By Simon Kolawole What a year. WhatAyear. What. A. Year. Muddled and fragmented. Masked up and washed up. It was a tasteless year, the year we could barely smell the coffee, the year humanity was severely fatigued. It was the year that soaked our hands in an ocean of sanitizers and distanced us from each other. It was the year that mercilessly coughed up the sick and the elderly, raising their temperature and taking their breath away. We cannot even cough in peace; we will start suspecting we have caught the virus. Someone, or some people, ate bat in Wuhan, China, and the rest of us — who did not as much as have a bite of the weird mammal — started washing our hands all over the world. How can humanity ever forget 2020 and the coronavirus devastation that shaped it? On January 18, 2020, around 1:30pm, I was catching up on latest developments across the world on the BBC website when I came across the headline: “New virus in China ‘will have infected hundreds’.” Virus? China? I panicked a bit. What came to my mind instantly was the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) pandemic of 2002-2004. And any infectious disease that breaks out in China will certainly affect more than China. The BBC story itself was not that alarming: there had been only 60 officially confirmed cases and two deaths — although China, being China, would always fiddle with figures. After reading the story, I immediately sent the link to Mallam Abba Kyari, who was then chief of staff to President Muhammadu Buhari. I added a very short note: “Good afternoon Mallam. We need to watch it.” I usually alerted him to things I considered to be “matters of urgent national importance” and we would argue over the fine details thereafter. The biggest argument we had over the virus was whether or not the airports should be closed to international flights when the pandemic started biting harder in March. I argued in favour of closing the airports. While not opposed to it per se, Kyari said he was more worried about our capacity to manage cases if there was an outbreak. Life! Kyari would later catch the virus. After nearly three weeks of treatment at the First Cardiologist Hospital in Lagos, he reportedly tested negative. He was preparing to be discharged when he came down again. The virus had aggravated his delicate health. He could not survive the complications. Between the time I shared the BBC story with him and the time he died from the virus, it was exactly one day short of three months. It was surreal. Anytime I go through our WhatsApp conversations on what was later named Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) by the World Health Organization (WHO), I always feel a chill in my soul. I had no inkling he was going to be a victim. Life! The COVID-19 pandemic turned the world upside down in 2020, infecting 80 million people and killing 1.75 million so far — and these are just the officially captured figures. The nature of the disease means that many of those infected never knew they were, never had mild or severe symptoms, and were never captured in the reporting. A safer guess would be that over 200 million might have been infected. And given the global fatality rate and the fact that only deaths recorded in hospitals and care homes were captured in most countries, we can also safely assume that over two million souls have been lost to the pandemic. That is a lot to lose to a new disease in one year. But things could have been worse. When the Spanish flu gripped the world from 1918 to 1920, between 17 million and 50 million deaths were reported from 500 million infections. There were other estimates putting the death toll at over 100 million since data from many countries were not captured. Although we are still in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic without any certainty on its end, we can presume that we would not record 17 million deaths, much less 50 million or over 100 million. Science is more advanced today; more so, there is an experience to learn from. Experimental drugs are also producing results and saving lives, and vaccines are being produced in record time. Yet, what has apparently saved millions of lives is not medication or ventilator. It is not some sophisticated product. It is a piece of clothing. You can even make it at home. It is the face mask. You can improvise. Just cover your mouth and nose anyway you can. The coronavirus infects mainly through droplets from the mouth and nose. The fastest way to catch the virus is to inhale or ingest the infected droplets, sometimes with the aid of the air conditioning system. Keeping your distance is good but better with covering your mouth and nose. Washing your hands is good but better with covering your mouth and nose. So it is the face mask plus other things. It saves lives! I would say 2020 was the Year of the Face Mask. It was the most adorned piece of clothing. It was one little piece of clothing that unified the human race. The divides created by race, gender, religion and ethnicity fizzled out under the mask. We realised that we are all humans, all said and done. Coronavirus was the leveller. It did not discriminate along the artificial lines that we have segregated humanity. We are all wearing the face mask, no matter the colour of our cassock, the hue of our hijab and the tint of our tassels. The face mask is the fabric that ties us together as humanity comes under severe attack. If face mask was to be a human being, it would be the Person of the Year. Historians have traced the origins of “face covering” for hygienic purposes to several centuries ago, as far back as Before Christ, but it would

There was a huge sigh of relief across the country last Wednesday when the Academic Staff Union of Universities [ASUU] national president Prof. Biodun Ogunyemi announced a “suspension” of his union’s crippling, nine-month-old strike action that has kept all public universities closed even after the country emerged from the pandemic-induced lockdown. Ogunyemi said in Abuja that the decision to resume work was because an agreement was reached with the Federal Government at a meeting a day before, which he said addressed most of ASUU’s demands. A committee was also set up to monitor implementation of the agreements. The restive union’s leader added a threat that “should government fail to fulfil its own part of the agreement, ASUU will resume its suspended strike as deemed necessary.” Most Nigerians had grown too weary of the strike to even notice the terms of the deal, or even the issues that precipitated the strike. Most publicized of them was ASUU’s insistence on its members not enrolling in government’s Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System [IPPIS]. They instead want to be paid under their own University Transparency and Accountability Solution [UTAS] software. ASUU’s other, less publicized demands however included funding for revitalization of public university infrastructure, paying Earned Academic Allowances, paying withheld salaries, checking the proliferation of state universities, instituting visitation panels for public universities, and reconstitution of government’s team to re-negotiate previous agreements. Ogunyemi said an agreement was reached for the immediate release of Earned Academic Allowances, mainstreaming EAA into the annual budget; and government expediting action to deploy UTAS for the payment of university salaries. Unfortunately, ASUU had to call off the strike at a time when government does not have enough money to meet all the demands. It only agreed to pay the lecturers’ withheld salaries and earned academic allowances in a staggered fashion, stretching into next year, when it hopes to have more money. As it happened, the suspension of ASUU’s protracted strike immediately unleashed more chaos in the universities, with three non-academic staff unions threatening to go on strike after rejecting their members’ alleged share of the N40 billion funds to be released for EAA. Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities (SSANU), Non-Academic Staff Union of Educational and Associated Institutions (NASU) and National Association of Academic Technologists (NAAT] leaders said only 25% of the money is slated for their members and they demanded a higher share. It is difficult to see why non-academic staffers should demand a share of “earned academic allowances.” The inescapable conclusion is that ASUU’s notorious history of going on prolonged strikes all too often since the 1980s, and government’s caving in to them, has spread like COVID-19 to the other unions. This awful tradition must be brought to an end. It looks like no ASUU leadership legitimizes itself in the eyes of its members unless and until it leads a protracted strike action. Even though ASUU claims to be fighting to improve the condition of our universities, these incessant strike actions have greatly contributed to the deterioration of whatever standards are left in our campuses. In fact, most parents who send their wards to school abroad say they do so because of incessant ASUU strikes, not because of alleged poor standards in our universities. Nor should government cave in to the notorious “non victimization clause” after every protracted strike and pay people salaries for work not done. This is a violation of the no work, no pay law which is standard throughout the world. If ASUU were to bear responsibility for paying its members’ salaries anytime it called them out on strike, like trade unions must do in Europe and North America, its leaders would think twice before they undertake a nine-month strike action. Going forward, the intellectuals that they are, ASUU members should learn to maximally utilize other opportunities afforded by the democratic system, instead of these incessant strikes. They are an archaic throwback response to the days of dictatorship. All these are not in any way to exculpate government for its own notorious record of reaching agreements with trade unions that it has neither capacity nor intention to implement. Daily Trust