COVID-19: Can Nigeria’s Slow Vaccine Rollout be Attributed to Political Distrust?

Vanessa Obioha writes that the absence of African countries on the COVID-19 race track exposes the unpreparedness and inadequacy of the continent for a pandemic

The International Monetary Fund’s latest world economic outlook indicates that the COVID-19 pandemic is still slowing the economic growth of many countries, with low vaccination rates in emerging economies leading to a lopsided global recovery.

As each day passes by, vaccine inequality between rich and poor nations becomes more glaring. Developed nations that were home to pharmaceutical companies manufacturing the vaccines were and are still leading in the vaccinations rate.

A recent data by Our World in Data showed that the top 20 least vaccinated countries were mainly in Africa with just only 1.1 per cent of people in low-income countries receiving at least one dose. Only four countries, Eritrea, Burundi, Tanzania and North Korea are yet to begin vaccinations.

There was a glimmer of hope when vaccines for the deadly coronavirus that shut the world down last year began to roll out.

Britain was the first country to formally authorise a start to widespread vaccinations, injecting 90 year-old Margaret Keenan with a dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine last December. The United States would follow suit six days later and by December 26, the EU started its own vaccinations.

In Nigeria, the rollout began in March but only 0.7 per cent of the population have been fully vaccinated according to data collated from global reports on the pandemic. The statistics show that out of the over 200 million Nigerians, only 1.4 million are fully vaccinated, with only 3.94 million doses administered as at the time of filing this report. Lagos is the state with the highest number of vaccinations in the country.

So far, Nigeria has only recorded 175, 264 confirmed cases of COVID-19 with 2,163 deaths according to the World Health Organisation data on August 5.

It was widely believed that the formation of COVAX — the COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access Facility — would promote the global distribution of COVID-19 vaccines but subsequent months showed that countries with financial stamina will always take the lead. The COVID-19 vaccine power tussle could be traced to the former US President, Donald Trump, striking financial support for the invention of the vaccines despite his earlier stance in dismissing the threat of the pandemic which led to many deaths in America. Other countries followed suit and vaccines, meant to save infected citizens, became a race for powerful leaders. It was like a scorecard of their performance in which they were all eager to get good grades, with money of course!

Behind the race to get the vaccines first was another issue — racism as countries issued travel rules based on the vaccine they considered superior.

The absence of African countries on the COVID-19 vaccine race track exposed the unpreparedness and inadequacy of the continent for a pandemic. Relying mostly on COVAX and developed countries’ generosity, the vaccine rollout in most parts of the continent have not been as impressive as desired.

The worrisome stance of African nations in lifting their economies from the gossamers of the pandemic was one of the talking points of the Director-General of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala during the Nigerians in Diaspora Commission (NIDCOM) celebration of National Diaspora Day. The cerebral economist lamented the low rate of COVID-19 vaccination in the continent, stating that even if vaccine production volume had been increasing, “the bad news is that most of those doses ended up in the developed countries and the vaccine inequity continues”. She however revealed that talks are in progress to see how to improve vaccine production in Africa.

“How do we even shift the production to African countries? The WTO has the job of monitoring export restrictions and trade facilitation measures, and what I am trying to do is to leverage that, to actually work with companies; to persuade them that ‘if we work with you to monitor supply chains, remove export restrictions, will you invest in our country?”

Okonjo-Iweala also disclosed that COVAX has already sent 130 million doses to developing countries “but it was supposed to have done about 500 million by now. What we are trying to do is to say let us not be dependent on other people all the time. We cannot as a continent continue to import 99 per cent of our vaccines and 90 per cent of our pharmaceuticals. What we are now pushing is for them to develop that industry in Africa.”

She added that President Muhammadu Buhari has set up a task force headed by the Minister of Health to look at the issue of how Nigeria can manufacture its own vaccines.

Her concerns echoed the thoughts of the Director-General of WHO Tedros Adhanom Ghrebeyesus who recently said that “a shocking imbalance remains in the global distribution of Covid-19 vaccines…The haves are opening up, while the have-nots are locking down.”

In Nigeria however, the lockdown is not yet at full speed even as the Delta variant threatens countries with high rates of vaccinations. On Wednesday, August 4, the New York Times database observed that the total of global coronavirus infections has surpassed 200 million.

The US, which almost had normalcy in her grasp, is feeling it slip away by the rising cases of infections such that President Joe Biden’s administration in the past few days has been rolling out mandatory guidelines to curb an uncontrollable spread. France made it mandatory for citizens to be vaccinated to gain access to public places despite many protesting the decision.

Britain on the other hand has witnessed a decline in infections and recently opened its borders to fully vaccinated people from the US and Europe. It also started donating millions of coronavirus vaccine doses around the world, including Commonwealth countries, following its pledge to provide 100 million jabs globally by next June.

While on the surface, access to COVID-19 vaccines seems to be an obstacle to getting people fully vaccinated in Nigeria, there lies a deeper problem underneath: the lingering COVID-19 conspiracies spread by anti-vaxxers.This is not peculiar to Nigeria as there are anti-vaxxers in other parts of the world, including nations leading in vaccinations rollouts. Nigeria’s slow rate can be attributed to a mix of religious beliefs and political distrust.

For many Nigerians, particularly among commoners, coronavirus is a hoax played by corrupt politicians. There are many reasons why this perception holds. First, in the low-income residential areas, where they reside, cases of COVID-19 infections are rare despite the disregard of the safety guidelines such as wearing face masks and maintaining social distance. They easily point to thickly populated local markets such as Iyana-Iba along Lagos-Badagry Expressway or Balogun Market in Lagos Island, where people move and shove each other without fear of contracting the virus. Such riotous scenarios affirm their belief that the virus doesn’t exist or is simply for the elites.

This lack of concern has also been fuelled by the various COVID-19 theories online and from the pulpit, emboldening citizens to snort at the mention of vaccines or easily claim that they are protected by the almighty powers of the Supreme One.

It is not uncommon to see them refer to the low numbers of cases issued by the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) as evidence that the disease is a stranger in Nigeria. But there’s been an uptick lately following the emergence of the Delta variant.

Their nonchalance is not lost on the Federal Government that is ably gearing up for a third wave. The Minister of Health Osagie Ehanire recently disclosed that the country is expecting 33.7 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines to reach herd immunity. The Federal Government has also recently activated isolation centres across the country. Recently, the United States donated four million Moderna vaccines to Nigeria, with Lagos, Akwa Ibom, Oyo and Rivers states given top priority.

However, getting Nigerians to believe in the existence of coronavirus, let alone in vaccinations, will remain a herculean task for the government because of a lack of trust in leadership. A good example is the allegation of mismanagement of COVID-19 intervention funds levelled against Ogun State Governor Dapo Abiodun by the state’s chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Before the arrival of the vaccines in Nigeria, the opposition party had lambasted the ruling party All Progressives Congress (APC) for not making provisions in the 2021 budget for the purchase of vaccines.

The discovery and looting of warehouses where COVID-19 relief materials were kept last year across the country is another indicator of the growing disbelief.

More so, a handful of Nigerians are not enlightened on where to get vaccinations, although the NCDC through its websites and other forms of communication convey the importance of getting vaccinated. It will have to do more. For instance, some people are confused about where to get the vaccines from and are often discouraged by protocols involved in obtaining the vaccine in some select health facilities.

So far, the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) approved the following vaccines: BioNTech, Pfizer; Johnson & Johnson, Moderna, Oxford AstraZeneca, and Sputnik V.

Getting an appreciable number of Nigerians vaccinated and the recovery of the economy, which should follow will not be a walk in the park. It will require the sober commitment of Nigerian leaders and a deeper sense of accountability than the grandeur display of politicians getting vaccinated, majorly to hug the news headlines.