Why are Nigerians Suspicious of Covid-19 Vaccines?

This article is part of IranWire's ongoing coverage of Covid-19 disinformation in different countries, in partnership with Health Studio.

By Aminu Abubakar for Health Studio

Since the outbreak of Covid-19 in Nigeria last February, authorities have been using lockdowns and other measures to contain the still-spreading disease. It’s hoped that vaccines will offer a more permanent solution, and the government has already secured 57 million doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca shot, the first of which are due to arrive at the end of the month.

But with many members of the public sceptical about the safety of the vaccine, authorities have a mammoth task ahead of them to get the nation inoculated against Covid-19.

Speed of Vaccine Development 

Research has shown the Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine is very safe, and it was recently approved by Nigeria’s National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control. But the speed at which it was developed has led to speculation over its safety on social media platforms including Facebook and Youtube in Nigeria.

These unevidenced suspicions, first spread by conspiracy theorists in the West, have been amplified locally, with celebrities and even some officials joining the bandwagon.

Dino Melaye, a Nigerian celebrity and former senator with a huge social media following, released a {{ __192396_videocomponent__video component__ }}">Youtube video in December advising Nigerians to reject any Covid-19 vaccines.

He told viewers: “For one hundred years we couldn’t find a vaccine for cancer. For over 40 years we are yet to find any vaccine for HIV/AIDS. For over another 100 years research has been going on to find a vaccine for diabetics, we are yet to find a vaccine. How is it possible on Earth that in one year you found a vaccine for Covid-19?”

Melaye’s statements about these diseases are both misleading and inaccurate as he is not comparing like for like. AIDS, cancer and diabetes are very different diseases to Covid-19, and it’s much harder for scientists to develop vaccines for them.

For example, HIV – the virus that causes AIDS – mutates very quickly. This has made it more difficult for researchers to create an effective vaccine, but efforts are ongoing.

Vaccines are in fact used to help prevent certain cancers that can be caused by viruses, like cervical cancer and liver cancer. Most cancers, however, are not caused by infection, so vaccines like those developed for Covid-19 would not be an effective way to prevent them.

Similarly, most cases of diabetes are not linked to infection. However, work is underway on vaccines that may one day prevent type 1 diabetes— which is usually caused by a malfunction of the body’s immune system — but the technology to vaccinate against diseases like Covid-19 is much more established.

Covid-19 vaccines may have been developed on an accelerated basis, but they are built on years of existing research. Scientists developed the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, for example, with technology previously used to make a vaccine for another new disease called Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), which emerged in 2012.

Side Effect Rumors

Reports of side effects in people who have had a Covid-19 shot in the West have also spread on social media and caused apprehension among the Nigerian public. Many people in Nigeria believe vaccines can cause infection with HIV, for example, following reports that people tested positive for the virus in Australia after getting the shot. Scientists clarified, however, that these were false positive results, and the vaccine could not cause HIV infection.

Although mild side effects like a sore arm are not uncommon after Covid-19 vaccination, severe side effects are very rare.

 

Anti-Western Sentiment

Strong anti-Western sentiment in Nigeria has also been used to spread false rumours about the vaccines. This sentiment is particularly common in the predominantly Muslim northern parts of the country, where a deep-seated but false belief that Western healthcare interventions are part of a conspiracy to reduce the population of Muslim and developing countries persists.

This attitude was strengthened by the deaths of 11 children and the serious injuries of many more from a highly controversial drug trial carried out by Pfizer in Kano, northern Nigeria’s largest city, during a triple epidemic of cholera, meningitis and measles in 1996.

Pfizer was accused of failing to obtain proper parental consent before giving children the experimental meningitis drug Trovan, and of giving those in a control group unusually low doses of “gold standard” treatment ceftriaxone. The events led to a four-year legal battle between Pfizer and the Kano state government, which ended in a multimillion-dollar settlement.

Since then, conspiracy theorists have been using the Trovan trial to sow disinformation about Covid-19 vaccines. Early in January 2021, Yahaya Bello, the governor of northern Kogi state, used the case to falsely allege the vaccines were intended to “{{ __192397_videocomponent__video component__ }}">kill.”

 

Lessons from Polio

Parallels can be drawn between the country’s upcoming Covid-19 vaccination campaign and its troubled but ultimately successful polio vaccination drive.

In August 2003 Kano state government suspended a polio vaccination campaign over similar suspicions voiced by some radical Islamic clerics. They claimed, without evidence, that the vaccine was laced with substances that could sterilise children as part of a US-led Western plot to depopulate Muslim and third world countries. The state eventually resumed vaccinations 13 months later after clinical trials in and outside Nigeria proved the shot was safe.

But this pause in vaccinations damaged the global polio eradication drive. Poliovirus spread at an alarming rate, with Kano becoming a global hub of transmission, alongside Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Proactive immunisation campaigns involving religious, traditional and community leaders have since helped people embrace the polio vaccine in Nigeria. The country successfully shed its polio-endemic status in September 2015 and was declared polio-free by the World Health Organization (WHO) on August 25, 2020.

Dr Ibrahim Musa, a consultant haematologist at Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital, says the Nigerian government needs to replicate the polio immunisation template to convince the public to welcome Covid-19 vaccines.

“With similar sustained sensitisation campaigns and the involvement of the local religious and traditional institutions, the suspicion against the vaccine will be gradually overcome,” he told Health Studio in late February. “[Officials] need to co-opt the polio immunisation structures into their Covid-19 vaccination strategies.”