COVID-19 and the decline of the social state in Nigeria’s federal democracy

Abstract

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic cuts across all spheres of human life, and it has exposed fundamental weaknesses in political values, governance systems, public health and social life in different parts of the world. In Africa, although with relatively less death rates than initially predicted, the pandemic has also exposed weaknesses in the continent’s political and public health systems. This article analyses how Nigeria’s public health sector has fared against the COVID-19 pandemic in the face of a declining social state and an ascending political state within a skewed federal democracy. This is useful for testing the relationship between effective public healthcare delivery and political systems in Africa.

Distinguishing between the social and political states, the article argues that the social state in Nigeria has declined further in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. Dialectically, as the social state declines, the political state ascends, and this is reflected in the considerations that drive the strained intergovernmental relations which characterise the federal and state governments’ responses to the coronavirus. Therefore, like all countries of the world irrespective of ideological leaning and political system, Nigeria needs a strong state with a social component in the long term to combat COVID-19. In the short term, measures aimed at changing the behavior of Nigerians will help arrest the growing tide of infections and death rates.