How A Former Colonial Power And Its Ex-Colony Are Faring In COVID-19 Fight?
By: Sheka Tarawalie (Shekito)
Apart from its extraordinarily high fatality toll and fast-paced infection rate worldwide, the coronavirus disease’s ability to strike at the very heart of government anywhere is conspicuously unprecedented.
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson is still convalescing at Chequers after a scary it-could-have-gone-either-way experience at the intensive care unit of London’s St. Thomas’ hospital. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s wife Sophie battled with COVID-19, forcing her husband to go into isolation.
Britain’s Deputy Ambassador to Hungary, Steven Dick, died from the disease at post. German Chancellor Angela Merkel had to go into self-isolation after her doctor tested positive. Flamboyant US Republican Senator Rand Paul caught – or was caught by – the virulent disease. Australia’s Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton tested positive.
In the Middle East, Iran’s Vice President Eshaq Jahangiri and Deputy Health Minister Iraj Harirchi Tabrizi were among scores of high-ranking ruling elites (together with at least 23 MPs) infected, after losing several top-ranking officials including Seyyed Mohammad Mirmohammadi (Special Adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatolla Ali Khamenei). Up to 150 members of Saudi Arabia’s royal family tested positive, forcing King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to go into self-isolation in a remote island – thereby administratively paralysing the kingdom and demystifying Ramadan to a mere shadow of its former self.
In West Africa, Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari has had a close shave with the virus when he lost his Chief of Staff, Abba Kyari, to it. In Burkina Faso, at least six senior ministers (including Foreign Affairs, Mines, Education, and Interior) tested positive along with resident Ambassadors from Italy and USA, while the disease took the life of Member of Parliament Rose Marie Compaore.
Nearer home, Guinean President Alpha Konde’s right-hand man, Sékou Kourouma (the Secretary General/Chief of Staff of the government), died from COVID-19 even as an official Conakry press release admitted that: “Several senior state officials have died from complications from Covid-19”. The list goes on… China’s issues at the top are shrouded in utmost secrecy…
And now Sierra Leone’s President Julius Maada Bio and his immediate family have had to go into quarantine after one of his guards tested positive. Ebola didn’t – couldn’t – go that far.
The closest Ebola came to infecting a ‘high-profile’ government official was the case of a Liberian renegade official, Patrick Sawyer (a civil servant at the Ministry of Finance holding an American passport), who - having already known he was infected and colluding with others - sneaked from his home country and collapsed at a Lagos airport and later died in hospital, causing some Nigerian health workers to pay the ultimate price but were able to prevent him from attending an ECOWAS conference where he could have further spread the virus.
He also infected a Nigerian diplomat (actually the liaison officer that received him at the airport) who survived.
And Liberia’s then-Transport Minister, Angeline Cassell-Bush, had to self-quarantine herself and came out without having the disease after her driver died of Ebola.
That’s about it for Ebola at top government level. Because the quarantining of Sierra Leone’s former Vice President, Samuel Sam-Sumana, after the death of one of his periphery security guards, ended up being more of a political tic-tac-toe than a health issue – as he discarded the quarantine rules by fleeing his home before the 21-day period was completed following a ‘tip-off about soldiers coming for me’, leading to his controversial removal from office a few days later. He didn’t have Ebola…
Perhaps - just perhaps - if Ebola had started at the top, it would have been taken more seriously very quickly by the authorities and wouldn’t have killed as many people – especially now that COVID-19 has exposed it as a less dangerous, less infectious virus. Only when the plague entered Pharaoh’s house did he let the people go!
But let’s leave it to fate. That was what it was. Now this is what COVID-19 is. It becomes more terrifying a battle when the commander is physically missing in action – never mind the virtual appearance via video-conferencing and television. Hearts will not rest – and deputising would not do - until the man himself appears again in person. The UK is going through it; and now Sierra Leone.
So as we continue to pray for President Bio (just as we did for PM Bojo – it’s biblical to pray for the governing authorities), his family and all others affected by the coronavirus, it cannot be overemphasised that the future is not rosy.
Even if Sierra Leone had no COVID-19 infections, there would be little to celebrate, as long as the UK (our largest donor in lieu of being the former colonial authority) is affected. And as Sierra Leone is now living with the virus (two reported deaths thus far), with new infections popping up here and there (though there seems to be a high rate of recovery for those treated as at now), it seems the centre is not holding. There is cause for concern, to put it blandly.
The somewhat haphazard handling of the crisis reveals some panic somewhere at the top: there was first the invitation of the former administration’s Ebola-fight head Palo Conteh, but he got arrested and charged with treason (then one wonders why his former counterpart, Stephen Gaoija, is not included anymore); and then the current Minister of Defence Kellie Conteh was appointed as head of the COVID-19 fight (he came in for lampooning for not even being able to properly pronounce ‘hand sanitizers’ on television); and then the Ministry of Information was relieved of the task of speaking about COVID-19 and the responsibility transferred to the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, who is a lawyer…
And then to give the peremptory semblance of presidential action in isolation, a STAGE C-19 committee in the fight against the coronavirus has also been formed (and a doctor who has just been discharged from hospital after testing positive and should therefore be quietly recuperating from home at this time – with all due respect to her - is number one on the list); followed by knee-jerk blitzkrieg appointments of district COVID-19 co-ordinators by Kellie Conteh; on top of the Ministry of Health assuming it’s still in charge while collaborating with a socially-distanced World Health Organisation country office.
Tell me about another case of too many cooks spoiling the broth…
Compared to the Ebola campaign, the British don’t seem overly interested in Sierra Leone’s COVID-19 fight at all. Who would blame them? They have too much on their plate – the UK’s coronavirus situation is at such a scale as not only to be approaching a twenty-thousand fatality milestone but hitting the economy so hard that generously caring for others apart from her citizens and residents would be unreasonable, if not callous (look at America blocking immigrants from entering its territory due to the consequences of the plague).
The quintessential diplomat that he is, British High Commissioner Simon Mustard was earlier this week seen marshalling British passport-holders off the shores of Sierra Leone to Britain where - despite being hardest hit - at least people are assured of constant supplies of food, electricity, water, medicine for other ailments and accommodation. Even a fallen cotton tree is taller than the grass!
And for the Sierra Leone Government to run to Russia for help is not the best of approaches, as the Foreign Ministry (whose apparent redundancy is exposed by its Deputy Minister being sent on secondment) tries to find something to do: according to a Russia News Agency report of 13 April, “The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mrs. Nabeela Tunis (Nee Koromah), sent a letter to the Russian side, asking for assistance in fighting the coronavirus”. But, usually reliable diplomatic sources say there is still no response from the Russians.
They are also in the thick of their own battle with COVID-19 – though not the best of friends even in ‘peace time’ (where are the 200 garbage trucks that the Ministry of Local Government said it would receive from the Russians since October 2019?).
The words of 19th century British statesman George Canning could not be more resonant: ‘Every nation for itself and God for us all’. Small, developing nations like Sierra Leone would bear the brunt of COVID-19.
It’s a long night! And the press attachés, who could have possibly helped in propagating Sierra Leone’s tight-rope case abroad at this time, were appointed so late (like in a caesarean delivery) that they look more like political test-tube babies flaunting their new titles in Freetown but of no use – not just yet.
If Britain can’t help as usual due to the prevailing circumstances, then Sierra Leone is apparently in a bind (don’t tell me about IMF/World Bank windfalls, which don’t only come with throat-choking conditions but in drips). But, perhaps, necessity would beget invention. The government could come up with something in ‘a brand new direction style when the pa returns to State House’.
After all, Muammar Ghaddafi – in all his ways – developed Libya to enviable heights during an internationally-imposed lockdown. But then when one sees cane-lashing security personnel revelling in mumbo-jumbo ‘bloody civilian’ nostalgia in Freetown during the recent three-day lockdown instead of actually carrying out the instructions of the Head of State to fight COVID-19, one starts to wonder which direction the wind is blowing…
It’s a watch-and-see scenario. But the people are nervous. Nervy. While some other governments, even in Africa, are cushioning the effects of COVID-19 on their people by providing some free essential supplies and services, the Sierra Leone Government wants applause from its people for merely promising some comparatively meager extra-cash to frontline health workers. While the call for a significant and proportionate reduction in the price of fuel (whose world market worth has been reduced to laughable levels) falls on rocky ground.
Don’t call me selfish or lucky for being thankful that I am ‘surviving’ the lockdown in Britain - even as I make the most of the time not only by writing and reading but also mowing the grass of my front garden...
But we all should be grieving for our people… And pray for the future…
(Stay tuned for Part 3)
Sheka Tarawalie is a member of the UK’s National Union of Journalists (NUJ) and the author of ‘Pope Francis, Politics and the Mabanta Boy’
(https://www.troubador.co.uk/bookshop/autobiography/pope-francis-politics-and-the-mabanta-boy/)
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