Entrepreneurship is the process of identifying and profitably exploiting opportunities. It starts with entrepreneurial alertness. Criminal entrepreneurship in the WAC (War against Coro) is thus the ability to identify and optimise opportunities for criminal enrichment in the management of the pandemic. This is not limited to Nigeria. Before we move into the main item on the agenda, here are some updates
It is gladdening that Lagos has flattened the curve, and that Nigeria recorded just 79 new cases on 13/9/20. It is however an irony that on that day, the world recorded the highest single-day rise in new cases. The PTF also reports that States no longer conduct tests and have also stopped submitting their figures as only 13 states submitted their figures on 13/9/20. In another twist, Plateau State, has taken the “silver medal” in Nigeria, and even upstaged Lagos in the highest number of new cases on Friday,11/9/20. There is also the worrisome report that the cost of Coro testing in Nigeria is the second highest in Africa ($131) after Morocco ($136), while it is $86 for Ghana, $30 for Egypt and $0 for Madagascar, Sudan and Cameroun (that is FREE!!!). Is this a part of criminal entrepreneurship? There is even a beer-parlour talk (even though I am not a beer-parlour patron) that the thing is supplied free to us. (I hope there is no N5m fine attached to beer-parlour news).
When LASU announced its resumption, I asked no one in particular (on 3/9/20), “with which lecturers?” Well, on Monday, 14/9/20, the lecturers and other staff locked out the VC from the campus. Three weeks ago (27/8), I announced the availability of a $1.5 million face mask being produced by an Israeli Company, Yvel. Well I am glad to announce that I have identified some affordable brands, including the $1k Louis Vuitton mask, and another golden one for $5000 from India and then, a hand-made, local content one for less than $.01.Muo & Muo unlimited is the authorized distributor for these affordable facemasks and still out of my kindness, they will be priced in Naira.
Finally, the Non-Communicable Disease Alliance has announced that Hypertension, Cancer and HIV et al kill about 600,000 Nigerians annually. So? Why have we diverted all attention and resources to Coro, which has mercifully killed only 1093 as at 14/9/20, while ignoring the major killers, including malaria, diabetes and birth-related deaths? It appears that we have, borrowing an analogy from Peter Obi, locked up our shop to run after shop-rats. Have we totally abandoned all health issues so as to fight Coro, the latest Sherriff in town? Well, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in its “2020 Goalkeepers Report” has also raised alarm that Coro, in its 25 weeks of rampage has reversed the gains recorded in the health sector in the past 25 years. This is because governments have diverted all resources to Coro while people have stopped going to hospitals to avoid being infected while hospitals also do not have the time for non-Coro patients! We need to have a strategic rethink.
Now on coro-related criminal entrepreneurship.
Coro-related criminal entrepreneurship is pervasive and diverse; it is deep and wide; it is in cash and kind; it is big and small and it is routine and extraordinary. Down to specifics, an avalanche of fake taskforce members are on the prowl in Anambra, were some Task-Force officials were “caught in the act of collecting their fine in kind, (sexually that is) from a girl who flouted the face-mask protocol, right inside the task-force vehicle. Probably they had learnt from Inspector Peter Iba of River State, who raped a lady all night long for face-mask violation.
He argued that it was between willing buyer and willing seller, and that he settled her with N4000! In faraway Kenya, a prison warden raped a quarantined female Coro patient while James Mbam, of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps, was caught smuggling two people into Ebonyi( surely for a fee!) during the period of interstate lockdown. There were also verifiable reports of extortion bazaar along our highways, during the interstate lockdown while Nigerian Customs also impounded a COVID-19 vehicle used for smuggling frozen chicken from Bene Republic. The vehicle was arrested at Ijebuode
The Ekwulobia Community in Anambra State protested against Reverend Emeka Ezike and two others were accused of cornering the communal share of palliatives, while in Niger state, some palliatives found their way into the open market and others ended up in a private warehouse. In Kano, a bench warrant had to be issued for the arrest of Kabiru Ado-Panshekara, the Chairman of Kumbotso LGA, over palliative diversion. In Abuja, people flooded the market with fake sanitisers while some Pharmacies indulged in price deceit. In the same Abuja, Charles George, a fake doctor was treating Coro patients in his one-room apartment.
In Congo, two doctors were arrested over fake Coro diagnosis while in Bangladesh, Mohammed Shaheed, a hospital owner was arrested over fake coronavirus test results. Out of the 10,500 coronavirus conducted by the hospital 4,200 were genuine and 6300 given without conducting tests” I don’t know whether this is similar to viral response from an unknown lab to an oversea-bound client “If you come to us, N60, 000, if we come to you, N75000; if we don’t come to us and we don’t come to you, N40000. What does the last option mean?
We now move to more serious matters in criminal entrepreneurship. In South Africa, the Auditor General reports that corruption has become ‘amplified’, with a ‘frightening’ misuse of coro funds as, for example, PPEs are bought at 400 percent of their market price. In the same South Africa, 7 men stormed the OR Tambo Airport in a failed attempt to steal PPEs. Moving to high profile cases, The Bolivian Minister of health bought 179 ventilators at the $27,683 apiece while it actually goes for a maximum of $12,000 each,
In Zimbabwe, the Minister of Health Obadiah Moyo got enmeshed in a $60m Coro fraud, which included the procurement of facemasks at $28 (N13,000) apiece. Two Nigerians, Adesanya and Abass, were involved in € 2,380000 Coro scam while a small boy, David Hines, in Miami defrauded the government of $4m in Coronavirus Funds, and used $318,000 to buy Lamborghini the same thing that Andrew Marnell did to the tune of $9m gambled some of it away in Las Vegas. In an insider-dealing, corporate governance infraction, some executives made billions of Dollars when the shares of their companies soared after the US government shortlisted their vaccines in its Operation Warp Speed programme.
In another high-wire global case, UK, US and Canada accused Russia of coro-vaccine theft and in what has been called the covid-bonanza in UK, over 177 contracts worth over £1bn were awarded under the fast-tract rules to private companies without going through normal bidding protocols. Similarly in Nigeria N534m worth of Coro emergency contracts (including N18m for liquid soap, N40m for custom facemasks and N48m for sanitisers by NSCDC), were awarded to 19 unknown contractors and others which did not meet the procurement protocols.
Some of us subjected ourselves to self-imprisonment; some of us are busy saying prayers against Coro while others are making billions in hard currencies from the same coro. In this criminal entrepreneurship, the opportunities which people identified and exploited depended on their status (fake doctor) interests (sexual gratification and diversion of palliatives), level of covetousness ($60m in Congo) and deployed the outcome on their fancies (gambling or Lamborghini). My question is: when shall we investigate and arrest, charge and dismiss our own ministers and officials for coro fraud, as they did in Bolivia, Zimbabwe and Congo? When? Meanwhile, let the criminal entrepreneurs continue “enterpreneuring”; one day, monkey go go market, e no go return!
