Covid-19 and the Nigerian Society: Challenges, Prospects and Need for Rebuilding Higher Education

Covid-19 and the Nigerian Society: Challenges, Prospects and Need for Rebuilding Higher Education

Introduction

The first half of the year 2020 witnessed the outbreak and spread of the coronavirus disease. The virus spread from China, in Asia to other parts of the world like Europe, North and South America and Africa. COVID-19 pandemic brought about serious emergency crisis across the globe which did not only succeeded in instigating fear and confusion between and among governments and the people, but also ended up putting the world at a standstill.

While developed countries of the world like the United States launched into series medical and social research in a bid to find out the possible cure to the virus, a lot of African countries like Nigeria suffered the impacts of the virus coupled with the other challenges (like poverty, unemployment, terrorism etc.) that has bedeviled its political and economic progress. Nigeria recorded its first case of Covid 19 on February 28, 2020 and since then, the figure increasingly hit thousands within the space of some months with scores of recorded deaths.

With many Nigerians living in high density houses with little or no access to hygienic food and water, clothing and monies to at least help ease the effects of the lockdown, it became very obvious that many Nigerians were at the risk of contracting the virus and spreading it like wildfire. Again, the pandemic raised a lot of questions bordering on Nigeria’s progress rate in regard to national development especially on the areas of patriotism, true and sincere leadership, accountability and more (Ewalt & Jennings, 2014). Furthermore, the Covid period revealed the prevalent abnormalities in the public health sector, the security sector and education sector. In regard to education, Yinka and Adebayo (2020) reported that according to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), an estimated 1.725 billion learners were affected because of the closure of schools during the period in question, representing about 99.9% of the world’s student population as of April, 2020. Though, the shutting down of schools and state borders; restriction of movement and lockdown of people seemed to be the best measures taken by the government to instantaneously curb the virus, they ended up causing more problems like hunger for the masses. Based on this background, the thrust of this article is to examine the challenges and prospects of Covid 19 in Nigeria and also make recommendations on the essence of rebuilding the country’s education system in such a way that it would not be affected by subsequent pandemics.

Challenges of Covid 19 in Nigeria

There are a lot of challenges that were brought about by the outbreak of the Covid 19 pandemic in Nigeria. In the course of this article, these challenges would be summarized in three categories: political, economic and social challenges.

Political challenges

During the Covid 19 period, it was alleged that the Nigerian government took advantage of the pandemic to accumulate funds at the expense of the masses. As the pandemic became more prevalent, financial institutions, private establishments, private individuals, the World Health Organization (WHO) among other foreign private establishments and entrepreneurs contributed immensely (both in cash and donations of relief packages) towards the fight of the virus. Additionally, Aisha (2020) reported that the Nigerian government approved a ten billion naira grant to be used in the fight against the pandemic. It was also on record that the presidency released a fifty-billion-naira special intervention fund to the Nigerian Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), a national public health institute. However, irrespective of these donations, many Nigerians raised a lot of questions regarding their impact on the polity since there were no substantial evidence of the use of Personal Protective Equipments by health workers; no distribution of face masks and ill equipped isolation centres.

It was against this backdrop that Sahara reporters (2020) reported that the Northern Elders Forum (NEF) accused some governors of allegedly politicking with the virus in the country. The News forum continued that some states in the country reported fake cases of affected individuals in order to receive funds from the federal government and foreign donors. In addition to this, there are events where states like Zamfara, Borno, Kogi, Akwa-Ibom, Cross River, Anambra and others rejected having some Covid 19 cases as reported by the NCDC and in response, the NCDC apologized for inflating the figures. From the foregoing, one can easily depict the reason why a lot of Nigerian concluded that the pandemic was not only unreal, but also was a ploy by politicians to embezzle the country’s resources.

Again, there was a communication gap between the government and the people. Many Nigerians complained that they were not properly informed and that the government was not sincere with the reportage of events during the Covid period. Consequently, this caused a lot of people to become adamant thus resulting in a lot of Covid 19 contractions. On the part of the people, there were reports of division and biased sharing of palliatives. In most cases, non-indigenes who resided in some states were denied relief packages. According to Okon (2020), few people who have sighted semblance of the palliative packages in their area, decried the distribution process; they complained that a greater portion of the relief materials was reserved for political party members who were identified by their party membership cards.

Economic challenges

Covid 19 affected the global economy in dual capacities. First, the outbreak of the virus facilitated social distancing which led to the shutdown of markets, businesses and events. Second, the rate at which the virus spreaded and the uncertainty of how bad the situation could get, resulted in the suspension investments among other business enterprise by investors (Ozili &Arun, 2020). Furthermore, the pandemic plunged a lot of countries across the globe world into recession. This is evident as financial markets, global stock markets erased about US $6 trillion in wealth just in a week from 24th to 28th of February 2020 (Ozili &Arun, 2020).

According to Ozili (2020), there are five ways through which the pandemic spilled into the Nigerian polity. These are: 1) The pandemic affected borrowers’ capacity to service their loans and this declined banks’ earnings and eventually impaired bank stability. As a result, while banks became reluctant in lending money, borrowers struggled to repay the loans granted to them before the Covid 19 outbreak. 2) There were oil demand shocks which was reflected in the sharp decline in oil price. The is evident in the drop of crude oil price from nearly US $60 per barrel to as low as US $30 per barrel in March 2020.

Also, during the pandemic, people could not travel and this resulted in the fall of the need for aviation fuel and automobile fuel which affected Nigeria’s net oil revenue as well as foreign reserve. 3) There were supply shocks in the global supply chain. This caused many importers to shut down their factories while countries like China and Nigeria temporarily closed down their borders. Nigeria was seriously affected by these chains of events because it solely depended on imports. hence, her shortage of crucial supplies like pharmaceutical supplies and finished goods from China. 4) The country’s national budget was also affected and finally, the pandemic affected the Nigerian stock market as many investors pulled out their investments causing the market a loss of over NG# 2.3 trillion barely three weeks after the first case of coronavirus was confirmed in Nigeria.

In addition, Onehi, (2020), reported that over 60% of the total population of the country are youths with many of them vulnerable and out of gainful employment. Furthermore he stated that with the outbreak of Covid-19 outbreak, unemployment rate in the country was expected to rise uncontrollably.

Social challenges

The pandemic exposed the social challenges that affected the development of the country and these were more prevalent mainly in the education and healthcare sectors. The pandemic uncovered a lot of inadequacies in the public health sector. On this note, Azuwuike (2016) wrote that 40,000 Nigerians visited India annually for medical treatment and this meant a huge loss for the Nigerian economy. Further, the situation pointed out the government’s neglect of the country’s public health sector.

According to Adepoju (2018) the challenges in the country’s health sector resulted in brain drain. He noted that during the pandemic, at least twelve Nigerian doctors left the country for the United Kingdom. More than 4000 were already practicing in the United States while Canada continued to attract a lot of medical professionals from Nigeria in particular and Africa in general.

Prospects of Covid 19 in Nigeria

In as much as the pandemic caused a lot of damages to countries across the world, it must have as well brought about some positive impacts for the Nigerian polity. Some of these impacts are evidenced in the following:

Good Governance

The pandemic revealed that there is: lack of patriotism on the side of Nigerian leaders and the people; strained communication and total disconnect between the leaders and followers for lack of trust. However, if the government will put the highlighted challenges into consideration, the country’s unity and progress will be strengthened. With this, there would also be transparency in communication between the government and the people since public behaviour and trust can have profound effects on epidemic response (Bathanti & Ladner, 2020).

Provision of adequate and updated public health infrastructure

Owing to the bad state of the country’s healthcare system which could not meet up with the medical expectations of combating the pandemic, the Nigerian government must have learnt important lessons from the Covid incidence and this provides more reasons why they have to invest in the sector by providing good and quality public health infrastructures, building good hospitals, paying health workers and strengthening the disease surveillance system

Diversification of Economy

Nigeria’s reliance on a mono-economy has to a large extent affected her economic progress. Most business institutions like banks and companies operate using the old-fashioned office work model as opposed to the ” work from home” model (Sanusi,2010).The emergence of the pandemic wrecked the business environment in Nigeria. It negatively affected a lot of industries and this was because they solely operated a traditional model of work with less regard for other alternatives of business operations like the use of E- Commerce applications that enable online buying and selling and can allow buyers and sellers make purchases and sales at the comfort of their homes.

With government revenues collapsing, following the fall in oil prices, Nigeria urgently needs to diversify her economy. The fluctuation of oil price in the international market brings to fore the need for the Nigerian government to diversify its economy from oil-dependent to varieties of other natural resources like cocoa, leather, cement, groundnut, coal and others for export. There is need for the government to take advantage of other mineral resources than oil (Aigbedion & Iyayi, 2007).

Finally, with the rate at which the country’s educational system has been affected in the course of the pandemic, the reformation of the education sector is imminent. In a bid to advancing the reformation of higher education in the country, there is need for the government to embrace technological innovations. Virtual teaching should be encouraged and adopted to alternate classroom teaching method. On the other hand, government should include digital learning platforms that aid audio and video lessons as well as broadcasts through the radio and television. Although, these come with their own challenges like power failure, low accessibility of technological appliances, but the gains are far more better than the challenges.

Need for Rebuilding Higher Education in Nigeria

The emergence of Covid 19 unveiled the challenges prevalent in Nigeria’s educational system and for the country to make meaningful progress, there is need to resolve these challenges. Consequent upon the outbreak and impact of the pandemic, it is obvious that relying only on classroom teaching and learning model is not safe and guaranteed. And, this is why it is important to embrace the use of technology in learning. Adaptive learning technology can ensure personalized learning with minimal teacher involvement and has the potential to deliver better learning experiences (Obiakor & Adeniran, 2020). Based on this pattern, both teachers and students would be exposed to digital education. Consequently, this will increase computer literacy and skills as well as convenience in teaching and learning. With the introduction of various academic online applications, teachers and students can be able to gain easy access to knowledge and further enhance their research through the use of online books stored electronically on the internet.

However, the government should ensure that the cost of purchasing these technologies is affordable for everyone. Learning based contingency planning is also very important as it would ensure learning continuity even in the midst of crisis to secure students and educators and to build resilience within the education sector (Obiakor & Adeniran, 2020).

Conclusion

The article x-rayed the political, economic and social challenges of COVID-19 pandemic in the Nigerian society. In addition, it examined the prospects of the pandemic and also discussed the need for the government to take advantage of the pandemic in rebuilding or reinvigorating higher education in the country.

References

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