeria), television stations
and media houses (i.e. Africa Independent Television, Television
Commercial, Nigeria Television Authority, Guardian Newspapers).
Equally represented (15%) were Faith-Based Organisations such as
churches and church groups (Redeemed Christian Church of God,
Methodist Church, Boys’ Brigade), volunteer groups, celebrities, and
public-spirited individuals.
e messages were relayed using facts, logic, statistics and medical evi-
dence. Topics covered encompassed managing or curtailing the spread of
A. I. Odejide and O. A. Egbokhare
441
the virus, especially social or physical distancing, curtailing movement,
isolation and quarantine, handwashing, avoidance of touch or contact
with eyes, mouth and nose. More of the messages (67.3%) focused more
on the benets of taking action than on the threats and severity of the
pandemic. Seventy-one percent of the messages touched on the agency of
the audience. A total of 96.7% of the messages gave accurate information
about COVID-19. However, there were a few inaccuracies such as the
distance to maintain in social distancing, coughing into elbow or cover-
ing the mouth, the duration of handwashing, the avoidance of eating
game and stockpiling of food and medicine. Emphasis on the benet of
taking action was minimal (30%), just as the barriers to taking action
were also not given priority attention (10%). Seventy-three percent
(73%) of the messages made clear calls to action, with a notable one
being cast in Yoruba, Gbe ile ki o ba gbaye (“Stay at home to stay alive”).
is tagline would resonate with many native speakers of Yoruba, (one of
the three major Nigerian ethnic groups) and the play on words “Gbe ile”
and “Gbaye” makes for memorability.
e messages did not adequately reect all the factors examined in the
Health Belief eory. Demonstration of the severity and threat of the
epidemic was low (20%), probably because the message developers did
not want to generate more fear and panic, as people were already scared.
Translation of some technical terms (hand sanitizer, social distance, virus)
from English into the indigenous language was not accurate or adequate.
One particular fact-laden message, devoid of entertainment, garnered
over half a million views (577,073) on Facebook alone(https://www.you-
tube.com/watch?v=G- wB_IANUzw). Another video titled “VSO
NIGERIA raises awareness on COVID-19” was targeted at hearing
impaired persons, a category of people usually, inadvertently sidelined in
communication campaigns in Nigeria.
Examples of specic calls to action can be categorised as follows:
• Avoiding large gatherings: “Stay away from people in public places;
Stay away from weddings, owanmbe (large, crowded parties; Use tech-
nology to worship).”
19 Analysis of COVID-19 Risk Communication and Community…
442
• Checking the media and NCDC updates: “Stay tuned to this TV
channel to receive more updates on the corona virus; Take responsibil-
ity and call NCDC for information.”
• Observing the health protocols: “Use hand sanitizer, no shaking hands
with neighbours and friends; Stay away from cough droplets; Wash
hands regularly for at least 20 seconds; Cough into elbows, avoid
touching your mouth and sick people, cover mouth when sneezing;
Wear facemask.”
• Avoiding rumour mongering: “Don’t spread rumours; Spread this
message, not the virus.”
• Providing information on treatment procedure: “Self-isolate if you feel
sick; Do not self-medicate; Don’t panic; Do not buy fake drugs for
cure; Call helpline if you feel or notice any of these symptoms.”
• Being socially responsible: “Be a superhero; Don’t discriminate against
people who test positive.”
Research Question 2: What Appeals Are Used
intheSelected Messages fortheStudy?
e nature of information people consume can inuence both the extent
and the form of their opinions (Valkenburg etal. 2016), the probability
of the individuals’ response to threats to personal or community health
and self-agency (Commodari 2017). is section shows samples of cre-
ative elements in the selected messages, notably the attempt to domesti-
cate or indigenise the campaign through music, people’s mode of dressing,
location, language (especially the use of slang) and some transliterations.
e videos featured drama, music, animation, straight announcement
and documentary. e most common format for the messages was drama
(40%). Some elements of fear concerning disease, epidemic and death
were introduced into the video messages. In line with e Health Belief
Model, some of the messages focused on the pandemic’s deadliness, dan-
ger and fatality. ese were reinforced by naming dead Nigerian elites,
portraying health ocials decked in Personal Protective Equipment
(PPE) and images of hospitalised victims. e Anthill Corona PSA ani-
mation, which had garnered about 24,000 views at the time of data
A. I. Odejide and O. A. Egbokhare
443
collection for this research played up the fear of families being separated.
It featured young children with the warning, “Your parents will be taken
by the government.”
e videos and posters also featured Nigerian celebrities (Toyin
Abraham, Oga Bello), religious leaders (Pastor Enoch Adeboye, General
Overseer Redeemed Christian Church of God), sportsmen and women
(past medallists like Mary Onyeali), musicians (e.g. Cobham, Don Jazzy,
KWAM One and Ebenezer Obey), health professionals (Dr. Jaya
Abubakar, Head of Epidemiology, NCDC, a group of health profession-
als across disciplines from a teaching hospital), CEOs of companies (e.g.
Aliko Dangote), town/community groups, among others. ese notable
personalities and institutions were featured to enhance the credibility of
the messages, thus increasing the possibility of gaining the attention of
the target audience. is corroborates the argument of Iyengar and
Kinder (2010) that health promotion thrives when opinion leaders and
existing communal structures own the message and audiences can hear
their own voices in the communication.
e messages from the Faith-Based Organisations focused on hope,
love, belonging, unity, togetherness, encouragement and a call for prayers.
e pronoun “we” was more commonly used than the pronoun “you” or
“I.” e song, “We Go Win,” by Cobham Asuquo (https://www.you-
tube.com/watch?v=G- wB_IANUzw) is an example of a message replete
with a call to unify eorts at ghting Corona: we go ght am, we t beat
am, we t stop am, we get power, no let panic nish us, we go win o. e
song was a repeated call to ght Corona as one people. e copy of some
of the other selected advertisements featured messages like “Let’s save
ourselves, let’s save the world,” “Take responsibility, do it for yourself and
the rest of us.” “You are the superhero Nigeria is waiting for, will you
answer their call? Corona, alejo lo je; tete k’eru re malo” (“Corona, you
are a stranger, pack and leave here quickly”). In the last message, Corona
is personied as an unwanted guest. All of these were attempts to make
the audience own the message and act as a cohesive group.
One rich and prominent element in the messages is the use of humour
which, according to Obadare (2009: 245), ordinary Nigerians use as a
potent weapon to “deconstruct and construct meaning out of a reality
that is decidedly surreal.” e categorisation of humour styles by Martin
19 Analysis of COVID-19 Risk Communication and Community…
444
etal. (2003) was particularly relevant. ese are the aliative, which is a
benign style used to improve one’s relationship with others; the self-
enhancing, which is wholesome and favourable to oneself and others; the
aggressive that is detrimental to others while enhancing oneself; and the
self-defeating type which derides oneself while promoting one’s relation-
ships with others. Buttressing the Yoruba folk saying, Oro buruku, toun
terin (“A grievous situation accompanied by laughter”), these humorous
messages serve as coping mechanisms to limit the anxiety occasioned by
the pandemic (Kuiper etal. 2004)
e Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG) for its 68th Annual
Convention featured a video which employed self-enhancing humour to
discourage members from attending the convention which normally
attracts thousands of members and would have constituted a super-
spreader event. An argument in Ijesa dialect of Yoruba, between a mother
who is a diehard member and her sceptical daughter, provides accurate
information on the ecacy of social/physical distancing and deploys the
authority of a credible encoder, the General Overseer. Self-denigrating
humour is employed in a video, “Palliative, Episode 8” produced by
20Mouth House of Humour which highlights the deep distrust displayed
by Nigerians about the government and its eorts to alleviate the eects
of the pandemic on the citizens. e video dramatized the greed dis-
played by a couple who were intent on outwitting each other in ways that
fractured the delity of the marriage, all in a bid to collect the cash sub-
sidy promised by the government. is clip contains neither COVID-19
guidelines nor call to action and could undermine people’s agency.
Despite the grim reality of COVID 19, Nigerians’ zest for life and
humour appears undiminished as is reected in thirteen of the posters
which attempt to mitigate the severity of the pandemic and laugh in the
face of fear (Nabi 2016; Hendriks and Janssen 2018). In Nigeria, “jokes
serve a double function as a tool for subordinate classes to deride the state
(including its agents) and themselves” (Obadare 2009, 241).
Poster 19.1 derides a policeman, a state agent, who appears to enforce
the use of face mask while greedily staring at a man eating a whole
chicken. Poster 19.2 similarly derides the Inspector General of Police’s
announcement banning the Special Anti-Robbery Squad and police
checkpoints by proposing alternative means of extortion of the public.
A. I. Odejide and O. A. Egbokhare
445
Poster 19.1
Poster 19.2
19 Analysis of COVID-19 Risk Communication and Community…
446
Poster 19.3 creates humour from the famous last statement about Corona
virus credited to Ibrahim Magu, the suspended Head of the much-
dreaded Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).
In Poster 19.4, there is linguistic inversion in a pun with the acronym
of the World Health Organisation (WHO), being used as the pro-
noun “Who.”
Posters 19.5 and 19.6 adopt comic incongruities to draw attention to
the guideline on social distancing while the green frog in Poster 19.7,
rather irreverently, compares breathlessness, a symptom of COVID 19,
to the discomfort of wearing tight pants.
Poster 19.8, “Don’t let them take your temperature on your forehead,”
ridicules the guideline on monitoring people’s temperature before they
are permitted to enter public places by inferring that it distorts a person’s
cognition. is self-defeating humour style in Posters 19.5, 19.6, 19.7,
Poster 19.3
A. I. Odejide and O. A. Egbokhare
447
Poster 19.4
Poster 19.5
19 Analysis of COVID-19 Risk Communication and Community…
448
Poster 19.6
Poster 19.7
A. I. Odejide and O. A. Egbokhare
449
Poster 19.8
and 19.8, while ostensibly countermanding the protocols, uses counter-
intuitive humour to sustain morale in the face of the stress of the
pandemic.
Similarly, Poster 19.9 titled “God Abeg” (“Please God”), will resonate
with the average Nigerian’s belief in the existence of everyone’s “destiny
helper.” is joke becomes more hilarious when juxtaposed with another
one which had earlier celebrated the idea of face masks providing a debtor,
a cover against being recognised by the creditor.
Poster 19.10 ridicules societal materialism exhibited in the ostenta-
tious Nigerian Owanmbe tradition in which party attendees make outts
with the same material and incorporate matching face masks introduced
by Nigerian fashion designers. However, this poster depicts an overkill
where the face mask not only matches the wearer’s attire but the entire
décor, including the container of hand sanitizer. Even though this use of
humour does not support the Health Belief eory which requires that
beyond rhetoric and humour, people need to know how to prevent
COVID-19 (Kissler etal. 2020); it still attracts attention.
Posters 19.11 and 19.12 contrast sharply in the level of the compliance
with COVID protocols. Poster 19.11 contains a striking and potentially
damaging infodemic purported to be derived from opinions of medical
practitioners. e message in the poster makes a call to “everyone in the
world” to take part in inhalation of steam for one week and COVID-19
would be “eradicated.” Compared to the message in Poster 19.12
19 Analysis of COVID-19 Risk Communication and Community…
450
Poster 19.9
sponsored by the Oyo State Government, this claim of eradication by
inhalation, though laughable, may be embraced by a gullible public, thus
constituting an abuse of the principle of agency by the community. is
kind of falsehood underscores the need for the media to set the right
agenda and push information that will generate healthy choices and
inuence positive actions.
According to Olubodun (2018), to a large extent, to be African is to be
religious. erefore, factoring religion into message development is
important because it is a locus of control and an integral part of the life
of the African. us, Posters 19.13 and 19.14, while extending greetings
to Muslims on the occasions of Eid Kabir and Eid Mubarak, combine the
COVID-19-compliant guideline by masking the Islamic symbol of the
crescent and the sacricial lamb for the Eid-el-Kabir or the Eid-al-Adha.
e messages simply reiterate the need to celebrate the Eid with family
and friends while observing the safety precautions for COVID-19.
Similarly, Poster 19.15 adds an eleventh commandment to the existing
A. I. Odejide and O. A. Egbokhare
451
Poster 19.10
Poster 19.11
19 Analysis of COVID-19 Risk Communication and Community…
452
Poster 19.12
ten in the Bible by replacing the word “covet” in the tenth command-
ment with “COVID.” Such use of humour is potentially attractive and
makes a message memorable, fostering attitudinal change and knowledge
acquisition (Cline and Kellaris 2007, Percy and Rossiter 1997), promot-
ing interpersonal sharing and stimulating positive emotions (Greatbatch
and Clark 2002). In the context of the new media, it can act as conversa-
tion starter/topic and an important determinant of information sharing
(Dobele etal. 2007). is way, the media can assume an agenda setting
role by telling people what to talk about.
A. I. Odejide and O. A. Egbokhare
453
Poster 19.13
Poster 19.14
19 Analysis of COVID-19 Risk Communication and Community…
454
Poster 19.15
Conclusion
From the assessment of the selected COVID-19 messages, one could
identify the salient issues addressed in the messages and the extent to
which the messages leaned on the constructs of the Health Belief Model
and Agenda Setting eory. e literature shows that social media are
relevant and highly potent for disseminating information on health cam-
paign to support behaviour change. While humour served to provide
relevant information, it was used to ridicule state agents and for self-
critique, to sustain morale and cohesion of the community in ways that
lessen the fear of the pandemic. e encoders, public health practitioners
and social marketers utilised aspects of HBM variables and Agenda set-
ting to package their campaigns to meet their communication objectives
and reach the right target with the intended message. ese health
A. I. Odejide and O. A. Egbokhare
455
campaigns on COVID-19 shared on social media have the potential of
receiving considerable attention, especially from literate young people.
Consequently, due consideration should be given the pivots of health
belief model in order to set the right agenda and directly increase the pos-
sibility that salient information on COVID-19 reaches the desired tar-
gets, and ultimately, impact health behaviour.
Recommendations Having examined closely the messages under study
and their contents in line with the Health Belief Model and Agenda
Setting eory, we recommend that for health communication messages,
especially on COVID-19, to full the objective of improving the knowl-
edge, attitude and practice of the target audience, message developers
should incorporate receivers’ cultural constructs, adopt and adapt tradi-
tional media of theatre, oratory and folk music. is should facilitate
compliance with the health promotion interventions, especially in a
country like Nigeria with its low literacy level, multi-ethnicity and
religious aliations and sensitivities. At the applied level, the results gen-
erated by this study underscore the popularity of humour in campaign
development, the importance of encouraging sharing, and measuring
potential impact as a component of health campaigns evaluation.
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20
COVID-19 (Post)Proverbials: Twisting
theWord Against theVirus
AderemiRaji-Oyelade
Already we are familiar with the concern generated by “nervous diseases,”
and the awareness that man becomes more delicate in proportion as he
perfects himself. As the century advanced, the concern became more pressing,
the warnings more solemn. Already Raulin had observed that “since the birth
of medicine…these illnesses have multiplied, have become more dangerous,
more complicated, more problematical and dicult to cure.
—Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization (1989: 211)
Preamble: Tracing theVirus
COVID-19 stands for “Coronavirus Disease 2019,” a transmissible respi-
ratory disease caused by a novel coronavirus, which rst broke out in the
city of Wuhan, Hubei Province, China, on November 17, 2019.1
1 https://www.livescience.com/rst-case-coronavirus-found.html.
A. Raji-Oyelade (*)
Department of English, University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria
© e Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023
F. Egbokhare, A. Afolayan (eds.), Global Health, Humanity and the COVID-19
Pandemic, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17429-2_20
462
COVID-19, caused by the SARS-CoV2, is a new strain of SARS-CoV,
i.e., severe acute respiratory syndrome-coronavirus. It was identied as an
epidemic in 2002in the city of Guangdong, China, aecting 26 coun-
tries with 8000 documented cases.2 Unlike SARS-CoV, COVID-19
(SARS-CoV2) has attained the status of a pandemic, barely 150 days
after its outbreak, with over 6.5m cases in 210 countries across the world.3
As researches on the origin, nature, and volatility rate of the contagion
continued, there have also been concerted, international eorts to con-
tain its spread, with the race for the vaccine to conquer the virus. While
medical responses have been the most obvious to contain the pandemic,
there have also been other responses to the ravaging illness, ranging from
trado-medicinal, homeopathic, and the religious to conspiracy theorems
including the scare of the biblical Armageddon, the end of days, the
interrelation of the scourge with 5G wavelength radiation, and the
counter- accusations of bio-terrorism, which suggest an economic third-
world war between the USA and China. us, the responses to COVID-19
have been notably medical, spiritual, philosophical, economic, political,
sociological, and sociolinguistic. Across the African continent, following
healthcare instructions, most national governments introduced a combi-
nation of testing, contact tracing, social distancing, face-masking, saniti-
zation, handwashing, and total or partial lockdown of the citizenry as
measures to mitigate the pandemic.4 According to a United Nations
Habitat report, the control measures of most African countries to curtail
the spread of COVID-19 included “restrictions on inter-regional move-
ments to total lockdowns at the local, provincial or national level”
(2020: 20).
2 https://www.who.int/ith/diseases/sars/en/.
3 https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/.
4 e rst conrmed case of COVID-19in Africa was in Egypt on February 14, 2020. Nigeria had
its rst case on February 27, 2020. e rst case in South Africa was announced on March 5, 2020,
and in Ghana, the rst two cases were reported on March 12, 2020.
A. Raji-Oyelade
463
Breaking theOutbreak
In the ascendancy of COVID-19, dierent categories of creative materi-
als including memes, video and audio skits, GIFs, quips, and proverbs are
produced on social media as part of the larger sociological and psycho-
logical (motivational) responses to the disease. Particularly, some inven-
tive turns have been served on a number of proverbs that they can be
categorized as novel creations of the postproverbial imagination, given
the strains noticeable in the breaking and re-composition of the words.
Amidst the challenge and containment of the aiction, the strains of
invented proverbs are phenomenal reactions of the people to the out-
break, deserving of attention and analysis. e radical imagination of the
users of the proverb text within particular language communities are evi-
dent of their philosophy of engagement with the pandemic. e postpro-
verbial text itself is a cultural-linguistic “outbreak,” an outgrowth of the
conventional text, and, thus, symbolically, a response to the viral outbreak.
In Search oftheDeviant Text
e focus of this chapter is to draw on the available range of postprover-
bial response to COVID-19, that is, the manner in which reactions to the
scourge have been recongured in particular proverbial utterances in
some African communities. An open call for contributions (OCC) was
shared on March 15, 2020, on social media, including WhatsApp,
Twitter, and Facebook.5 Respondents were not limited to the number of
entries that they could supply. In selecting the entries for this study, con-
sideration was given to appropriateness, logic, and translation. In some
cases where clarications were needed, direct correspondence with par-
ticular respondents was initiated for follow-up. e proverbs were col-
lected within the time range of 4 weeks (March 16–April 15, 2020) by
means of question and sampling from respondents. In addition to the
5 All the respondents who supplied examples of coronavirus-related proverbs did so freely and
approved of the use of the illustrations. e interpretations of the postproverbials are without any
prejudice to the respondents’ own comments and suggestions.
20 COVID -19 (Post)Proverbials: Twisting the Word…
464
open call, other examples or illustrations of coronavirus-related proverbs
were drawn from available sources in news reports, Twitter, and other
platforms. Furthermore, permission was sought to cite all the collated
entries only for academic purpose and publication.
is study contains 23 postproverbials related to COVID-19in six
African languages, including Hausa, Ibibio, Igede, Igbo, Yoruba, and
Zulu. As it will be evident in the interpretation section of this chapter,
the collected samples are radicalized sayings (in the season of anomie),
emerging as decidedly playful but instructive fabrications out of the wel-
ter of traditional African proverbs. Also, given the ethnic background of
most of the respondents, examples from Yoruba language are more pre-
dominating, representing up to three-quarter of the total number of the
proverbs collected. e preliminary observation is that the collected
responses are admonitions, which draw attention and awareness to the
dangers of the pandemic, and in other cases, they are verbal jousts against
the virus itself. In relation to the basic principles of rift, suture, and
super(im)position of the theory of postproverbials, these are absolute cre-
ations of the radical imagination, with new values, new functions, and
dierent signications.
The Postproverbial Order
Transgressive paremiology is the study of innovations and transforma-
tions in contemporary proverb scholarship. Its crucial interest is to deal
with signicant structural violence done to traditional or conventional
proverbs, the deconstruction of the idiomatic pathogen of the conven-
tional utterance which invariably aects its meaning, knowledge trans-
mission, and the overarching philosophy of life.
To be sure, conventional proverbs have never been dismissed as jaded,
outworn, or clichés in spite of their ubiquitous and repetitive use. Yet, the
human penchant for creativity, modernist, or iconoclastic energies, cou-
pled with a critical detachment from the heritage of traditional wisdom,
have questioned the sacrosanct status of the proverbial text in culture.
e term “antisprichwort” (German for “anti-proverb”) was rst used by
A. Raji-Oyelade
465
Wolfgang Mieder in 1983.6 Mieder would collaborate later with Anna
Litovkina, the Hungarian sociolinguist, to publish the rst major work
on the tradition of innovation in the use and making of proverbs titled
Twisted Wisdom: Modern Anti-Proverbs (1999). In European and Anglo-
American studies, proverb scholars have drawn on the label “anti- proverb”
for alterations, transgressions, and transformations: anti(-)proverb
(French), aнтиnословицa (Russian), and anti(-)proverbium (Hungarian).
In African proverb scholarship, the term “postproverbial” was rst coined
in 1995 by Aderemi Raji-Oyelade in an essay that would be published
later in Research in African Literatures in 1999.7
COVID-19 Postproverbials: Interpreting
theTwisted Word
e set of COVID-19 postproverbials collected so far are verbal reec-
tions on the reality of the pandemic, the experience of lockdown, social
distancing, hygiene, as well as the invocation and reication of the mor-
bid potential and presence of the virus in the community. e interpre-
tive minimum, which runs through all but one of these radicalized texts,
is the personication of the coronavirus as subject and agency. As orga-
nized, each pair of proverb text for analysis contains the conventional
proverb and the postproverbial engendered by the disease; thus, the com-
mentary that follows serves as contextual explication of the interrelation
of the given proverbemes. In the basic structural pattern of the postpro-
verbial act, a part of the conventional proverb—clausal, phrasal or
6 Mieder, W. Antisprichwörter. Band I.Wiesbaden: Verlag für deutsche Sprache, 1983.
7 Relevant publications on postproverbials or anti-proverbs include the following: Raji-Oyelade,
A. “Posting the African Proverb: A Grammar of Yoruba Postproverbials, or Logophagia, Logorrhea
and the Grammar of Yoruba Postproverbials.” Proverbium: Yearbook of International Proverb
Scholarship 21 (2004): 299–314; T.Litovkina, A. and Mieder, W. Old Proverbs Never Die, ey Just
Diversify: A Collection of Anti-Proverbs. Burlington & Veszprém: e University of Vermont & e
Pannonian University of Veszprém, 2006; Mieder, W. “Anti-Proverbs and Mass Communication:
e Interplay of Traditional and Innovative Folklore”. Acta Ethnographica Hungarica 52.1 (2007):
17–46; Aleksa, M. and Hrisztova-Gotthardt, H. & T. Litovkina, A. “e Reception of Anti-
Proverbs in the German Language Area”, in Soares, R. & Lauhagankas, O. (eds.), Actas ICP08
Proceedings. Tavira: Tipograa Tavirense, 2009. pp.83–98; and Raji-Oyelade, A. Playful Blasphemies:
Postproverbials as Archetypes of Modernity in Yoruba Culture. Trier: Wissenchaftlicher Verlag, 2012.
20 COVID -19 (Post)Proverbials: Twisting the Word…
466
lexical—is suspended and replaced by a newly extracted clause, phrase, or
lexis, which is directly related to coronavirus as agency. In other cases, the
conventional proverb remains intact but supplemented by a postprover-
bial retort. e double act of suspension and superimposition which
takes place is a structural ssure, albeit, a locking down or twinning of
the old with a new artice which thus gives birth to a hybrid or rogue text.
On Lockdown
e rst set of proverbial retorts to the pandemic are devoted to the peo-
ple’s reaction toward the sudden change of lifestyle caused by the ocial
declaration of lockdowns in most countries around the world. e lock-
down was the rst major regulatory act of governments, and attendant
upon it were other restrictions including self-isolation, quarantine, face
masking, and social/physical distancing. Medical tourism, the practice of
travelling for therapeutic treatment, became downgraded, and in its place
was medical curfew, the restriction of movement of persons across state
borders, in control of the acute contagion.
1.
p1: Ibi orí dá’ni sí làá gbé.
A man’s home is where he should reside.
p2: Ibi orí dá’ni sí làá gbé, níí gba’ni l’owoo àtànkálẹ kòró.8
A man’s home is where he should reside. us, one is saved from the spread
of coronavirus.
Comment: e conventional saying is a philosophical reference to the
destiny as well as the contentment of humans who must submit to the
natural order of birth. In troping on this, the postproverbial retort directly
points at the need for human to remain within her location (locus) in
order to be saved from the uncharted rout of the virus. e sense of the
spiritual (fate) in the rst proverb is replaced by the sense of the physical
8 Supplied by a respondent, @Olushola-Excel Oyadiji (Yoruba).
A. Raji-Oyelade
467
(home) in the prosthetic proverb. is truly is a lockdown
postproverbial.
2.
p1: Akpa sangha isang isi diagha se mbon ufok edia.
e one who walks about does not eat what those at home eat.
p2: Akpa sangha isang abi m^m COVID-19.9
It is the one who walks about that will contract COVID-19.
Comment: is is an apt example of a postproverbial that is induced by
the sense of precaution. Whereas the conventional proverb points at the
adventurous nature of humans, the radical response in COVID-19
addresses the danger of indiscriminate wandering.
3.
p1: Ukwu n’aga wam wam wam marakwa na anya n’aga wam wam wam
na eleya.
e leg that walks about should know that the eye that looks around is
watching it.
p2: Ukwu n’aga wam wam wam mara kwa na COVID-19 na eche ya.10
e leg that walks about should know that COVID-19 is waiting for it.
Comment: In this example of a lockdown postproverbial, a person is
admonished against aimless wandering and transgression that could lead
to infection. e restrictive tone of the original proverb is retained in the
new proverb; the warning is not about extra vigilance (“of the eye that
looks around”) as it is about the presence of the virus (COVID-19) that
lurks around the corner for the wanderer.
9 Supplied by a respondent, @Hanson Utibe-Abasi (Ibibio).
10 Supplied by a respondent @Miracle Francis (Igbo).
20 COVID -19 (Post)Proverbials: Twisting the Word…
468
On Social Distancing
e act of lockdown, with the creation of physical and social boundaries,
was the direct cause of the condition of isolation and dissociation. e
popular term for the practice of regulated spacing and dissociation is
called social distancing. Social distancing is the accepted measure of
remoteness between persons and groups of people with a view to reduc-
ing or canceling any act of intimacy especially for the purpose of medical
(psychological or psychiatric) healing. It is noteworthy that most of the
postproverbial creations in the season of the coronavirus reect directly
or indirectly on the logic and necessity of safe distancing.
4.
p1: Ká rìn ká po, yíyẹ níí yẹni.
Moving together in unison brings honour and respect.
p2: Ká rìn ká po, pípa níí pani.11
Moving together in unison brings death.
Comment: e original proverb here reects on the joy of communal
relations and association, but the postproverbial admonishes against the
danger of crowding, which increases the rate of viral infection in
COVID-19 time. e radicalized proverb is already used as part of a
musical composition entitled “Koro” which was released on April 16, by
Jubal Music (2020). e song is itself a persuasive melody drawing on the
lesson of good hygiene, social distancing, counsel against overcrowding
in the home and in public places, as well as an invocation of spiritual
protection and hope for the future.12
11 Composed in a special song released by Jubal Music, entitled “Koro”; https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=kqYnB9T9rUU.
12 In popular imagination, coronavirus is shortened as “koro,” being the colloquial form of
corona/korona.
A. Raji-Oyelade
469
5.
p1: Ara kìí sá f’ára, bíí ti kúrúnà ko.
Bodies do not run from bodies, not with scabies infection.
p2: Ara kìí sá f’ára, bíí ti kófìdì ko.13
Bodies do not run from bodies, not with the outbreak of COVID-19.
p2: Ara kìí sá f’ára, bíí ti kórónà ko.
Bodies do not run from bodies, not with coronavirus infection.
Comment: In the conventional proverb, a bacterial skin disease is the
referent eect of non-cautionary physical interrelations; in the postpro-
verbial creation, the discomfort of scabies is replaced by the stigma of
coronavirus. us, COVID-19 is gured as the symptomatic repercus-
sion of bodily interactions. e other postproverbial variant here—Ara
kìí sá f’ára, bíí ti kórónà ko—is a direct pun of the phonetic similarity of
corona/korona (English) and kúrúnà (Yoruba).
6.
p1: Ìsúnmoni, là á mo se ẹni.
Close association brings understanding.
p2: Ìsúnmoni, àrùn níí dá sára.14
Close association breeds illness.
Comment: is is a proverb on the virtue of close interpersonal rela-
tions and how aliations make understanding and awareness of a per-
son’s character possible. But the postproverbial creation becomes a
warning, a counsel about social distancing as crucial mitigation of the
danger of infection and spread. erefore, as in the previous example,
close physical association is a veritable source of illness and death.
13 Supplied by a respondent, @Tolulope Akinrinde (Yoruba).
14 Supplied by a respondent, @Ope Oyetunji (Yoruba).
20 COVID -19 (Post)Proverbials: Twisting the Word…
470
7.
p.1: Òde kìí yá aláso rè.
Partying never tires the dresser.
p2: Òde kìí yá aláso rè, l’áyé kòró ko.15
Partying never tires the dresser, not in the time of coronavirus.
Comment: e conventional proverb is apparently a praise of the mate-
rial possessions of someone with a chest of clothes and who is therefore
never tired of going to parties. A general stereotype of the Yoruba is that
of a people given to hedonism and lavish celebrations. One of the eects
of the lockdown is the absolute absence of social gathering. e supple-
ment of the postproverbial text is predictably cautionary, inferring that
interaction or partying is no longer a fanciful or virtuous in the age of the
coronavirus.
8.
p1: Igi gogoro má gùn míi lójú, àtòkèrè la tí n’wó.
at we may not be blinded by the tall, pointed tree, one must watch it
from afar.
p2: Igi kòró má gùn míi lójú, àtòkèrè la tí ń’júbà.16
at we may not be blinded by the tall, corona tree, it takes a salute from
a distance.
Comment: While the original proverb expresses the need for extra cau-
tion and prudence in all proposals and actions, the postproverbial dis-
courages socialization and encourages extra care. In the new proverb,
there is an attribution, the qualication of the presence of the virus in a
material object of nature—“igi kòrónà” (corona tree).
15 Supplied by a respondent, @Wale Oyedeji (Yoruba).
16 Supplied by a respondent, @Adeshewa Adekoya (Yoruba).
A. Raji-Oyelade
471
On Spread andAwareness
By the context of their creation and use, some postproverbials have served
as disseminators of the existence of the pandemic in the society. ey also
serve as verbal evidence, admonitions, or conrmation of the aggressive
virus with its morbid power of fear and death among the people.
9.
p1: Ó jo ate, kò jo gàté, ó ẹsẹ méjì lé lẹ ate-gàte!
So steadily, so unsteadily, the matter plants its feet wobbly in the land!
P2: Ó jo ate, kò jo gàté, kòró má n’ ẹsẹ mú lẹ!17
So steadily, so unsteadily, the coronavirus is planting its feet solidly in
the land!
Comment: In this example, both proverb and postproverbial call atten-
tion to the awareness of a crucial matter or event within the community
with the potential of becoming permissive and endemic. In the conven-
tional proverb, reference is to an unnamed matter or situation; in the
radical proverb however, the situation becomes known and named. Also,
its presence is described as potentially grounded in the community.
10.
p.1: Oun tó wà l’ẹyìn Ọfà, ó ju Òjé lo.
What is after the border of Ofa is more than the encampment of Oje.
p.2: Oun tó wà l’ẹyìn kòró, ó ju iko lo.18
What comes after the coronavirus is more than coughing.
Comment: e traditional proverb here is usually uttered as a caution
on an action that has repercussion, should the warning be ignored. In its
historical context, Ọfà was a Yoruba settlement in the northern border of
17 Supplied by a respondent, @Lanre Oladoyinbo (Yoruba).
18 Supplied by a respondent, @Remi Akinpelu (Yoruba).
20 COVID -19 (Post)Proverbials: Twisting the Word…
472
old Oyo Empire; it used to be a major garrison of the warriors before the
Fulani Jihad of 1804; beyond the old garrison was Òjé, another settle-
ment which later developed into a huge encampment for warriors on
strategic missions. It is therefore said, in military sense, that when a battle
rages and ends in Ọfà, there is a greater one with greater repercussion
waiting in Oje. us, in the postproverbial turn of the conventional say-
ing, the infection of the coronavirus is the initial battle, but the mini-
mum symptom of cough is itself the euphemism for death.
11.
p1: Ong ole kojuwa hwume gen gen ka gba chu gbei.
Whatever is making the bush to shake must come to the road by and by.
p2: Okumu nyi koro ole kowe hume gen gen aka dai lo gba chu gbei ka.19
e corona masquerade that is shaking the bush must eventually appear on
the road.
Comment: e conventional proverb here notes that whatever is hid-
den even for a long time will eventually be revealed. But the postprover-
bial turns the general (“whatever”) into the specic presence of the
pandemic which is personied as a masquerade (“okumu nyi koro”). is
is a radical proverb not only about the awareness of the virus but more
about its impending outbreak and danger.
12.
p1: “Mai zan yi da abinda ya gagare wuta,” inji kishiyar konania.
“I have no business with a re ghter,” says the co-wife of a burnt woman.
p2: “Mai zan yi da abinda ya gagare wuta,” inji kishiyar mai korona.20
“I have no business with a re ghter,” says the co-wife of a corona patient.
p2: “Ba ruwana da asibiti,” inji kishiyar mai korona.
“I have no business with the hospital,” says the co-wife of a corona patient.
19 Supplied by a respondent, @Maria Ajima (Igede).
20 Supplied by a respondent, @Rahila Luka (Hausa).
A. Raji-Oyelade
473
Comment: “‘Mai zan yi da abinda ya gagare wuta,’ inji kishiyar kona-
nia” is a proverb that is generally used to address negligence and indier-
ence. Its postproverbial other (“Mai zan yi da abinda ya gagare wuta, inji
kishiyar mai korona”) addresses the negligence of the Kano state people
toward the outbreak of COVID-19. Whereas the original proverb dwells
on the negligence, as well as the complicity, of the wife in the misfortune
of the co-wife, the postproverbial is used to focus on the reported cases of
negligence and even denial of a cross-section of Kano state youths. In the
third week of April 2020, there was a spike of mystery deaths in Kano,
the main hub of the economy of Northern Nigeria. A record number of
over 150 mortalities were reported within 3 days, followed by counter-
statements about the cause of the death, especially of the elderly and
high-prole individuals in the city.21 Weeks before the outbreak of deaths,
scenes of crowds in dierent parts of the city defying the stay-at-home
order were familiar and displayed in online sites and in conventional
news channels. A virus-defying song was even composed by the predomi-
nantly youthful population: “Malam ya ce babu korona, muma mun ce
babu korona”—“Malam says there is no corona, we also say there is no
corona.”
13.
p1: Girman kai rawanin tsiya.
Pride is the turban of trouble.
p2: Girman kai rawanin mai karyata korona.
Pride is the turban of a corona denier.22
Comment: In the symbolic use of an abstract characteristic as a sign for
another condition, the original proverb is as metonymic as its postprover-
bial other. e attribute of pride (girman) in both proverb and
21 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/28/nigerian-authorities-deny-wave-of-deaths-
is-due-to-covid-19.
22 Supplied by a respondent, @Rahila Luka (Hausa).
20 COVID -19 (Post)Proverbials: Twisting the Word…
474
postproverbial is employed as agency and cause. In the conventional
proverb, pride is the crown (rawanin) of trouble; but in the postprover-
bial, pride becomes the handle, the carriage for the denial of the existence
of the coronavirus.23
On Invocation
With its conrmation as qualier of the new normal in societies, the
coronavirus becomes the reference in daily dialogues and conversations
that it becomes easily invoked and named in place of other material ele-
ments. us, a number of the postproverbials supplied by respondents
sound like invocation or qualication of the embodiment of coronavirus
as disease, as an infective, drug-defying pandemic which is open to awe
or derision according to the perspective of the particular speaker. e
invocation of the virus itself points at its agency, volatility, and morbidity.
14.
p1: Òkùnkùn kò m’ẹni owo.
Darkness does not recognize the noble person.
p2: Òkùnkùn kò m’ẹni owo, kòró lẹ ń’ké sí.24
Darkness does not recognize the noble person, the praise-name of
coronavirus.
Comment: is is another classic example of a postproverbial text com-
posed with a supplement. e conventional proverb is used to qualify the
state or area of darkness as a place of anonymity which does not respect
an individual’s importance or class. In the postproverbial, the quality of
darkness is invoked as the power or praise-name of the coronavirus. As it
were, the disease is thus infused with the epithetic and descriptive agency
of “darkness” over humans, irrespective of standing, stature, or status.
23 “Rawanin” is the Hausa word for the emir’s turban, which has the connotation of “crown”;
“karya” means lie, so the word used for denial in Hausa is karyata, i.e., claiming that something is
not true.
24 Statement made by an unidentied speaker on a live call in a radio program (Yoruba).
A. Raji-Oyelade
475
15.
p1: Uwar kishiya, kwadon kulle mai yawon banza.
e mother (matriarch) of co-wives is a padlock for the restless wanderer.
p2: Korona, kwadon kulle ma yawon banza.
Corona, the padlock that keeps the restless wanderer at home.
Comment: Like the example before this, the postproverbial here is cre-
ated as an invocation of the power of the coronavirus. In the conven-
tional proverb, the “mother of co-wives” is actually the matriarch of the
home, literally the senior wife who controls the home, and is therefore
described as “the padlock” to the restlessness of the co-wives. In the post-
proverbial, the power of the matriarch is attributed to the coronavirus,
signied as the padlock which restricts and connes the restless wanderer
at home.
16.
p1: Nala kungheko iquhude liyasa.
Even when the rooster is not present, the day breaks.
p2: Nala Ukorona ekhona, usuku liyasa.25
Even when the corona is present, the day breaks.
Comment: e conventional proverb reects on the eternity and con-
stancy of nature, in spite of other condition, opportunity, or challenge.
e postproverbial is itself no less dierent in the philosophy of the natu-
ral law of existence, that in spite of the invocative morbidity of the coro-
navirus, day will still break. In other words, the pair of proverbs here
deates the power of the disease, with an underlying sense of optimism
that in spite of the darkness, the day will break.
25 Supplied by a respondent, @Bernice Badal (Zulu).
20 COVID -19 (Post)Proverbials: Twisting the Word…
476
17.
p1: Ẹni éégún ńlé, kó máa r’ojú; bó ti ń’rẹ ará ayé náà ló ń’rẹ ará orun.
He who is pursued by the masquerade should endure; as the human tires
so does the spirit tire.
p2: Ẹni éégún kòró ńlé, kó máa r’ojú, bó ti ń’rẹ ará ayé náà ló ń’rẹ ará
orun.26
He who is pursued by the corona masquerade should endure; as the human
tires so does the spirit tire.
Comment: In this example, the deation of the power of the coronavi-
rus is the subject of the postproverbial utterance. Both proverbs establish
the importance and necessity of endurance in the face of adversity. e
masquerade in the conventional proverb becomes the corona masquerade
in the radical proverb, but the impermanence of trials is the constant
trope of the (post)proverbial text.
On Hygiene
In the new normal, one of the precautions against the coronavirus is the
hygiene of humans and their environment. In addition to social distanc-
ing and lockdown, the main measures of that precaution include the cov-
ering of the mouth and the nose with face masks and the regular washing
and sanitization of the hands. e responsibility to prevent the transmis-
sion of the virus, which is tied to hygienic orientation, has also been a
subject of postproverbial creativity.
18.
p1: Àgbájo owo la ń’so àyà.
With all hands together we beat the chest in solidarity.
26 Supplied by a respondent, @Adetutu Olubummo (Yoruba).
A. Raji-Oyelade
477
p2: Àgbájo owo la ń’wẹ owo.27
With all hands together we wash (the hands) to cleanliness.
p2: Àgbájo owo la ń’so àyà; l’áyée kòró koo.28
With all hands together we beat the chest in solidarity; not in the age of
coronavirus.
Comment: In the conventional proverb, the focus is on solidarity and
collective action; whereas the rst postproverbial points at the indexical
and individual action of hand hygiene, the second example of the post-
proverbial functions as a declamation against collective physical activity.
19.
p.1: F’otún w’òsì, f’òsì w’otún, lowo ńmo.
Washing the left with the right, washing the right with the left, makes the
hand clean.
p.2: F’otún w’òsì, f’òsì w’otún, ló ń’lé kòró lo.
Washing the left with the right, washing the right with the left, lays o the
coronavirus.
Comment: is is a pair of proverbs that focuses on the physical activ-
ity of hand washing as manual process of hygiene. On the one hand, the
conventional proverb is predictively embedded with the metaphor of
solidarity and cooperation; on the other hand, the postproverbial directly
arms the necessity of hand hygiene as a crucial way of preventing coro-
navirus infection.
20.
p1: Tí ará ilé ẹni bá ń’jẹ kòkòrò burúkú, tí kò bá r’ẹni so fun un, hùrùhẹrẹ
rẹ kò ní jẹ kí ará ilé gbádùn.
When one’s relation feeds on a forbidden insect without warning, his res-
tive reaction will not allow the neighbours to rest.
27 Supplied by a respondent, @Charles Akinsete (Yoruba).
28 Supplied by a respondent, @Morounfolu Akinpelu (Yoruba).
20 COVID -19 (Post)Proverbials: Twisting the Word…
478
p2: Tí ará China bá ń’jẹ kòkòrò burúkú, tí kò bá r’ẹni so fún un, kòró kò
ní jẹ kí gbogbo àgbáyé gbádùn.29
When the Chinese feeds on forbidden animals without warning, the coro-
navirus will not allow the whole world to rest.
Comment: Literally speaking, this is a proverb that anticipates the
symptomatic eect of harmful food intake; it also draws attention to how
a strain of poisonous food/object consumed by one person can aect the
well-being of other people around. In the postproverbial, the subject
becomes specied as “the Chinese,” apparently echoing the widespread
insinuation that the coronavirus disease emanated from an exotic animal
market in China. us, the radical proverb is as cautionary as much as it
is accusatory.
On Morbidity
e very absolute repercussion of coronavirus infection and spread is
death. is is an awareness that has been part of the scary reality of living
with the pandemic. erefore, through a number of postproverbials, the
creative imagination is devoted to the fearful connotation of death and
the sense of morbidity connected to the agency of the virus which is as yet
unyielding to the science of vaccine production.
21.
p1: A kìí gbé’lé ẹni ká f’orùn ro.
One cannot stay at home and get injured.
p2: A kìí gbé’lé ẹni ká f’orùn ro, òwe kòró ko. F’owo ẹ!30
One cannot stay at home and get injured, no such proverb in corona time.
Wash your hands!
Comment: e conventional proverb here is a terse guration of the
home as a place of comfort, security, and safety. It is a philosophical
29 Supplied by a respondent, @El-Nasir Al-Amin (Yoruba).
30 Supplied by a respondent, @Lanre Oladoyinbo (Yoruba).
A. Raji-Oyelade
479
assumption that no one gets involved in a ghastly accident while within
the connes of his own residence. e accident is specied, that is, having
a forced sprain to the neck (“f’orùn ro”). In the postproverbial utterance,
the home is no longer given as safe or insulated from the scourge of the
coronavirus. e original proverb is extended and doubly troped upon:
rst, there is the declamatory clause (“òwe kòrónà ko”), followed by a full
imperative statement which counsels physical hygiene (“F’owo ẹ!”). In
the postproverbial, the impact of injury (to the body or bones) is replaced
with the trauma of infection that it is inherently implied in the radical
utterance that the injury is not somatic but a viral one.
22.
p1: Àtẹlẹwo ẹni kìí tan ni jẹ.
One’s palm does not betray the bearer.
p2: Àtẹlẹwo ẹni a má pa ni jẹ.
One’s palm can become one’s deathtrap.31
Comment: In the conventional proverb, the palm (àtẹlẹwo) is the sym-
bol, the metonym, for a person’s destiny; it is also the manual representa-
tion of the person’s ability by which his industry is determined. us, it
is said that a person’s success or failure is dependent on the eort of her
hand/palm. However, in the postproverbial text, the epistemic base of the
original proverb is deated such that the palm is no longer imagined as
symbolic. Instead, the palm is taken literally as the inner surface of the
hand between the wrist and ngers with the function of washing and
cleansing. e palm is the site for physical hygiene and sanitization; if it
is not duly taken care of, it may turn to the carrier of infection and death.
In its brevity, the postproverbial utterance contains the dual resonance of
counsel and threat: the palm can save, and the palm can kill.
23.
p1: Báòkú, ìse ò tán.
When there’s life, activity does not cease.
31 On Twitter, https://twitter.com/ajankoro/status/1250390293662380033?s=20 (April 15, 2020).
20 COVID -19 (Post)Proverbials: Twisting the Word…
480
p2: Báòkú, ìsekúse ò tán.32
When there’s life, lustfulness does not end.
Comment: Here, the conventional proverb is otherwise rendered as
“when there’s life, there’s hope.” In its radical form, it is turned over,
punned on, and infused with sexual undertones. Whereas the original
proverb is motivational and positivist, the postproverbial stresses the pos-
sibility of promiscuity and the potential of lasciviousness as long as there
is life. Contextually, being sexual or sensual is taken as an inevitable or
primary human activity (even in corona times). is postproverbial cre-
ation was a direct inference from an unveried news item ascribed to a
top ocial of the Ministry of Health in Uganda who reported that some
quarantined coronavirus patients had been having sex with each other.33
In spite of the possibility of being fake news, such seedy scenario is better
left imagined as precarious and dangerously indulgent.
Values ofthePostproverbials
e limitation of the study is that the data for analysis is highly topical:
the postproverbials are volatile, and like the virus in its period of infec-
tion, incubation, and spread, the deployment and signicance of
COVID-19 postproverbials would probably be active and virtually
meaningful within the marked period of invention, currency, and inscrip-
tion. But ultimately, the values of COVID-19 postproverbials reside in
the general attempt to create paramedical awareness against the pan-
demic, the expression of wisdom in social or physical distancing, of the
danger of overcrowding, and of the importance of sanitization, tracing,
self-isolation, self-preservation, and in community hygiene.
32 Shared by a Nigerian author, Tade Ipadeola (April 15, 2020).
33 https://weetalknaija.com.ng/news/breaking-govt-raises-alarm-says-those-in-quarantine-have-
started-having-sex-with-each-other.html.
A. Raji-Oyelade
481
Conclusion
Finally, I assert that these are inexhaustive samples of invented proverbs
in the age of the coronavirus. ere are four cardinal stems that may be
added to conclude the interrogation of these strains of contemporary
radical sayings, viz:
1. As a category of postproverbials, they are the eponymous type, in the
sense that they are deliberately invented proverbs identied with their
initial “authorship” or traceable to particular individuals as referenced
in this chapter.
2. As formalized utterances, these entries are essentially retorts, reactions,
or blus to extant African proverbial thoughts. Indeed, they are inge-
nious responses to the experience of medical aiction, through the
artice of proverb-making; thus, it can be said that the typical
COVID-19 postproverbial is a verbal innovation in the age of illness.
3. As literary and cultural materials in the possession of their users, they
undergo a form of “genetic manipulation,” and they become chromo-
somal mutants, aesthetically speaking, in relation to the conventional
proverbial text.
4. As sociolinguistic verbal acts, they bear the therapeutic functions of
jest and relief, deployed as a coping or healing strategy against the
choleric season with its attendant condition of trauma. Pragmatically
so, these postproverbials are verbal communicative strategies of living
with the life-threatening force of the respiratory virus.
In its creation, the typical COVID-19 postproverbial is invariably vola-
tile, and like the virus in its virtual period of infection, incubation, and
spread, the deployment and signicance of the radical text will probably
be active within the life span of its invention, currency, inscription,
and usage.
20 COVID -19 (Post)Proverbials: Twisting the Word…
482
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———. 2012. Playful Blasphemies: Postproverbials as Archetypes of Modernity in
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Tóthné Litovkina, A., and W.Mieder. 2006. Old Proverbs Never Die, ey Just
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(UN-Habitat), 34pp.
A. Raji-Oyelade
483
NUMBERS AND SYMBOLS
#EndSARS, 44, 185, 185n1, 330,
333, 343, 360n4
A
Adeboye, Pastor Enoch Adejare, 273,
277, 443
Africa
“diseases continent,” 8, 124, 145
sub-Saharan, 53, 55, 56, 63,
136, 230
African traditional religion, 319–321
Akin Fadeyi Foundation (Nigeria),
355, 359–363, 368–370
Aladura movement, 260
Almajiri, 200, 223–244, 340
Anamnesis, 23–26
Animal, 35, 100, 151–157, 163,
165, 172, 269, 288, 409, 478
AstraZeneca, 3, 37, 180, 283
Asukwo, Etim Bassey, 329–344,
343n7, 348, 349
B
Bakhtin, Mikhail, 304–306, 308,
309, 314, 316, 317, 321
Black Death, v, 314
Border, 106, 128, 141, 181,
197–220, 234, 240, 338, 356,
390, 392, 414, 466, 471
Boundary, 7, 25, 113, 197–220,
270, 370, 414, 468
Index1
1 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.
© e Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023
F. Egbokhare, A. Afolayan (eds.), Global Health, Humanity and the COVID-19
Pandemic, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17429-2
484 Index
C
Capitalism, 2, 7, 128, 229
Cartoon/cartooning, 329–349
Case Fatality Ratio (CFR), 173
Center for Disease Control and
Prevention (US), 52, 81, 133,
134, 199, 201, 295, 374–376
Center for Infectious Diseases
(Senegal), 125, 129
China, v, 36, 40, 79, 98–106, 109,
110, 112–117, 152, 154, 167,
173, 176, 180, 181, 199, 202,
206, 207, 215, 248, 283,
308–310, 315, 316, 319, 320,
353, 354, 429, 461, 462, 478
Wuhan, 8, 36, 79, 97, 100–103,
154, 173, 199, 248, 272, 283,
308, 401, 461
Christianity, 250, 255, 272, 313,
390, 413–415, 419, 420
Citizen, 9, 42, 76–80, 79n7, 84–88,
90, 91, 101, 128, 134, 137,
179, 185, 198, 201, 207, 210,
211, 213, 215, 225, 232, 235,
241, 242, 250, 254, 309, 330,
331, 335, 336, 344–346, 349,
358–360, 364, 365, 367, 375,
392, 393, 402, 405, 444
Civilization, v, vi, 4n1, 46, 133, 218
Colonialism, 64, 86n15
“Combat Coronavirus” stamp
(Senegal), 137, 138
Communication, 10, 129, 251, 252,
267, 295, 332, 354–362,
367–370, 382, 427–455
Communion, 35, 49, 99, 100,
109–113, 117, 159, 160,
166–168, 238
ethic of, 99, 100, 109, 110, 112,
113, 117
Communitarian/
communitarianism, 45, 415
Community
epistemic, 183
Pentecostal, 249, 250, 253, 262
political, 211, 215–217
scientic, 10, 187
Conspiracy theories, 10, 103, 106,
115, 167, 172, 178, 186, 187,
191, 319, 342, 429
Coronavirus/COVID-19, v, 2, 16,
33–49, 51–66, 75, 97, 123–146,
151–169, 171–193, 197,
199–208, 212–219, 223–244,
247–277, 283, 303–323,
329–349, 353, 373–394,
401–422, 427–455, 461–481
Culture/cultural, vi, 10, 24, 27, 29,
34, 42, 46, 48, 52, 53, 58, 59,
61, 62, 64, 66, 105, 128,
131–133, 135, 139, 157,
163–165, 184, 210–213, 216,
229, 230, 237–240, 248, 257,
258, 275, 285, 295, 330–336,
331n2, 340–346, 343n6, 348,
349, 355–359, 367, 377, 389,
406, 409, 428, 433–435, 438,
439, 455, 464, 481
D
Death, v, 3, 17, 37, 54, 98, 105, 107,
115, 124n1, 126, 132–134,
145, 160, 163, 166, 173, 175,
176, 184, 199, 200, 202–204,
248–251, 254, 260–262, 264,
271, 272, 283–285, 292, 293,
297, 306, 316, 338, 362n5,
364, 374, 392, 402, 405, 442,
468, 469, 471–473, 478, 479
485 Index
Dehumanization, 2, 232, 239
Democracy, 40, 44, 86, 213,
256, 413
Diagnosis, 23–26, 31, 175, 181, 283
Dialogism, 303–323
Dickens, Charles, 1, 2
Disease, 1–11, 25, 33, 51, 75, 100,
123–146, 153, 172, 202, 224,
248, 283, 307, 354, 374, 401,
428, 461
infectious, 51, 52, 54, 55, 59, 76,
78n5, 81–84, 90, 107, 108,
124, 128, 131, 284, 285, 287,
291, 428
Distrust, 9, 63, 79–81, 85, 86,
88–91, 115, 152, 168, 182,
187, 260, 430, 444
E
Eating, 151–169, 410, 441, 444
Ebola, 43, 51–66, 107, 124, 128,
129, 145, 180, 181, 207, 298
Economy
attention, 331n2
prayer, 240
Education, 7, 8, 26, 29, 31, 42, 63,
190, 203, 205, 214, 225, 230,
231, 237, 239, 241, 242, 256,
267, 295, 304, 339, 353, 356,
369, 378, 434
Engagement/disengagement, 9, 19,
28, 30, 43, 61–63, 66, 135,
151, 153, 154, 156, 159, 219,
237, 291, 332, 335, 340, 348,
355–361, 363, 367n6, 370,
374, 376, 379, 416,
427–455, 463
e enigma of health, 15–31
Enlightenment, 3, 203, 228, 231,
236, 404, 414
Ẹnulẹbo, 151–169
Epidemic(s), 2, 51, 53, 54, 58, 59,
61–63, 98, 100, 102, 108,
180, 190, 248, 250, 260, 265,
273, 277, 292, 296, 308, 317,
319, 387, 391, 421, 427, 433,
437, 441, 442, 462
Epidemiology, 166, 171–193
Epistemology, 7n2, 40, 156, 176,
178, 179, 225, 227, 243,
248, 268
Equilibrium, 19–22, 24, 25,
27, 29, 30
Ethics/ethical, 17, 41, 43, 46, 51,
53, 61, 65, 66, 76n1, 97–117,
151–169, 171, 208, 212–219,
238, 268, 283, 284, 406
European Union (EU), 79, 215,
236, 286
F
Facebook, 252, 329–349, 375, 377,
379, 381, 384, 387, 440,
441, 463
Faith-based organisations, 251, 437,
440, 443
Fake news, 10, 329, 365, 393, 432,
433, 480
Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, 342, 393, 394
Food, 29, 82, 145, 151, 153, 154,
156–158, 162–166, 182, 225,
227, 229, 231, 233, 239,
248n2, 264, 271, 318, 339,
365, 401–422, 441, 478
486 Index
Foucault, Michel, 226, 238, 239, 358
Freedom, 9, 31, 45, 53, 76–78, 212,
239, 250–252, 266, 268, 319,
381, 401–422
of choice, 77, 78
G
Gadamer, Hans Georg, 17–31
Geographic information system
(GIS), 124, 125
Gestaltkreis, 20–22, 24
Ghana, 63–65, 107, 124n1,
262, 462n4
God, 160, 162–165, 164n6, 227,
229, 238, 249, 251, 254, 262,
263, 268, 269, 273–277, 310,
314–318, 321, 362, 387, 403,
410, 413–416, 418, 419
Good
collective, 83–85, 89–91
public, 81, 87–89, 87n16, 101
Government, 15n1, 37, 39, 41,
43–45, 47, 48, 62, 75, 77,
79–82, 79n7, 84, 86, 89, 90,
98, 99, 102, 104–106, 108,
109, 114, 115, 126, 129, 145,
171, 172, 176, 182–185, 187,
189, 192, 193, 198, 202–204,
207, 212, 214, 250, 251, 253,
254, 265–267, 272, 275, 277,
287, 290–292, 299, 308–310,
312, 333, 334, 341–343, 345,
349, 354, 355, 357, 358, 360,
367–369, 374, 375, 379, 384,
390–393, 401–405, 407, 411,
415, 417–422, 428, 430, 436,
437, 440, 443, 444, 462, 466
Guinea, 62–64, 129, 298
H
Healing, 19–23, 29, 31, 163, 230,
239, 249, 252, 257–259, 268,
271, 276, 316, 320, 387, 403,
468, 481
Health
global, vi, 6, 9–11, 51–66, 100,
116, 217, 223, 283, 354
infrastructure, 58
mental, 2, 37, 295, 296, 298,
374, 377
promotion, 428, 429, 434,
443, 455
public, 16, 17, 31, 61, 76,
76n1, 78, 80n8, 81, 99,
107, 108, 123–125, 136, 137,
165, 167, 172, 176, 178, 181,
186, 197, 201, 202, 205, 213,
217, 248, 250, 251, 259, 274,
275, 277, 284–287, 291,
294, 296, 297, 311, 369,
374, 376, 379, 382–386,
390–394, 427, 431, 432,
437, 454
sciences, 16, 17, 20, 22,
23, 26–31
spiritual, 16, 28
workers, 103, 108, 124n1, 129,
138, 224, 292–295, 297–299,
312, 374, 375
Healthcare, 17, 22, 25–27, 31, 56,
58, 63, 98, 99, 102, 107–109,
203, 205, 207, 213, 254, 284,
291, 292, 294, 296–299, 311,
312, 337, 374, 376, 391, 392,
431, 462
HIV/AIDS, v, 55, 107, 175, 285,
314, 434
Holy Spirit, 247–277
487 Index
Human, v, 2, 15, 33, 51, 76, 98,
132, 151, 172, 197, 224, 249,
284, 304, 373, 402, 428, 464
Humanity/humanities, v, vi, 1–11,
18, 25–30, 33–36, 38, 40–42,
44–49, 51, 52, 58, 61–66,
109, 132, 136, 155, 162, 211,
216, 223–225, 230, 237, 243,
249, 262, 263, 293, 311–316,
318, 319, 321, 370
I
Identity, 47, 110, 111, 113, 167,
197–220, 270, 332, 338, 406,
409, 435
Ifá, 157, 162, 169
Immunity, 37, 55, 78, 80, 82–84,
83n12, 85n14, 89, 190, 203,
353, 354, 388
herd, 55, 80, 82–84, 83n12,
85n14, 190, 203
Immunization, 7n2, 59, 78n5, 82
Individual, 16, 22, 25, 26, 30, 36,
40, 45–48, 75–78, 80–91,
83n12, 85n14, 100, 110, 114,
124n1, 126, 131, 132, 136,
144, 159, 171, 172, 182, 184,
201, 204, 208, 209, 212, 213,
224, 238, 239, 241, 250, 254,
263, 293, 305, 316, 333, 334,
342, 344, 346, 356, 358, 359,
365, 376, 381, 382, 384, 389,
403, 407, 428, 431, 433, 436,
440, 442, 473, 474, 477, 481
rights, 81, 83, 84, 89–91, 201
Inequality, 8, 9, 17, 47, 58, 144,
202, 203, 207, 209, 214, 215,
219, 220, 226, 232
Inferiorisation, 188, 189
Infodemic, 10, 167, 186, 364, 375,
430, 449
Information/misinformation, 10, 64,
79, 79n7, 80, 86–90, 87n16,
98, 103, 104, 106, 124, 129,
171, 179, 183, 185–187, 189,
191, 192, 199, 206, 240, 252,
286, 307, 308, 330, 332, 354,
355, 357, 361, 362, 364–365,
367, 369n7, 370, 374, 375,
379–383, 386, 393, 404,
421, 427–429, 431–435,
441, 442, 444, 450, 452,
454, 455
Islam, 135, 136, 139, 226, 235,
240, 313, 318, 319, 415,
419, 420
Isolation, 37, 49, 60, 104, 108, 182,
184, 198, 217, 263, 306, 377,
382, 391, 430, 441, 468
J
Joshua, Pastor T.B., 261, 262
Justice, 57, 58, 85–88, 91, 203–205,
210, 345, 348
K
Knowledge, vi, 3, 5–7, 7n2, 16, 19,
20, 27, 28, 31, 40, 42, 44–47,
51, 52, 55, 63, 64, 78n5,
87n16, 89, 123–146, 176,
178, 183, 185, 187, 225–232,
238, 239, 268, 283, 291, 297,
330, 333, 339, 349, 418, 428,
429, 431–434, 452, 455, 464
indigenous, 428
488 Index
L
Language/languaging, 3, 19, 22–24,
27, 28, 33, 52, 124, 210, 226,
238, 242, 257, 263, 304–314,
321, 322, 333, 348, 355–359,
367–369, 428, 433, 438, 441,
442, 463, 464
Leibniz, Gottfried, 189, 191, 192
Lockdown, 37, 41, 47, 52, 66, 75,
102, 124n1, 145, 172, 177,
181, 186, 188, 190, 198, 200,
203, 204, 206, 207, 213, 234,
250–259, 265, 267, 271, 273,
329n1, 336, 339, 364–366,
374, 376, 377, 380–382, 384,
394, 401–405, 416–422, 430,
462, 465–468, 470, 476
M
Magal pilgrimage, 139–141
Magufuli, John, 262, 310, 362n5
Meaning, 6, 23, 49, 208, 226, 238,
241, 249, 251, 270, 305–307,
309, 311, 313, 322, 332–334,
336, 338, 341, 342, 348, 356,
357, 360, 367, 368, 406, 412,
414, 443, 464
Medicine, 9, 16, 18, 19, 23, 31, 60,
62, 66, 85n14, 105, 287, 320,
392, 406, 429, 441
Metaphor, 21, 22, 153, 226, 308,
311, 312, 322, 477
Minority(ites), 56, 140, 200, 202,
204, 214, 241, 269, 346
Moderna, 3, 55, 180, 283
Monadology, 189–192
Moral/morality
agent, 111, 409
failure, 224
theory, 100, 109–116
value, 60, 61, 111, 112
Mouride Brotherhood, 139
Music, 376–384, 386–388, 390,
393, 394, 436, 438, 442, 455
N
Nationalism, 8, 207, 218, 224,
229, 344
Neurath, Otto, 3
Nigeria, 39, 64, 76, 98, 107–109,
159n4, 171–193, 200, 224, 252,
283–299, 329, 353, 373–396,
401–422, 427–455, 462n4
Nigeria Centre for Disease Control
(NCDC), 114, 180, 181, 184,
186, 204, 284, 287, 290, 291,
299, 430, 442, 443
Nigerian Medical Association
(NMA), 98, 105, 106
Nigerian National Pandemic
Inuenza Preparedness and
Response Plan (NPIPRP), 284,
287–296, 298
O
Obadare, Ebenezer, 256, 330, 346,
413, 415, 416, 420, 443, 444
Oyakhilome, Pastor Chris, 186, 272,
273, 273n17, 365
Oyedepo, Bishop David, 272, 273,
276, 403, 404, 421
489 Index
P
Pandemic
diplomacy, 206
discourse, 303–305, 307, 309,
313, 315, 317, 321, 322, 349
Justinian, v
management, 115, 125, 145,
198, 212
philanthropy, 98–100,
102–106, 109–117
planning, 283–299
post-, vi, 36, 38, 41, 112, 208,
219, 291, 295
Pasteur Institute, 125, 129, 131
Pentecostal, 362, 363, 402, 404,
405, 412, 415, 416, 418–422
Pentecostalism, 249, 255–258, 263,
268, 271, 274–277, 362, 415,
416, 418, 420
Person, 4n1, 6, 16, 17, 22, 24–26,
30n2, 31, 35, 37–39, 41, 42,
46, 54, 57, 58, 78n5, 82, 83,
85, 85n14, 87, 111, 155, 156,
159, 163, 164, 173, 200, 211,
216, 217, 258, 263, 265, 273,
292, 293, 297, 363, 364, 384,
385, 389, 391, 405–407, 411,
429–431, 441, 446, 466–469,
474, 478, 479
Personal protective equipment
(PPE), 25, 59, 98, 134, 185,
215, 271, 292, 293, 298, 442
Pzer, 3, 55, 64, 283
Plague, v, 233, 235, 262, 268, 269,
285, 312, 313, 388, 389
Plato, 22, 23
Polio, 54, 59, 64, 80, 80n9,
129, 180
Politics, 25, 64, 97–117, 126,
205–207, 211, 215, 256,
307, 332, 334, 341, 342, 345,
346, 390, 408, 413, 415,
420, 421
Polyphony, 303–323
Population, vi, 3, 8, 15n1, 37, 52,
53, 55–66, 78, 107, 124–126,
132–136, 143–145, 173–175,
179, 180, 190, 200, 204, 207,
213, 215, 235, 239, 262, 265,
269, 284, 285, 291, 298, 342,
354, 356–358, 361, 367, 369,
417, 418, 433, 473
elderly, 125, 134
Populism, 115, 205, 218
Positivism, 6, 7n2
Post-Covid, 10, 223–244, 277, 402
Power, 8, 20, 27, 28, 42, 45, 64, 76,
86, 113, 115, 123, 125,
132–134, 137, 167, 168, 183,
188, 201, 202, 206, 212, 214,
215, 218, 238, 239, 242, 249,
251, 254, 256–263, 266, 268,
270, 271, 274–276, 309, 316,
318, 320, 329–336, 331n2,
338–342, 344–346, 348, 349,
358, 362, 363, 403, 407, 408,
415, 419–421, 434, 443,
471, 474–476
Proverbs/postproverbials,
417, 461–481
Public sphere, 252, 332, 341,
344–346, 348, 412, 413, 416
Q
Quarantine, 277, 377, 394, 421,
441, 466
arts, 377, 394
Quarantine Act (Nigeria), 76
Qur’an, 228, 229, 231, 239, 243
490 Index
R
Ramadan, 239, 419, 420
Relationality, 100, 113, 114, 116
Religion/religious, 2, 86, 101, 131,
159n4, 184, 210, 230, 248,
304, 362, 378, 402, 429, 462
Rwanda, 124n1, 128
S
Salvation, 239, 270, 271
SARS-CoV, see Coronavirus/
COVID-19
Science(s)
natural, 27, 28
social, 52, 379
Scientism, 5–7, 7n2, 10
Secular/secularism/secularity, 230,
405, 412–422
Self-determination, 78, 81, 83,
88, 90, 91
Sellars, Wilfred, 4–6, 4n1
Senegal, 123–146, 230
Sincerity, 76, 79, 84, 89, 90, 172,
192, 193
Social contract, 77, 84,
84n13, 88, 91
Social media, 79n7, 115, 172, 186,
251, 330–336, 331n2, 340,
342–349, 353, 373–394,
427–455, 463
inuencer, 331, 331n2
Social/physical distancing, 34, 37,
48, 52, 125, 131, 134,
136–139, 184, 188, 198, 199,
204, 212, 213, 250, 264, 265,
267, 273, 312, 339, 354, 361,
363–364, 367, 373, 374, 377,
383, 384, 401, 403, 404, 420,
428, 441, 444, 446, 462, 465,
466, 468–470, 476, 480
Society, 10, 18, 28, 39, 42, 44, 46, 47,
76, 80–82, 84, 85, 87, 89–91,
101, 110, 126, 133–136, 139,
141, 189, 197, 199, 200,
209–211, 218–220, 229, 232,
234, 235, 237–240, 248,
249n4, 250, 251, 254, 255,
257, 262, 269–271, 274n20,
275, 277, 285, 291, 293, 294,
305, 330, 335, 338, 343, 354,
359, 360, 370, 374, 378, 389,
406, 412, 416, 419, 471, 474
Socrates, 22–24, 38
Solidarity, 44, 53, 110, 111, 113,
116, 162, 165–167, 197–220,
343, 376, 377, 382, 386,
394, 477
South Africa, 36, 41, 107, 128, 143,
180, 207, 213, 214, 247n1,
252, 264, 266, 306,
342, 462n4
Spanish u, v, 54–55, 285, 297
Spirit/spiritual, 8, 10, 16, 24, 28, 42,
45, 49, 52, 136, 186, 189,
229, 243, 254–259, 263, 267,
271, 275, 310, 313, 319, 320,
363, 377, 382, 386–390, 394,
403, 406, 416, 419, 462, 466,
468, 476
State, 9, 17, 38, 66, 76, 101, 123,
152, 172, 197, 201–205, 233,
250, 287, 309, 329, 353, 375,
403, 436, 466
Suering, 24–26, 103, 109, 112,
116, 209, 228, 248, 249, 251,
255, 264–266, 274, 303, 312,
315, 316, 318, 417, 419
491 Index
Suciency, 52, 53, 57–59, 239
approach/theory, 52, 53, 57–59
Su/Susm, 135–137, 228, 237–239
T
A Tale of Two Cities, 2
eology, 225–227, 249, 257, 275,
276, 409–412, 415, 416
Trump, Donald, 103, 128, 202, 212,
307–309, 364
Trust, 9, 57, 61, 65, 66, 100, 106,
109, 111, 114, 162, 168, 169,
172, 183, 192, 193, 209, 214,
251, 254, 265
Truth, 5, 9, 10, 16, 18, 19, 22, 24,
26, 31, 39, 40, 46, 89, 115,
140, 143, 172, 175–177, 187,
189, 191, 193, 239, 304–306,
308, 309, 313, 317, 322, 332,
345, 404, 412
Twitter, 252, 329, 330, 334–336,
377, 381, 440, 463, 464
U
Ubuntu, 33–49, 110
United States (US), 17, 54, 56, 64,
79, 81, 124, 128, 133, 134,
141, 152, 154, 167, 181,
200–206, 212, 214, 215,
248n2, 307–310, 316, 317,
320, 364, 376, 408, 429, 462
Universal Basic Education Commission
(UBEC) Act (Nigeria), 241
V
Vaccination
advocates, 81, 82, 84, 85, 88, 89
debate, 75–91
moderationists, 81
Vaccine
anti-, 9, 59
hesitancy/hesitation, 9, 56, 60,
61, 65, 264, 276
nationalism, 8, 9, 56, 207, 224
Virus, v, 3, 16, 37, 52, 79n7, 97,
100–101, 128, 156, 172, 199,
225, 283, 303, 332, 353, 373,
403, 428, 461–481
Chinese, 8, 202, 307
W
World Health Organization (WHO),
3, 8, 8n3, 36, 37, 54, 55, 57, 62,
64, 79, 97, 107, 129, 130, 132,
144, 145, 152, 154, 167, 173,
181, 182, 186, 199, 201, 206,
215, 218, 223, 248n2, 258, 283,
285–289, 292, 295, 298, 299,
306, 307, 310–312, 353, 354n1,
355, 363, 366, 375, 392, 401,
427, 428, 433, 440, 446
Worship, 138, 141, 158, 184, 212,
214, 250, 319, 377,
401–422, 441
Y
Yoruba, 151–169, 240, 259, 438,
441, 444, 464,
469–471, 474n24
YouTube, 186, 252, 353, 361, 377,
379, 381
Z
Zimbabwe, 36, 261, 303–323
