'The past and the present: The Covid-19 pandemic and the Nigerian experience'.
Co-Investigators: M. Konte & A. Okafor
Funding Institution: INCLUDE
Executive Summary
It is generally feared that the Covid-19 outbreak would be a true testament to the health infrastructure and system of a country. Whereas this put developing countries in a precarious situation as they are notorious for having a dilapidated and poor health infrastructure and system, the 2013—16 EVD outbreak success and failure stories in West Africa offer a potential learning opportunity on how countries can contain outbreaks. One of such countries that emerged a victor over EVD promptly despite its epileptic health care infrastructure and system and at a time when clinically approved drug for the virus was nonexistent is Nigeria. A natural expectation is that such a country shows dexterity in the fight against Covid-19 that is currently ravaging countries, by building on it is erstwhile EVD country-wide response. Unfortunately, anecdotal evidence offers no such evidence for Nigeria as the number of Covid-19 confirmed and death-related cases have been on the rise since it recorded its index case. More still, different rhetoric currently abounds in the media and policy space on the approach of the current Nigerian government [GoN] not being optimal in containing the virus.
Premised on the foregoing, this paper had set out with three broad objectives that are inspired by the desire to understand factors responsible for Nigeria's foremost victory over EVD and why the country is unable to attain the same fit in its fight against Covid-19. To this end, as a first objective, we conducted a comparative study on the Ebola outbreak in Nigeria and other West African countries vis-à-vis Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea, identifying the approaches that had been undertaken by Nigeria and these other countries. Among others, we found that cooperation among citizens and government and community health workers, and conventional control tools— early detection, contact tracing, isolation and monitoring of those exposed, adequate supplies of PPE for health workers, and strict procedures for infection prevention and control—were paramount in containing the EVD. Particularly, these factors matched with strong political will were responsible for Nigeria's timely victory over the EVD outbreak in 2014.
As a second objective, we assessed Nigeria’s country-wide response to Covid-19, drawing inference from its past success factors during the EVD outbreak. We also highlight structural and systemic challenges undermining the country’s fight against Covid-19. We observe a near-total absence of factors that led to the country’s erstwhile victory in the current country-wide response to the Covid-19. For instance, unlike in the EVD, testing, contact tracing, and isolation have been limited so far since the Covid-19 outbreak in the country. More generally, we also find evidence of structural and system issues such as predominance informal economy and rural-urban poor, and high political distrust and population density as contributory factors to the country’s inability to replicate a similar country-wide response as during the EVD crisis. Third, employing the spatial and equity approach on secondary data we identify the covid-19 vulnerable while assessing the social and spatial distribution of government and non-government Covid-19 social protection programs, and explore to what extent they target the most Covid-19 vulnerable populations in Nigeria. We find limited evidence that government and non-government Covid-19 social protection programs targeted the most Covid-19 vulnerable populations in Nigeria. This may have further complicated the country's fight against the current epidemic.
Different policy conclusions, both immediate and long-term, can be drawn from our study. One of the frontline EVD respondents in Liberia, Paul Farmer, while documenting his experience in the fight against EVD noted vehemently that the formula for success against EVD and threats like it is to “invest in a comprehensive model of prevention and care for the poor” (Farmer, 2014). Attaining this fit requires building a quality and inclusive health care system with a robust public health component. It also requires either building or strengthening a country’s capacity to prevent, detect, and respond to pandemics along the IHR core capacities. The urgent need for Nigeria’s health care system and infrastructure to evolve in this direction cannot be overemphasized as our findings documents substantial gaps in these respective areas. Our findings about the late detection of the Covid-19 in the country, the belated and mild response of GoN at the onset of the outbreak that, other things equal, resulted to an early community transmission once again reemphasizes the importance of early detection and for heighten response to outbreak.
Nigerian government need to show more leadership and strong political will in the fight against Covid-19. Intensified testing in the country and at the different port of entry, strict adherence to Covid-19 guidelines in public functions, and robust awareness campaigns could be a good start. There is also the need to address copious structural issues that plaque the country, as the pose challenge to containing the virus. Among others, this relates to the predominance of informal sector and a lack of citizen-to-government trust in the country. The prevalence of large scale informality in the economy, not only show the vulnerability of the country to outbreak of the current magnitude but also a greater share of the country’s population in need of social protection of any kind. Hence, the need for job formalization and the attendant benefits thereof in the country. High political distrusts in the country which has contributed in disincentivizing the citizens to adhere to the Covid-19 guidelines is only one out of the many negative effects that may be associated with this systemic issue, hence, the urgent need to address it. Finally, there is an urgent need for a more targeted social protection extension to the Covid-19 most vulnerable in the country.
Finally, learning effectively from a crisis to the extent that the affected country uses the garnered knowledge to contain the next crisis is a conscious act and requires a pragmatic approach. The ideal pragmatic approach requires process-tracing and simulation exercises to identify the success or failure factors along with the counterfactuals. The findings are then used to update the related institutional designs, build a toolkit for capability shortfalls that are regularly monitored and evaluated, and shared among the stakeholders as a knowledge roadmap. In our scoping literature, we did not find any such evidence in the context of Nigeria. At best, the country's colossal victory in the fight against EVD has only been recorded as a quantitative score or a historical landmark without any substantial scientific and qualitative narrative built around it. Moving forward, the country's ability in strengthening its learning capability from past, present, and future crises depends on unlearning its old ways while adopting this ideal process.
'Policy research on solid mineral development in Nigeria'.
Co-Investigators: NODAC Consulting
Funding Institution: OSIWA in collaboration with the African Centre for Leadership, Strategy & Development
Executive Summary
Nigeria is a resource endowed country. Official statistics suggest that the country has over 44 solid minerals distributed across the 36 states of the country. These natural resources had shaped the country’s pre-independence industrialization trajectory as minerals were both a source of energy (in the case of coal) as well as a tradable commodity (e.g., Columbite, Tin, Lead, and Zinc). However, the discovery of and focus on crude oil production in the 1970s led to a significant decline in the development of the solid mineral mining industry. The nationalization policies of the 1970s and 1980s further worsened the state of solid minerals mining in Nigeria. Many foreign investors exited the industry due to poor operating conditions, which set the industry on a downward spiral as evidenced by a massive drop in solid mineral's contribution to Nigeria's GDP and export. The long neglect of the sector, despite the solid mineral abundance, comes at a cost such as deprived alternative sources of energy sources, employment generation, investment opportunities, foreign exchange, and tax revenues.
However, the oil price crisis of 2014, which severely strained Nigeria’s finances and foreign exchange earnings, inspired an urgency to diversify Nigeria’s economy away from oil as the major source of government revenue and foreign exchange earnings. This, amongst other things, led to a renewed interest to develop Nigeria’s solid mineral industry as a major employer of labor and a reliable source of tax and foreign exchange revenue. Whilst the Federal Government of Nigeria is continually improving the industry’s regulatory framework to encourage private investment, the sector still contributes very little to Nigeria’s GDP and gross exports. In the light of this, the objective of this study is to better understand the existing policy and institutional design and framework of Nigeria’s solid mineral industry, the actors and their interactions, interests, and the different activities undertaken in the sector to proffer evidence-based policy and regulatory regime that can help better the sector and some of the initiatives the government is already implementing.
The report is primarily based on information obtained during field visits to three states in Nigeria: Ebonyi, Ekiti, and Taraba. Three Local Government Areas (Gashaka, Ardo Kola, and Karim Lamido) were visited in Taraba State, seven in Ebonyi State (Abakaliki, Ebonyi, Ezza North, Ezza South, Ikwo, Izzi, and Ivo) and four in Ekiti State (Ado-Ekiti, Ijero, Ikere, and Oye). The states were chosen because of their respective high solid minerals endowment, and current mining activities. Hence, they collectively represent solid minerals spread across the federation, and serve as yardsticks to determine (in-)actions of stakeholders in the sector and what might be responsible for the abysmal performance of the solid minerals mining in the country. Primary data obtained during the field visits are complemented with desk reviews of relevant literature obtained from national sources and institutions, and secondary data from national institutions such as CBN and NEITI. The interactions during the field visits involved interviews and submitted questions. After the field visits, additional information and validation were obtained from the sources established during the field visits; such meta-data brought on valuable insights.
In line with the objectives of this study, some of the key findings of our study are presented according to the respective study focus. Overall, there are substantial gaps in the implementation of policies related to mining activities in the three states, particularly in the area of revenue collection. The industry is fraught with unclear as wells as a multiplicity of fees on mining activities at different levels: statutory fees, discretionary fees from state and local governments, as well as local communities. This lack of clarity in the existing guidelines on fees has encouraged underreporting and smuggling in the states. Similarly, regulations around mineral sales are largely unobserved as miners tend to sell minerals outside of the official minerals market’s institutional framework
On the effectiveness and quality of Community Development Agreements (CDAs), our survey shows that many mining communities are generally dissatisfied with the practice of community engagement by miners. For instance, mining communities in Taraba State do not have CDAs. And even in mining communities in states such as Ebonyi and Ekiti States, where CDAs exist, community leaders express dissatisfaction with the extent of implementation of those CDAs. These communities feel largely powerless in confronting mining investors in cases where commitments to project implementation have been weak. This sense of powerlessness also affects other outcomes of mining activities in the respective communities including the condition of the environment.
Our study also finds severe regulatory failures regarding adherence to environmental policies and regulations. While regulatory agencies across the three survey states accuse artisanal miners of being the most environmentally unfriendly mining operators, we find evidence of regulatory failures in the enforcement of environmental policies in many mining communities. Operators, as well as regulators, are aware of the myriad of environmental challenges in mining communities but little has been done to redress those challenges. These regulatory failures are a symptom of the overall regulatory failure and discontent across tiers of government.
Our evaluation of fiscal regimes in the sector and across tiers of government show that both civil servants in government agencies and solid minerals industry operators in the states perceive the statutory fiscal regime to be adequate. The main concerns arise from non-statutory fees. Some community leaders have the impression that their communities ought to get more benefit from mining in terms of statutory revenue allocation. We observe the reasonable correspondence between statutory allocation based on the 13% mineral derivation rule and the amount of mineral produced in the states. We note, however, that although Ekiti state is reported to have produced more solid minerals than Taraba in the NEITI 2016 report, it received a lower 13% solid mineral derivation allocation. Revenue leakages have also been perverse.
We find that governments have remained largely unable to address the weakness with revenue collection which is increasingly hindering the realization of projections for national economy diversification. Some of the reasons for these challenges include smuggling of minerals; inaccessibility to mining sites; informal organizations of artisanal miners, which make it difficult for the government to appropriately tax the sector; lack of solid mineral buying centers, which intensifies sales and distribution of minerals through unofficial channels and hence, a loss of revenue by the government, and lack of adequate exploration data, which makes it difficult for the government to track mining activities. These challenges do not only plague revenue collection but also the benefits derivable from the value chain for all players, including small artisanal miners.
Our survey also reveals avoidable losses to the value chain due to the fragmented nature of mining operations characterized by the massive dominance of artisanal and small-scale miners in the different local communities in the three states. Challenges with tracking of revenue streams of the informal mining sector include government difficulties in accessing the mining sites, lack of solid mineral buying centers, and exploration data, informal organizations of artisanal miners, and smuggling. We find that most of the artisanal miners in Taraba and Ebonyi States operate without a mining license while those in Ekiti State either have mining licenses or operating through a cooperative permit. Artisanal miners do not process the minerals before selling them, and they sell to anyone willing to buy them. Human rights violations have also persisted in several mining sites. Women and children are involved in mining activities across the three states, their roles and responsibilities within the mining communities vary greatly. In Taraba State, women and children are involved in every activity and stage of mining. However, in Ebonyi and Ekiti States, mining activities by underage children are limited, while the roles of women are limited to the processing stage, which includes crushing, grinding, sieving, washing, panning, among others. And to corroborate the reports from community leaders and regulators, we find that artisanal miners do not obey environmental regulations. This has led to environmental degradation, erosion, and excessive pollution, amongst other adverse effects.
In summary, our study shows that whilst the government of Nigeria is making laudable efforts to transform the solid mineral sector, the sector is still besieged with copious problems that go beyond institutional designs. These problems involve nearly every participant in the industry and have far reaching consequences not only for the mining industry but for the economy as a whole. Tailor-made policies and implementation are key. We detail our policy recommendations in the last chapter.
'Supporting an innovation agenda for the Western Balkans: Tools and methodologies'.
Co-Investigators: H. Hollanders & S. Owusu
Funding Institution: Joint Research Centre [JRC] – European Commission’s Science and Knowledge Service
Project Description: [Online]