On Saturday, the Federal Government (FG) approached the leadership of the National Assembly with a proposal of a N500 billion ($1.2 billion) crisis intervention fund that will help cushion the effects of coronavirus in Nigeria.

The Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning Zainab Ahmed, presented an executive proposal to establish a “N500 billion COVID-19 fund” as part of efforts by the federal government to ease the economic pains that are unfolding as the fight to contain COVID-19 continues.

The federal government is also prioritizing the rehabilitation of healthcare facilities around the country as coronavirus cases keep rising daily.

“Our general view is that this crisis intervention fund is to be utilized to upgrade healthcare facilities as earlier identified. The Federal Government also needs to be in a position to improve healthcare facilities not only in the states but to provide intervention to the states,” Mrs. Ahmed said.

The Minister highlighted some other programmes that the fund will be invested in including special work programmes currently being implemented by the National Directorate of Employment (NDE).

However, it became necessary for the executive to seek the approval of the legislature because funds will be drawn from various special accounts of the government to make up the N500 billion. The government also hopes to make an equalization from grants and donations from corporations, institutions and NGOs.

The Minister asked the lawmakers to approve taking loans from some designated accounts, promising to return to the legislative chamber with a proposed bill in that regard that will define what the fund will be used for.

“We know that there will be a need for the parliament to agree and approve the taking of loans from these special accounts and we will be coming back with a proposed bill in that regard that will define what the fund will be used for,” she said.

In response, the senate president Ahmed Lawan said the emergency health situation in the country has called for the consideration of such loans.

“So, we must work as expeditiously as possible to ensure that we place the request before the National Assembly,” he said.

The senate president also faulted the method of distribution of palliatives aimed at cushioning the effects of economic hardship emanating from coronavirus outbreak. The federal government had early this week, through the office of Humanitarian Affairs, commenced the Social Intervention Programme, distributing N20,000 to some Nigerians identified as poorest across the country.

“I think time has come for us to redefine the implementation of the Social Intervention Programme. Probably going out to communities to give them N20,000 person might not be the best way to go. It is still an effort, but I think we need a better approach that will be more efficient,” Ahmed said.

Over N10 billion has been pledged by individuals and organizations to support the government’s relief effort in Nigeria, and many have questioned the method that the government has adopted in administering its palliatives, raising concerns that donated funds may not be used for the intended purpose.

The federal government’s move to borrow from designated accounts has heightened the suspicion that there is ulterior motive. A reason the national assembly has requested a proposed bill detailing how the fund will be used.

In February, the federal government made a move to borrow N2 trillion from the pension fund as it was seeking funds to implement many of its programmes. The attempt was met with fierce opposition so that it backed down. The pension fund stood at N10 trillion and was a center of interest to the executive as oil revenue dwindled and put the government in economic hardship.

The coronavirus crisis appears to have aggravated the woes of the already broke FG, narrowing its options to funds in designated accounts as external borrowing seems difficult at this time.

Given the circumstances, the Excess Crude Account (ECA) would have come to the rescue. But regular visitation by the government to the account has reduced it to $71.81 million. And with oil price wobbling between $20 and $34 dollars, the Foreign Reserve doesn’t offer any option.

Left with little or no option, the national assembly is likely going to approve FG’s request to invade some designated accounts. The fear remains that it will result in more hardship than the government is trying to alleviate soon after.

 “Is this the way you want it to be, is this the way it’s gonna be…trying to make a living out there but it’s so hard.”

This lamentation is an excerpt from a song by the late reggae legend, Lucky Dube. The song always plays in my mind everyday. I have to wake up before the rising of the sun and return home after its setting. Day after day and week after week I see my life (and yours too) pass before me with the speed of a supersonic jet. I see dejected old men in the streets, and I ask myself, where has their time gone? I see women with babies strapped on their backs hawking soft drinks and water in the scotching African sun and I ask myself, where is their hope? I see my beautiful sisters clad half naked seeking patronage, and I ask myself, who took away their dignity? I see educated and talented young men running in traffic just to sell a commodity, and I asked myself, can their future be better? And I see the multitude of beggars, and I ask myself, could this be Your image, LORD? Just end the world now! 

If man is the crown of creation, why then should we toil everyday just to survive like animals? With our superior capabilities shouldn’t we be living beyond survival? Why is the majority of humanity still striving to meet the basic needs according to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs? Why should we live out our lives on these two levels of physiological needs and safety needs as if there are no higher levels of belonging and love, esteem needs, and self actualization and transcendence? 

Of course, I ask these questions in relation to my environment. I know there are climes where things are better. Citizens of these countries do not bother themselves about daily livelihood because they have responsible governments that have secured the first two basic levels. They occupy the higher levels of psychological needs and self actualization in Maslow’s Pyramid of Needs. They have the time and freedom to use their gifts, talents and capabilities to give the world a sense of direction that their focus is now more on the celestial than the terrestrial. Why should a part of the human race be so far ahead of the rest when we were all created together? 

Just what is wrong with being black?! How long shall we be called the Dark Continent? This year makes it sixty (60) years of self-governance in Nigeria; we can’t still get electricity right when we are not asked to rediscover electricity. Why do we have anti development officials in all levels of our government motivated by personal greed arresting development? You ask every Nigerian what troubles the country. We quickly use our index fingers to point at the leaders with the rest four fingers pointing at us. 

If we are in trouble with the country, how do we make her better? It’s a matter of mindset. For us to rise to our next level of better life is to individually seek to be altruistic. When we are altruistic, we will not inflate and pad budgets, we will not prevent the approval of a project because of a bribe, we will honor the elderly and vulnerable in our midst, we will not sit on somebody’s promotion, we will not fail female student for sex, we will not allocate development funds to some zones and deny another zone; in a nutshell, we will do unto others what we want done unto us. With these individual efforts, we will create the country we so much dream and talk about and achieve esteem, and self-actualization and transcendence, in other words, achieve our destinies. Let us bring this better place from the realm of imagination to reality. It is possible. 

Covid-19 and Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

The table above shows how a particular household in Nigeria allocates its monthly consumption budget to the five aggregate needs before and during Covid-19 pandemic. We can observe a significant change, for example, item five, which is Self-actualization in pre Covid-19 got the highest allocation and during Covid-19 it got a zero allocation. I have the feeling that all I just said seems a bit abstract to you. I want you to get my logic by accompanying me to 1943 to meet with Abraham Maslow to help us understand his theory on Human Motivation. Then we will return to this time, 2020, to analyze and understand the household consumption behavior.

Me: Good day Dr. Maslow.

Maslow: God day sir. I heard you are from the future, the 21st Millennium I suppose.

Me: That is correct Doctor. It’s a perilous time. We are facing an alien virus nicknamed Covid-19. It has snowballed into a pandemic. We need your help in understanding your thesis on human motivation and behavior. With this knowledge we will be able to fix the economy after we have defeated the invader.

Maslow: Oh my, that is awful news! Let’s get started. I published my study of how humans intrinsically partake in behavioral motivation; by motivation I am talking about the satisfaction of human needs that are innate. I termed it the Hierarchy of Needs, arranged in the form of a pyramid with the largest and most fundamental needs at the bottom and the need for self-actualization and transcendence at the top. In other words, individuals’ most basic needs must be met before they become motivated to achieve higher levels of needs. This is what the pyramid looks like.

I acknowledge the likelihood that the different levels of needs could occur at any time in the human mind because the human brain is a complex system and has parallel processes running at the same time, thus many different motivations from various levels of the hierarchy can occur at the same time. I focused on identifying the basic types of motivation and the order in which they will tend to be met. However, scholars who critique my work prefer to think of these levels as continuously overlapping each other. This means that the lower levels may take precedence back over the other levels at any point in time. We are actually saying the same thing in different words, you know. It looks like this…

Me: Absolutely Doc! This is my own motivation. I realized that the hierarchy could change by circumstance. The higher-order (esteem, and self-actualization) and lower-order (physiological, safety, and love) needs are not universal and may vary across cultures, class, political system, age groups due to individual differences and availability of resources in the region or geopolitical entity/country.

Maslow: More true, your world is now embroiled in the same pandemic; consequently, I see a common human motivation and behavior, and a realignment of the overlapping needs as depicted by the curves below

Me: This is unbelievable Doc. The changes in the slopes of the curves is uniform with the changes in the monthly consumption budget on the five needs of an individual household in my country Nigeria, and by extension, the whole world. Before Covid-19 became a pandemic, the household in the penultimate month disbursed a budget of N100, 000 as follows: 20% (Physiological needs), 15% (Safety needs), 20% (Social belonging), 15% (Esteem), and 30% (Self-actualization). And in the pandemic era both Esteem and Self-actualization got 0%. Safety got the highest allocation of 45% trailed by physiological needs with 35%. And the least allocation of 20% went to Love and belonging.

Maslow: You see son, these changes in the allocations reflect the most dominant need in your world currently. Safety needs that include health and well-being got the highest allocation, making its curve to rise above others from the second most bottom position. It is followed by the curve representing physiological needs that include food, shelter and warmth because of the stay at home and social distancing order. The third curve representing love and social belonging with an allocation of 20% is the last rising curve just under physiological and safety curves. Just as I expected, man cannot be striving for esteem and self actualization under this circumstance. These needs got zero allocation causing their curve to nose-dive.

Me: It’s a pleasure meeting you Dr. Maslow. Your thoughts will prove invaluable to us. We must return to the future now to share this insight with everyone. It will deepen our understanding about our behavior under circumstances like this and also guide our decisions during and after the pandemic.

Maslow: Glad I could help. Good luck lad!

Celebrities around the world have been vocal alongside health authorities as humanity pushes to conquer coronavirus. Many have done more than talking, donating large sums to provide medical necessities and relief materials to those who need it.

In Nigeria, the case has been the same. Some of the celebrities have gone on social media to share money in a bid to help people stay at home as the government’s lockdown order came into effect. Others have been consistently sounding the warning of social distancing. But then, there have been exceptions.

On Saturday, a popular celebrity couple, Funke Akindele aKa Jenifer, and her husband, Abdulrasheed Bello aka JJC SkillZ threw a birthday party at their residence in Amen Estate Lagos. From the video shared online by the celebrant JJC SkillZ, there were over 20 people in the party, including popular singer, Naira Marley.

If the date was January 4, a lot of birthday wishes would have followed the video, but it was a heavy backlash instead for obvious reasons.

Not long ago, the Nigerian Center for Disease Control (NCDC) has used Funke Akindele to advocate measures needed to curb the spread of coronavirus, which includes social distancing, limiting the number of people who come together at a time. And there she was – a role model, telling thousands of people who look up to her to respect governments’ restrictions on socializing for the greater good, that it is still ok to hold a large gathering when it’s your spouse’s birthday.

So when Nigerians started calling for her arrest, it’s not only because she and her husband broke the rules of social distancing, it also that she has set a bad example that may result in the spread of coronavirus that everyone is making sacrifices to quell.

The Lagos State Government had restricted the number of people allowed for social and religious gathering to 25, as the World Health Organization keeps emphasizing on the need to limit social gathering to the barest minimum. But then the number of cases keeps increasing in Lagos and Abuja, forcing the federal government to impose two weeks lockdown on the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Lagos and Ogun States.

Only a few people who offer services categorized as essentials were allowed to function, and Funke (an actress) and her husband (a singer) don’t fall into that category.

On Sunday, when the Lagos State police command announced that Funke Akindele Bello has been arrested and manhunt is on for JJC SkillZ and Naira Marley, there was more applause than sympathy.

Though Funke tried to explain what happened. In a video she shared on social media, she said the party attendees have all been in her home before the lockdown took effect and had no choice than stay back since they are working on a movie that Naira Marley is billed to star in.

“Before the outbreak of coronavirus, we all worked together here. We had the strength of 100 workers, but not all hundred are here now. So this is where everybody works and we shoot a lot of contents. So when the pandemic started we had to stop our production…

“But before the lockdown was announced by the president, some youths have been in the bootcamp here in Amen Estate, were hosting, singing, dancing. The majority of the youth are those you saw in the video,” She explained.

Going by her explanation, majority of those who were in the birthday party have been in the Estate before the lockdown took effect, including Naira Marley who is to feature in her new movie, Omo Ghetto the Saga.

But the video shared by the celebrant, JJC SkillZ refuted whatever excuse Funke has presented for what happened. They were excitedly saying in the video: “We no dey hear word, we no dey hear word, we get coconut head, we get big ear but we no dey hear word.”

That’s the defiance that got people pissed. It’s more like daring the government to do its worst.

For three people of their caliber, who have a country of people idolizing them, it is a very negative precedent.

Nigeria is known as a country where money and social status help people get away from obvious wrongs, thereby enabling impunity and total disregard for rule of law. But it is even more worrisome when the situation has to do with a global pandemic that doesn’t care about one’s money and social status.

The NCDC and Dettol that were using the actress as ambassador has dissociated themselves from her. NCDC has pulled down the coronavirus sensitization video where she featured in from its website.

The Lagos State government has charged the actress to Magistrate Court Ogba,  and the court has sentenced the couple to community service with a fine of N100,000. The court’s ruling has been applauded by many who believe it will serve as a deterrent to others who feel they’re immune to the law.