Nigerian Islamists veto vaccines

Opposition to the vaccine has been strengthened by a 1996 controversy in Kano involving Pfizer, the US drug company. A group of Nigerians has taken the company to court on behalf of more than 30 people who either died or were disabled after allegedly taking an experimental meningitis drug. Pfizer has denied wrongdoing. The case was reopened by a US appeal court last year.

The Pfizer case is cited by a number of people of Kano as a reason to be suspicious of the polio vaccine - and outside influence. Adamu Kachalla, a textiles trader, says northern Nigeria needs to be wary of attempts by Western countries to impose their values on Muslim societies. "They are not doing it without materialistic reason," he says.

Observers say northern Nigeria has always sought to preserve a strong identity in a country formed when the British colonialists fused the northern half with the predominantly Christian south in 1914. The northern region is poor and undeveloped even by the standards of a nation in which average incomes are estimated by the International Monetary Fund at a little more than a dollar a day.

Most of the military dictators who have dominated the country's postindependence politics came from the north, instituting a system in which wealth tended to trickle down to the northern region through the largess of influential men rather than through any coordinated attempts at development.

The result, analysts say, is that the region's leaders generally command great loyalty from people who have little hope of advancement through other means. Gen. Sani Abacha, the former dictator whose brutal rule turned Nigeria into an international pariah state, still has a prominent street named after him in Kano.

The vaccine dilemma is seen by some observers as the latest privation endured by northern Nigerians under a ruling elite that has long used a mixture of religion and politics to reinforce its power.

Men in and around the city's main market say they support the Kano government's position, and some say that strong, Islamic-based political leadership is critical in guiding their own decisions.

"We depend on our religion," says Mohammed Kabir, a Kano student. "Anything our leader says, we are going to agree with him."

Since the return of civilian rule in 1999, a dozen northern Nigerian states, including Kano, have imposed strict forms of Islamic law involving punishments such as amputation and stoning to death. Other northern states such as Zamfara, the first state to impose strict sharia, initially stayed out of the polio campaign but have since joined.

Back at the Physical Handicap Association of Nigeria workshop, Bello is torn between his respect for authority and his desire that others not suffer the hardships he has endured. He accepts the state government's conclusion that the polio vaccine is unsafe but adds that he thinks inoculation is a very good idea in principle.

"Things must not go on as they are now," he says. "There must be a way out."

Page: 1 | 2