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If a president is personally responsive, sensitive and charismatic, you still have to judge them by the quality of their political appointments, their actions on legislation, the policy formulation and implementation of MDAs under them. Please let us not be like Chidi Odinkalu.
If a president is not personally responsive, sensitive and charismatic, you still have to judge them by the quality of their political appointments, their actions on legislation, the policy formulation and implementation of MDAs under them.Please let us not be like Chidi Odinkalu
Going by Odinkalu’s argument, the buck for the initial and continued weakness of the US CDC response to Covid-19, the cutting of critical public health appointee positions etc doesn’t stop with Mr Trump.
Going by Odinkalu’s argument, Trump is only responsible for the horrendous, criminal handling of political relations with state governments. I am sorry, that is a rubbish position to hold. It is rubbish in Nigeria and would be rubbish anywhere else in the world.
Politics is also your ethics in action, and the ethics of Odinkalu’s position are deontologically suspect.
His is an especially rubbish view because our tendency to always highlight the failures of federal leadership in ways that, more or less, absolve state governments of their own failures of leadership is why healthcare in Nigeria is as bad as it is.
Please let us not be like Chidi Odinkalu: hold governors accountable as much as you do the president. Don’t go easy on the president but don’t continue to give governors a pass. https://twitter.com/senwele/status/1243520765296869376
There are many gaps at the federal level, worse at the state level, and you would expect a constitutional lawyer to recognise the autonomy of governors and hold them equally accountable.
You’d also expect a civil society leader and former political appointee to evince an awareness of the bread and butter of governance: the quality of legislation, political appointments, policy formulation and implementation of MDAs.
Instead, all we get is bad faith: you want to praise the appointee but keep even that faint praise from redounding to the one who appointed them. Whereas, your criticism would ordinarily lose nothing if you gave credit where it is due, or simply just made good faith arguments
Getting the appointments of NCDC & NIMR DGs right in 2016 are some of the reasons we are managing whatever quality of response we have now. Feel free to assess the quality of our response as critically as possible, but this is 1way to assess political will https://nigeriahealthwatch.com/dear-president-buhari-without-health-we-have-nothing/
Giving the NCDC legislation-backed autonomy, in keeping with the recommendations of the 2017 WHO Joint Evaluation of Nigeria on outbreak preparedness, 17 months before Covid-19 hit was important https://www.channelstv.com/2018/11/13/president-buhari-signs-ncdc-bill-into-law/
Fast-tracking regulatory & policy frameworks to support outbreak preparedness, at the Federal, State, & Local Government levels, in keeping with the recommendations of the 2017 WHO Joint Evaluation of Nigeria, up to 6 months before Covid hit was important https://reliefweb.int/report/nigeria/ncdcwho-map-resources-naphs-36-states-and-fct
Strengthening of laboratory capacity, especially specimen shipping, transportation and referral with significant milestones passed before Covid-19 hit was vital to quality of initial response https://www.nature.com/articles/d41591-020-00004-2
See (p 2) https://www.ncdc.gov.ng/themes/common/files/sitreps/c0878afdda89d42733598932f33c3091.pdf
See (p 2) https://www.ncdc.gov.ng/themes/common/files/sitreps/c0878afdda89d42733598932f33c3091.pdf
Enhancing the EOC/IMS system at federal level and strengthening sub-national RRTs supported by an all hazard risk communication strategy/plan before Covid-19 hit was important:
https://twitter.com/NCDCgov/status/1238143220422508545
https://twitter.com/NCDCgov/status/1235906856540950528 https://twitter.com/NCDCgov/status/1233175667447095296
https://twitter.com/NCDCgov/status/1238143220422508545
https://twitter.com/NCDCgov/status/1235906856540950528 https://twitter.com/NCDCgov/status/1233175667447095296
Strengthening inter-sectoral collaboration for emergency response particularly between health and the environmental sectors, on an all hazards approach, before Covid-19 hit was important to getting things like this after Covid-19 hit https://www.developmentdiaries.com/2020/04/nigeria-fme-activates-health-desks/
Getting the 2020 budget signed in December 2019, unlike the frequent enough delays that characterised federal budgeting from 1999 to 2018, so that NCDC could start accessing their ~ N1.7billion annual budget before Covid-19 hit was critical https://home.kpmg/ng/en/home/insights/2019/12/president-signs-the-2020-appropriation-bill.html
The N5 billion special intervention fund for NCDC which would even be more quickly accessible than budgetary allocation was important https://twitter.com/MBuhari/status/1243266137988771842
Are all those adequate? No. The beloved Nigerian on the street really care about those? Maybe not in the first instance but Nigerians are not stupid. FG is not doing nearly enough, Nigerians know but they are not stupid. Those important things are the primary job of a president.
Legislation, political appointments, policy formulation and implementation of MDAs are were the KPIs of a president lie. But some folks just want to be children again: they don’t want a president, they want a dad who will carry them in his arms
If you have those things without presidential address, your public health outcomes will be better than hearing Covik-1-9 every night with fancy flags flying. In any case, a constitutional lawyer, civil society leader and former political appointee isn’t your average guy.
You’ve got to watch out for Nigerian intellectuals – yes, people like me – they are intellectually lazy, and they lie, and they steal, and they cheat, and they are at the heart of leadership failure in this country.
The intelligentsia are even worse than the politicians even though around the world and in Nigeria they are the same people, really. Watch out for the governors as much as the president. Hold them all accountable especially when it comes to education and health.
For 8 years under the most progressive governor in the universe, it was running battles with state doctors over the most basic needs. Unlike most governors, because he was spending on CapEx in healthcare, he wanted his asskissed & to create cashflow slack in recurrent expenditure
It’s heartbreakingly perverse but it is almost as if the realpolitik qualification, going back to 1999, for anyone who wants to be a governor in this country is being an incorrigible asshole in terms of healthcare investment.
Where governors bred in such a perverse milieu are evidently failing, the proper response of the political critic should be to pin it on the feds? Please! That is intellectual and moral slovenliness.
