Nigeria and Nigerians sometimes can make you lose confidence in your ability to logically reason and make wise inference based on factual premise presented before you, or to put it bluntly, question your sanity! It is an environment where a very simple matter becomes overly complicated and complex issues can just be reduced to mere ABC or 123! In other words, in Nigeria, anything and everything can turn to the famed Abracadabra phenomenon or should I say ‘Nigercadabra’ i.e. the more you look, the less you see.
The Corona Virus pandemic and its attendant challenges have resulted into exposure of the Nigeria massive shortcomings regarding National health infrastructure or more accurately, lack of it and also almost zero existence of well-coordinated information storage for effective planning and application.
Sometimes you only just wonder if the political leaders of this country are either massively lowly witted or are so much consumed with their self-indulgent regarding the pursuance of personal financial and economic agenda associated with the pecks of their position such that they are way detached and unforgivably totally unaware of what is going even within the walls of their own territory.
The challenge of the Covid – 19 pandemic has led to various State Governments and the Federal Government to declare various level of movement restriction or lockdown in many parts of the country. Unfortunately, with the lockdown comes economic challenge that takes serious toll on the everyday life of the every Nigerian. A lot people in Nigeria across the country operate what you can call ‘daily based economy’. They are into commercial activities where their income/wages/profit is strictly based on their daily activities. The Volume of their income is relatively small and is often just enough to sustain their daily living. Only very few percentage of the general population fall into category of people who make enough to save or have a backup of long term huge funds to fall back on. With this challenge, it becomes imperative and inevitable for the government to support the people, at least some if not all, with regard to foods and other supplies they need to survive during the lockdown period.
The Federal and many State Government having received donations from private concerns both individual and corporate bodies, have tried to reach out to the people regarding items such as foods, toiletries etc… by physically distributing these items. Across the states, physical hand to hand distribution of food and other items as palliatives have been carried out with very limited success, just shade above being a total failure. The government agencies involved are discovering that it entirely almost impossible to achieve a meaningful, effective and efficient impact acceptable to the people with majority of their attempts so far.
Our collective failure regarding provision of adequate infrastructure and synchronization of multiple data collections from various government agencies for a collective National Data Base which the country can make use of has been largely exposed by Corona Virus.
It must be pointed out, however, that our infrastructure and population data base underdevelopment have been largely self-inflicted. The corrupt tendencies of both past and current political office holders and career civil servant have contributed largely to the serious hindrance to any form of development in this area. The lack of vision and forward future thinking of majority of our political office holders demonstrated by their inability to plan beyond the next election is another factor. Policies and project that would have been beneficial to the country on the long term are often jettisoned for myopic and personal egoistic reason. Cultural bias, illiteracy level of the general population and general mistrust of the Nigeria Political holders by Nigerians are some of the other challenges that has also contributed to the logistic and infrastructural nightmare facing the country as at this time.
One of the biggest underlining but latent consideration regarding the subtle refusal of past and current government to develop statistical data base system for the country remains most Nigerian politician’s mindset. There is lack of political will and willingness to take decision dispassionately without consideration for a “political profit”. A good number of these politicians often demonstrate readiness to illegally influence or out rightly control the outcome of elections. Elective office is determined by elections results. Election result is a function of numbers. And these numbers tied to the Nigeria human population distribution. Human population distribution has a huge political implication in Nigeria political arena. These include but not limited to political elective office opportunities, allocations of resources i.e. basically funds and others, political appointments, location of Federal infrastructures i.e. higher institutions, federal medical facilities etc…
But the biggest consideration for the politicians remains the electioneering activities and election result itself. The more the election process and procedure remains analogue and manually driven, the easier it is for them to manipulate. Digitisation or increase in the level of application of electronic system to the electioneering procedures and processes will naturally and eventually thin out if not totally eliminate the ability of the political leaders and their parties to interfere illegally with the elections system with the aim of sabotaging and or manipulating the outcome. Developing a national data base system or infrastructure, a lot of politicians fear, may, can or will inspire the Nigerian populace to make increased demand for digitization of the election process. In addition, evidences of National Data Base information, for example, may be used for election petition cases or processes to counter elections results even if the entire election processes were not fully electronic in registration, accreditation, voting, result collation or result announcement provided there is a law covering the existence of such National Data.
Despite these myriad of hiccups and problems holding back the ability of government to organize the distribution of these palliative effectively and efficiently to the public, one very important question to ask is, do we have anything to work with which can assist even if it is temporary but effective and efficiently enough compared to what is presently obtainable now? My personal conviction is that the answer is yes.
Irrespective of my “YES” above, my personal candid opinion is that given the current reality of the Nigeria situation, it is practically impossible to efficiently share supplies or physical items as palliatives to Nigerians without huge massive hiccups due to several factors which I have already highlighted above. The use of financial form of palliatives, in my opinion has a better probability of reaching higher number of the entire Nigerian population that urgently need such assistance. Financial palliative will also help to avoid some of the logistical headaches that physical distribution of foods and other items may present and prevent possible compromise of the social distancing procedure required at this time to limit human to human contacts that can lead to increase in infection and spread of the Covid 19.
In summary, government practically has two options. The government can either share food and other supplies directly to the people or provides funds for them to access such items themselves.
The Federal and State Government should be consulting organization such as INEC, Newspaper Media Houses and Private Companies whose operation business involved heavy and huge distribution activities should insist on taking the first option. These organisations can easily assist government by sharing their expertise on how to manage the logistics involved in undertaking such a massive volume of distribution of supplies. The concept of FGN and some state government of ONLY setting up a mere committee system to undertake such massive distribution process will never be effective. Because most often than not the people nominated in this committee know little or nothing about such large scale logistic challenge. Hardly have any of them been involved in day to day rigours of how to run such a process.
In an ideal system, virtually all 774 local governments in Nigeria should have some basic functioning infrastructures such as Fire brigade offices, Local Post offices, Good Primary Schools and Secondary Schools buildings, Local Town Halls, Stadium or some form of sporting facilities for sport and other related activities etc… All these facilities could be temporarily turned into warehouses or storage points from which distribution could easily be better managed and effectively carried out. Unfortunately we are far away from anything ideal. Most of these facilities hardly exist. Where such facilities are available, most are in serious state of disrepair and cannot even be used to execute the purpose for which they were built. Therefore, government will have to make do with what is on ground if this is the option the government is insisting on taking.
However my preferred option, as stated earlier, would be providing credit or funds either in terms of cash payment or fund transfers to either all Nigerians or most vulnerable Nigerians.
There are banks in Nigeria who currently have products in which an account holder can send or transfer fund to a beneficiary with no accounts in any bank. All the beneficiary need to access the funds is a phone line. The transaction from the sender generates a code which is sent to the beneficiary phone number. The beneficiary is only required to walk to any Automated Teller Machine (ATM) of any bank within Nigeria, type in the code sent to him and the beneficiary get paid cash from the ATM instantly. The beneficiary does not even need an ATM card!
As at the end of 2019, according to Nigerian Guardian online of January 23, 2020, there are 184.7 million active phone lines in Nigeria. Given the allowance that some of those lines may be multiple lines for same individuals, some used as office contacts, some for minors etc… it can be safely be estimated that not less than 120-150m of the total 184.7m actually belongs to different individuals. The credit history of the phone lines both in terms of call and data can be easily used as an indication, to a very large extent, of the economic or financial capacity of the owner of the lines. Same way bank account balance of individuals account owners can be used as an indicator of financial status. With this, the Federal Government of Nigeria can actually give out cash directly to about 120-150m Nigerians or whatever percentage of that figure they chose to considered as seriously financially limited or most vulnerable or poor Nigerians. This is a technology some of the banks have been using 2-3 years ago in this same NIGERIA! The direct implication of this is that this is a process that can be deployed NOW with little or zero modification! It is NOT a NEW INVENTION that requires a committee set up!. It is something FGN can achieve by involving just basically two agencies of the government, namely Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN and Nigerian Communication Commission, NCC. The CBN will interphase with the entire commercial banks to perfect the payment end while the NCC will do same with all the Telephone Operators to sort out the phone lines infrastructure. The funds will accountable because it will be traceable as it goes through 2 platforms that are technologically traceable i.e. phone lines are registered and the bank can account for each transaction that passes through them. No social distancing headache because it is not sharing of physical items. This can be achieved with even the cheapest kind of phone because the process is not internet based. The cost will be almost if any zero. The FGN can even use the cost of transaction as a form of tax rebate for the banks and the telecom companies.
Nigeria population is estimated to just over 200 million. If the FGN can directly impact over 120 million people financially almost at a touch of button, it will be some sort of a revolution in Nigeria.
Yes. There are other agency of government and some private bodies that have some level and volume of population data that may be credible such as INEC – Voters card, FRSC – Driving License, NIMC – National ID Card, NIS – International Passport, Electricity Companies – Bills, Cable TV companies– Decoder Card Number, Ministry of Land – C of O & land docs, NPC – birth certificates, FIRS/State IRS – TINs, Banks/CBN – AC numbers/BVN and probably many more. But of all these, none of them have the volume NCC/Telecom Operators have, 184.7m!
Using these option can even be developed to solve other possible future challenges and also used to develop and plan for other government processes.
An example will to combine Registered Phone Lines (NCC) and Bank Verification Number (CBN)! The possibilities could be endless…Elections, Tax Rebate Payment, Security/Crime Management etc…
This suggestion is something the Federal Government of Nigeria can look into and make use within a short frame of time.
I urge Lagos State Government considers this suggestion for proper evaluation as this may just be another novel idea which the state can engage in to further make more huge, faster, easier and of course quicker impact regarding the palliative management in the state. It is way cheaper to deploy. There is no need for retinue of Police, LASMA, Ministry officials, LASEMA, Direct labourers, Fuelling cost and many other costs. Lagos state residents will be probably the most phone user density in Nigeria. Meaning the percentage that may be covered may be actually way higher than for the entire country. The telecom operators can identify phones line located within the state. There are more phones users’ resident in Lagos than LASRA registered. And the phone lines are registered. I hope this can help to widen the spectrum Nigeria as a country and indeed Lagos State is considering as another means of impacting the lives of the citizens with respect to the economic challenges of this time. I share this idea with hope that it can assist or be used or even developed further to bring some coordination to some of the efforts being made at different levels of government and by some cooperate bodies are at making life easier for people who are taking serious economic hits presently. May GOD Bless Nigeria.
Abiodun Fatutu
Tel: 081 6059 8030
Twitter: @Oduntutu
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