The victims of the rampaging coronavirus pandemic are not just those in the cemetery or the hopefuls at the intensive care units, hospital wards or isolation centres. They include the rest of humanity, legion of those who do not yet know their status. They include those whose future have become uncertain, particularly because they have lost jobs, or their businesses have been negatively impacted. Among them are those whose health has been hampered because of the concern over how to handle debt repayment or the businesses that have gone awry even after financial commitments that cannot be reversed. Thus, by the time the lockdown following efforts to curtail the spread of coronavirus may have been lifted in countries across the world millions of businessmen and women would be in one crisis or the other.
However, some of these may be mitigated because of the stimuli put in place by the government. The difference will only be in the type of the stimulus per country and the method put in place, as well as the system within which they are to be applied. What is certain is that no business, including those that were exempted from the lockdown, like food and medication, has not been impacted. For instance, livestock farmers have been groaning in pains, complaining that the lockdown has made it difficult for them to cater for their animals.
At the piggery farm in the Oke Aro area of Ogun State, aside from the lockdown preventing several farmers and their attendants to access the farm, they could also not get feeds to the animals. Unfortunately, by the time the lockdown was eased, except for inter-state, the farm, said to be the largest in West Africa was ravaged with swine fever. Over 145,000 pigs were lost. And in the desperate attempt to cut their losses farmers had to sell pigs at giveaway prices. It is said that about 3,000 farmers and over 10,000 attendants have lost their livelihood to that crisis. Bello Dogodaji, national secretary of Agricultural Commodities Association told the media that the sector has been hard hit by the lockdown. Perhaps the telecommunications industry may stand out. That is like a drop in the ocean. In Nigeria, as it is in many other countries, the aviation industry is counting losses by the day. In the absence of business, airlines will have to pay for parking their planes. While they could ask some staff to proceed on leave without pay, there are certain kinds of staff, particularly in the technical section that must be guarded jealously. That is not all. By the time the lockdown is over, many of the aircrafts would have to be taken for checks, having been idle for some time. The loss of business in the aviation has a viral effect on the catering companies that serve the inflight foods. And in a country where many players in aviation industry were at the precipice before the lockdown, only government intervention would be the way out. That is also a problem, as the government has had to cut down the national budget twice because of the slide in the price of crude oil, which is the main stay of the nation’s economy.
Captains of industry are counting their losses as Covid-19 continued to take a toll on economic and social life in the world. But even worse than that is the fear that the immediate future looks bleak, with uncertain recovery plans in place.
The President of the Rivers/Bayelsa State Branch of the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria, Adawari Pepple told the magazine that many of the manufacturers may never recover from the aftermath of the pandemic. Pepple painted a grim picture of what manufacturers are going through because of Covid-19. “It has been a loss-loss situation to us,” he says.
“At the moment, virtually all the businesses are shut down. Even the manufacturers of essential goods have been forced to drastically reduce their operations, and in some cases have been forced to shut down totally. My members have managed to pay last month’s [April] salary. We just pray and hope that members will be able to pay the salaries for this month [May], which of course is going to be a very, very difficult thing to do. I will tell you; manufacturing is not like the business of governance where every month, you go somewhere, and you draw some allocations and you use it to pay. In our own case we have to generate the income by producing and by selling and people buying from us. All these factors are nil at the moment, and so there is nothing we can do.”
“Many businesses are retrenching. They have activated business continuity plan including cutting down staff salaries, cutting down the number of staff and having staff do multiple tasks,” Emi Membere-Otaji, a national officer of the Nigerian Association of Chambers of Commerce, Industry, Mines and Agriculture, told the magazine.
Even businesses that have been allowed to operate because they were providing essential services are not doing any better because the shutdowns have not allowed them to access their markets and clients. “It is not all about being authorized to operate, but it is about being able to access your markets. And in this instance, it has been a very herculean task for manufacturers to transport their goods within and across state borders. And this has impacted very negatively on the activities of manufacturers,” Pepple says.
Membere-Otaji, who is the immediate-past President of Port Harcourt Chamber of Commerce, Industry, Mines and Agriculture, told the magazine that even with the shutdowns a lot of businesses are still running costs. “Your fixed costs are still there. Your generators are working; your power bills are running. The planes are parked at the airports and they are paying costs for parking. I know that because I am a mariner. I own vessels and my vessels are parked. They are parked in Onne. You are not working but you are paying per day for parking them,” he laments.
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