Daniel Akande

The spread of Coronavirus and its numerous deadly variants is raising concerns about the right to bodily autonomy across the world today. By bodily autonomy, as socialists, we refer to the right of a person to determine the choices of how his or her body is manipulated or controlled.

Following the introduction of compulsory vaccination by different capitalist governments across the world, this right to bodily autonomy is under attack. For instance, air transport passengers are now made to face compulsory vaccinations.

For us in the Movement for a Socialist Alternative (MSA), we are not opposed to science. While we agree that vaccinations should be taken by working-class people, they should also have the right to determine whether or not they want to be vaccinated and when.

Actions taken against the free will of working-class people constitute an infringement on their right to bodily autonomy. In Europe, there have been pro-bodily autonomy protests under the slogan of my body, my choice.

In Nigeria, this is reflected, for instance, by the commercialization of COVID-19 tests for both vaccinated and unvaccinated air transport passengers. We demand the abolition of the unjust and exploitative Covid-19 testing fees in Nigeria amounting to N39, 500 and N79, 500 for both inbound and outbound passengers respectively.

We are aware that the government has made resources available for this same test, received donations and funds for the same exercise both through government budgetary allocations and donations from imperialist countries. We favour a programme of enlightenment and reassurance of safety to assuage the fears of the unvaccinated to encourage them to get vaccinated.

While we are not opposed to any safety measure, we do not however agree that the question of our collective safety and health be subjected to a question of “cash and carry”, through making cash cow of air transport passengers, with the control directly handed out to Big Business. This simply means that those that can’t afford it and if already infected; will simply walk away unable to know their health status.

This, we think is endangering the health of the whole of society. We call for serious steps to be taken to make vaccination accessible to all, especially in the face of a new variant designated as Omicron now spreading all over and confirmed to be more deadly.

We regard the payment of the high COVID-19 test fees imposed on the passengers by the National Centre for Disease Control, the Federal Ministry of Health (Port Health Services), the Presidential Task Force on Covid-19 as extortive, exploitative and insensitive.

With hurriedly established private laboratories for COVID-19 tests purposefully put in place to enrich Big businesses in most cases fronting for government officials and their cronies.
We insist that Nigerian hospitals and laboratories should also be approved to carry out testing of the Covid-19 virus for both the inbound and outbound passengers at little or no cost.

Moreover, we demand improved funding of the healthcare sector and nationalization of the Covid-19 testing centres under the democratic control of healthcare workers. Added to this, the test centres should be taken over by the government to enhance their maximum capacity in conducting the COVID-19 tests.

The activities in these Testing Centers should be controlled and managed by the mass of the working people, professional medical and health workers and elected community representatives and their organizations. This will make the centres work effectively without paying exorbitant fees and this will help in reducing the rate of COVID-19 virus transmission in Nigeria.

We strongly hold that this must be the responsibility of the government. We also call for the proper funding of the healthcare sector and its democratic management by the elected representatives of workers and their unions and to make it possible to tackle the regime of corrupt practices by government officials and political office holders, who often mismanage the paltry amount allocated to the health sector.

We call for adequate payment of hazard allowance for workers of the Port Health Services and other entry points into the country and every other layer of the working class, who like the front line workers face daily exposure to this endangering disease at great risk to their lives in order keep the rest of us safe.

We are not unmindful that they earn peanuts as salaries and these salaries are not paid as and when due. We also insist on compensation to children and families of these frontline workers who meet their tragic death at work.

Painfully, the country still lacks basic equipment in treating or adequately testing for the Covid-19 virus. The commercialisation of COVID-19 tests has led to the case that individuals can now pay their way through without having to conduct any test.

This is evident when some Nigerian air transport passengers who have the Covid-19 virus, especially the Omicron variant were caught in London by the UK health officials, even with all of the documents at hand certifying them not to be positive. This was the reason for the ban on air flights to and from Nigeria by the United Kingdom.

For us in the MSA, we demand that concerned Nigerians, medical professionals and health workers’ unions, Trade Union Congress (TUC), and the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC ) should join us in demanding that the Covid-19 test in Nigeria be accessible at little or no cost howsoever.

We also demand that all private laboratories be nationalized under democratic control and management of workers and the working masses.

This struggle is in solidarity with air transport passengers of whom most of them are poor Nigerians, who are on the daily basis paid exorbitant fees on the Covid-19 test while travelling out for education and for business purposes. It is only by our united struggle that victory can be attained.