All propagandists for this regime, for this central regime, should by now know or ought to know that this is not a regime, that this is not a central regime to popularize further. This government is bereft of ideas, of solid ideas that are original in every sense and every meaning of the word “original.” And this coronavirus pandemic has proved well this observation. Unless someone, unless some professional either in the health sector or in the sector of politics or of security, proves me wrong in a manner devoid of politics or of flattery, I would stick to my gun – and go further to say that General Buhari’s government is the most highly unorganized form of political activity in our country’s history.
And because his is the most highly unorganized form of political activity ever known to us, his present regime is also the most highly unorganized form of intellectual activity ever witnessed in our land. This is in spite of some decent displays of some fine professionals, technocrats and intellectuals in our president’s government who don’t belong to his inner circle known in political parlance as his kitchen cabinet. This accounts, I believe, for our president’s inadequate activities so far in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic.
It is surprising that up to now our president and his inner circle are yet to know or realize fully that after all said and done we all are human beings. The almighty coronavirus ravaging everywhere has proved and demonstrated that every person, every man, every woman, no matter his or her status and standing in the society and the world must succumb to it. Thus every being, every human being, must be every human being’s keeper and relative in this moment of moments of pretty dangerous danger. Our president seemingly thinks otherwise. This must explain why the Nigerian masses and people are being treated the way that they are being treated so far. This explains why our country is being locked down so far without any real meaningful presidential efforts to provide for the locked down masses and people who must be provided for selflessly and in ways that ought to make them believe and know that they are truly loved by the leaders of our country.
We are a rich country of gifted people. But we are being treated as a country of gift-less people wonderfully unloved by their leaders who are not their genuine leaders. We are a rich country of gifted people. But we are being treated as a country of gift-less people who our Creator denied abundant resources that are abundant resources. We are a mockery of the rest of the world and a scorn in the mouths of their people. The rest of the world also suffer from the touch of coronavirus, but their suffering people pity us with more than a touch of grave pity.
How many people, how many of our countrymen and countrywomen are casualties of the President Buhari-inspired lockdown everywhere in the land minus good Edo State? Do we know? No! This must be the resounding answer. How can the people be locked down and locked out of their livelihood and existence without provision for them by those who have locked them down and out? Why do we imitate people outside our shores and their governments who mean well for them and who are providing them necessary needs and stimulus in their moments of critical need when our follow-follow central government lacks the impulse to construct a living life for our people in this exceptional time of coronavirus? And all the monies our big-time philanthropists have doled out, where have they gone into? All the billions, where have they entered? The people need them, in addition to some of what we have in our reserve, to act as timely stimulus to re-structure and reconstruct their lives as our governments lock them down and out until coronavirus returns to where it flew from.
It is not too late for our governments, especially the central government, to show sufficient sensibility that will alter the course of the casualties. Our people should suffer no more. Hunger must not ravage the casualties; our people should suffer no more, I repeat. Hunger must not ravage and kill our people as coronavirus is ravaging and killing people elsewhere.
We need a home-grown solution side-by-side the good feelings and good thoughts from abroad. But the good feelings and good thoughts must not be at the expense of our people and patriotic professionals. This is why I am at this moment feeling fine at the thought of our medical doctors who have resoundingly rejected the central government’s suicidal thought to invite Chinese medical doctors to come help us. How “conversant” are the Chinese doctors “with Nigeria’s culture, terrain and peculiar challenges,” as the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) has rightly argued? And as the National Association of Resident Doctors (NARD) has stated, “Nigeria is too important in the African continent to act carelessly in the face of this emerging but potent threat to human existence.
We need to holistically cross-examine the intent and purpose of the importation of the 18-man Chinese team” (The Guardian, Monday, April 6, 2020, page 6). And are the Chinese themselves “out of the woods”? By the way, how much is the central government going to pay the Chinese medical doctors? Can we compare the lousy salary our own medical doctors are being paid with the bountiful remuneration the Chinese medical doctors will be getting? Sincerely speaking, what our medical doctors will lose is definite, and what the Chinese medical doctors will gain is indefinite. And our country will continue to suffer casualties. And the billions of money donated so far will enter private pockets and corruption of coronavirus’ instigation and definition will extend very far. The Federal Government’s specious explanation or excuse for wanting to bring the so-called Chinese experts should be told to the marines. Our medical doctors should be courageous to say no to the end.
Our medical doctors understandably should not give full cooperation to the Chinese-imported imposters. And the coronavirus figures will mount and plateau and mount and plateau to the sky and beyond the sky with or without the lockdown in our country. This is an oracular statement. I will say no more.
What do we need? We need primarily the remarkable but universal intelligence of our medical doctors who could and would apply their intelligence swiftly to an answer that will give us our peculiar solution to the pandemic. Our governments must cooperate with them. Our governments must encourage them. Our governments must frequently provide them all necessary professional equipment they need for their professional activities and those of their fellow health workers. They need to be fabulously compensated as fabulous professionals.
Unfortunately, we do not in the present time have governments whose sensitivities and sensibilities possess the rare qualities relating to what they must do for their people. Let them continue to lock us down without stimulus. Tumultuous outcry of adjectives and more will soon visit them; and the casualties they are unleashing on us, on our land, will re-bounce to them in ways and manners un-foreseen by them and their babalawos and soothsayers. I will say no more. But the current outrage in our nation must cease to be now with alacrity. I will say no more before the deluge. Yes, before the deluge.
Afejuku can be reached via 08055213059.
