BUA Group, a member of the steering committee of CACOVID, responded yesterday evening to a statement issued by CACOVID on Monday, February 08, 2021, disavowing the press release issued by BUA that the company purchased one million doses of COVID-19 vaccine for Nigeria.
The Coalition Against COVID-19 (CACOVID) is the Private Sector task force spearheaded by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), in partnership with the Federal Government, the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) and the World Health Organisation (WHO) with the sole aim of combating Coronavirus (COVID-19) in Nigeria; tasked with pulling resources across industries to provide technical and operational support while providing funding and building advocacy through aggressive awareness drives.
The Bone of Contention versus Public Interest
Straight off the bat, and sadly so; it is obvious that two or more entities are at odds with each other on the approach, means, and credits on this important intervention. Clearly, BUA is at odds with the coalition, and vice versa it would seem from the tone, content and medium of delivery of the released statements.
At a time when African nations are being asked to wait before receiving adequate Covid-19 vaccines approved by the World Health Organization (WHO), a lot more is expected of Nigeria’s private sector leadership, one that has demonstrated an admirable public-private working relationship in addressing, containing and managing the pandemic thus far.
To appreciate the severity of the challenge confronting the country, recall that in January 2021, it was reported by the BBC that “close to 900 million doses have been secured so far through various initiatives, enough to inoculate about 30% of the continent’s 1.3 billion people this year. Hoarding by wealthy nations, funding shortfalls, regulations and cold chain requirements have slowed the process of rolling out the vaccines.”
The thinking in the organised private sector is that we should be pulling closer together to make the developing nations and institutions more accountable to the catastrophic moral failure it has shown thus far, by seemingly ignoring and doing less to contain the number of lives and livelihoods that will be lost in the poorest countries of the world, indeed in Africa.
According to the WHO DG, Dr Tedros Ghebreyesus, “close to 40 million doses have been administered in at least 49 higher-income countries, compared to just 25 doses given in just one of the lowest-income countries. Not 25 million, not 25,000, just 25,” he said, without saying which country.
So far, none of the main, western vaccines has yet been administered in Africa, almost three months after the first doses were rolled out in Europe. Over the weekend, South Africa suspended the use of AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine after it failed to clearly stop virus variant. We have yet to discover what works and what would not work.
These are what CACOVID was designed to focus on, and why the one (1) million doses, small as it may appear relative to population; should be procured without delay; and hopefully, guidelines for its allocation, distribution and prioritisation will equally be released on time, along with a time-table for the vaccine roll-out.
This is important, not just as a signaling to our economy but more importantly, a major boost for the mental health of the citizens dealing with higher levels of uncertainty, fear and financial challenges arising from the pandemic’s impact on lives and livelihood.
The Governance structure of CACOVID was designed to respond to challenges such as this and as shown below; it should be made to work. If there is a need to review same, then it should be done sooner than later.
– Proshare
