Victoria Ibezim-Ohaeri and Emem Okon

A little over 100 days after the index case was confirmed on the 27th of February 2020, Nigeria’s Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) reported 13,464 confirmed coronavirus cases and 365 deaths (as of June 10, 2020). Nigeria, as elsewhere in the world, is under severe pressure to take strident steps towards controlling the spread of the virus and mitigating the impact of infection on affected populations.

A flurry of disease containment and mitigation measures were quickly introduced in the country—particularly the state-mandated lockdown—involving the total cessation of all non-essential movement, suspension of social and economic activities, a ban on public gatherings, school and office closures, as well as the directive for people to stay at home. As necessary as these measures were, the resulting surge of unintended adverse consequences on the local economy, health systems, traditional livelihoods, food security, maternal wellbeing, security and the informal sector, have serious implications on the social, economic and cultural rights (ESC) of citizens, especially the most vulnerable groups such as women and children.

In Nigeria, informal business activity is so pervasive that it accounted for about 65% of Nigeria’s 2017 GDP. From the roadside mechanics and vulcanizers, to petty traders and the artisans smelting iron, carving woodworks, or engaged in carpentry or furniture-making; the tricycle riders, the shop-based tailors and street-based cloth menders; the hairdressers and barbers; the electricians and the technicians; the market women transporting and selling wholesale and retail agro-produce; the bricklayers and daily-wage workers on construction sites; traders dealing in second hand wares, street-hawkers of assorted products: the list is legion. They populate the streets, every corner, within public and private spaces and depend on their daily income for survival.

Women are particularly overrepresented among the low-wage workforce engaged in small and informal businesses, and predominantly living in the most precarious areas often known as slums.  Because they are mostly self-employed, self-provisioning and self-producing on a subsistence basis, infection control measures that require them to stay at home, observe social distancing and avoid mass gatherings hits hard on their livelihoods and income-generating strategies

Without an income, women are unable to feed their families, renew the rent for their homes and small shops, pay utility bills and cater for the needs of their dependents. Other than the government-provided palliatives, mainly in the form of food supplies designed to last a few weeks, introducing far-reaching social assistance programmes is necessary to facilitate the recovery of collapsing small-scale businesses while enabling the most vulnerable to cope with the impacts of the pandemic and mitigating the socio-economic consequences.

The differentiated impacts of the emergency responses on men and women clearly evince that gender is an important driver of risk and infection. Consistent with the traditional constructs of gender roles, women are responsible for domestic chores like fetching water, fetching firewood, cooking, washing, subsistence fishing and farming, going to markets, caring for the sick, the young and the elderly in the home. Most of these domestic chores are undertaken outdoors, which keeps the women outside, hindering their ability to adhere to the recommended safety protocols to stay-at-home. For women living in urban slums, adherence to social distancing protocols is much more difficult because they live in overcrowded buildings, cook outside and share sanitary facilities—such as toilets and bathrooms—with numerous occupants. For their counterparts in the under-served rural communities, clusters of women sell their daily fish catches or agro-produce in the local markets, fetch firewood from nearby farms and forests, or fetch water from the local river. In performing these social and traditionally-constructed gender roles, women’s daily outdoor activities involving constant interaction with surfaces doubly raises their risk of infection.

Beyond the traditional gender roles, pre-existing problems of inadequate housing, lack of access to basic amenities, environmental pollution and degradation are also undermining women's resilience and ability to comply with health protocols. For instance, only citizens with a roof above their heads can comply with the government's stay-at-home directive. The housing deficit in Nigeria is estimated at 17 to 20 million housing units, increasing annually by 900, 000 units.  Further, millions of people lose their homes annually for various reasons. In the thick of the lockdown, a demolition exercise at Yaya Abatan to Obawole in Ogba, Ikeja, Lagos by Lagos state authorities on April 22, 2020, displaced 300 persons, including many female-headed households. State-ordered demolitions characteristically target under-served slum communities housing urban poor households, vulnerable communities and small-scale businesses. The displacement exercises potentially increase the risk of displaced populations contracting and spreading COVID-19 as they cannot self-isolate in a safe space nor comply with the movement restrictions.

Pre-existing health, social and environmental conditions in rural areas like the oil resource extraction zones in Nigeria’s Niger Delta region predispose local populations to the more serious complications of coronavirus. A recent brief by SPACES FOR CHANGE and KEBETKACHE WOMEN revealed that the pandemic is exacerbating pre-existing asymmetries and other social and economic rights deprivations in the Niger Delta region. Decades of petroleum exploration and production by oil multinational corporations have resulted in massive pollution, environmental degradation, total or partial destruction of vegetation in many oil-rich, yet poor communities, destroying the peoples’ ability to live and make a livelihood. As independent studies like the United Nations Environment Programme established, the types of chemicals present in crude and refined oils and released during its combustion, may lead to short-term respiratory problems and skin and eye irritation if concentrations are sufficiently high. This finding raises an alarm bell, especially when placed side by side with the World Health Organization’s (WHO’s) caution that people with pre-existing non-communicable diseases such as respiratory diseases appear to be more vulnerable to becoming severely ill with the coronavirus. The implication is that underlying health conditions often associated with crude oil production predisposes oil-rich communities to greater risk of being disproportionately harmed by the coronavirus.

Compliance with frequent hand-washing recommended by health experts is premised on the availability of basic social amenities such as constant water supply. Urban slums lack basic amenities like potable water and sanitary facilities. The same fate befalls resource-rich rural communities devastated by decades of oil spills that have contaminated rivers and water sources, limiting access to clean water needed for handwashing. Across both urban and rural divides, the household expense incurred in buying water from private boreholes for washing and cooking doubles in the face of increased handwashing and hygiene demands.  

Likewise, health disparities have always existed between urban and rural areas, but the pandemic is now widening the gap. The COVID-19 testing and isolation centres are for the most part, located in the urban areas or city centres. For rural dwellers, infections will be easier to report and manage, and deaths avoided if people have access to emergency care located not too far away from them.  The dusk-to-dawn curfews and movement restrictions in place pose additional constraints on access to healthcare during a pandemic for rural dwellers.

The disproportionate impacts of COVID-19 on vulnerable groups like women demonstrate that human rights, particularly ESCR must lie at the core of COVID-19 emergency responses. Importantly too, the state must take gender into consideration when developing their executive or legislative responses to COVID-19. With many states easing the lockdown restrictions and more knowledge about effective epidemic control strategies emerging across jurisdictions, the time has now come to revise policies and emergency responses to align with the needs and rights of those who continue to disproportionately suffer the most negative effects—women.

Victoria Ibezim-Ohaeri is the founder and Director of research and policy at Spaces for Change [S4C], a non-profit organization based in Nigeria that conducts cutting-edge research and advocacy focusing on strategic sectors such as urban governance, gender inclusion, energy policy and defending the civic space. She is an SXSW 2013 honoree, 2016 Desmond Tutu Fellow and 2015 Harvard University alumni. Twitter: @spaces4change

Emem Okon is the Director of the Port Harcourt Study Centre of the Centre-LSD Leadership School. She a Co-Founder of Women Initiative on Climate Change(WICC)  a grassroots network of community women groups working on gender and climate change.  She is on the Board of Trustees and the Regional Steering Committee of WoMIN Africa Gender and Extractive Alliance. Twitter: @kebetkachewomen