School Resumption Nigeria Medical Association (NMA) Should Break Out Of Intellectual Complacency.

Nigeria Parents Forum, NPF, has taken note of the concerns of Nigeria Medical Association predicting doom for the country should schools resume on 4th August, 2020 as announced by the Federal Government of Nigeria. To further buttress the position of NMA, the association's National President, Prof. Innocent Ujah in an interview the NMA President granted to a national daily, made references to South Africa and Ghana which opened schools but had to close them down because of Covid-19 spike. Prof. Ujah in a later part of the interview admitted that "... some have made reference to the fact that it (Ghana) has re-opened (schools)". The NMA boss advised that "the circumstances that led to re-opening (of schools) in Ghana should be studied because it is not enough to import cut-and paste ideas."

Prof. Ujah's interview on the proposed school resumption; and roles of the Nigeria Medical Association over the years especially NMA's responses so far to the Corona virus pandemic and the development of the Nigerian healthcare sector smack of abdication of duties and intellectual complacency. Without prejudice to the patriotic efforts of some members of Nigeria Medical Association, Nigeria Parents Forum is worried that a frontline professional association like NMA expected to exploit scientific methods to set precedents and break all barriers to Nigerians' healthcare have abandoned these roles and taken up roles of prophets of doom and alarmists. Nigeria Parents Forum recalls that since the Covid-19 pandemic, the Nigerian Medical Association has not generated any autochthonous or home-made scientific response to the pandemic. All we have had from NMA are alarms, prophecies of impending doom and robotic application of foreign templates to Nigerians even when it is clear that the strain of Covid-19 in Africa, nay Nigeria, is different from that in Europe; and in spite of the fact that Africans who are generally negroids are not as vulnerable to respiratory diseases as caucasians, mongoloids and other peoples of the world. It is also sad that NMA never showed sufficient interests in the efforts of local researchers in search of panaceas to the pandemic. Prof. Ujah and the NMA need to tell Nigerians what local content the professional body has generated or infused in the global bid to contain the virus. At least, the entire world saw the creative efforts of medical professionals and researchers in Ghana, Madagascar et cetera which were beyond the routine frontline professional duties at the isolation centres. It is also disheartening that the statistics of Covid-19 cases which in Nigeria which Prof. Ujah taunted in the interview contained the number of Covid-19 deaths in Nigeria and excluded the number of Covid-19 recoveries and the drugs used to treat them. What is the position of NMA on the recent revelations of Nigerian-trained Dr. Immanuel at Washington DC over Covid-19 cure and prevention? Prof. Ujah should steer the Nigerian Medical Association out of stereotype and intellectual complacency and the tradition of passing blames to Government. NMA and Nigerian researchers should emulate the courage and intiatives of scientists of the Research And Production agency of the defunct Republic of Biafra who in the face of the civil war emergency broke routine barriers of science and technology and made useful inventions which sustained the young but now defunct Republic without Government assistance.

Nigeria Parents Forum hereby rejects the faulty and unorthodox opinion of NMA on the planned resumption of schools as stated by Prof. Innocent Ujah and frowns at the fact that NMA has ignored the danger of ignorance to humanity. If markets and worship places have opened in Nigeria and there were no spikes, schools which run on a near-regimental administrative set-up should resume without extra-curricular activities especially for examination classes which include primary 6, junior secondary 3 and senior secondary 3 classes. Covid-19 is injurious to humanity, but ignorance is far more injurious to humanity. Our responses to the pandemic should not promote ignorance by locking down schools perpetually over a virus that has no timeline.

Nigeria Parents Forum stands by the Federal Government of Nigeria and indeed other State Governments; and encourages them in their bid to unlock schools for the education of Nigeria's future generations on 4th August, 2020. Man is a purpose-oriented creature whose life is not meant to be kept in the safe but to spent in utilitarian interactions. Nigeria Parents Forum is also seeing the emerging light at the end of the tunnel of Covid-19 pandemic; and prays God to stoke that light into full dazzle for the benefit of mankind and the glory of His name.

(Monday Eze is the National Coordinator of Nigeria Parents Forum)