It is important to truly get into it and say those things about us that most people are polite about. As a people we tend to take alarm bells rather casually. So they say don’t use that bridge, it is 90 percent gone. We are going to first of all deploy our democratic right to use it and apply intellectual rigour to the rest of it. Although a professor of political history, we shall apply our academic prowess to the bridge and dare anyone who says it’s not strong to come forward.
In fact, if perchance we were on the committee that was part of building it ten years ago, we shall speak a lot of English on the political histrionics of the bridge and how the powers in the state are working assiduously to fix it and how it is safe. In fact, on a full blown television interview, we will praise the state government for its steadfastness and assure the state citizens of the safety of the bridge. Yet we are not Engineers. Two weeks later, the bridge will fall on pedestrians and careless Nigerians who take no heed and also poor Nigerians who spoke no English and had no choice. Visits will be paid to the families of the deceased. Compensations will be touted and then we move on. We are neither a people of deep analysis nor a people of data and therein lies our tragedy.
That Nigeria has quite a number of very intelligent people in sub Saharan Africa does not change that fact. With our brilliant minds we still tend to believe in ourselves, ignore science and often times live in the rumour mill. Our self-entitlement and ostrich behaviour does not help matters.
Enter the Coronavirus. Wash your hands… we act like we cannot hear. Sanitise… like what? All of a sudden there are all kinds of emulsions popping up. We are now selling cream mixed with groundnut oil and “kain -kain” to our citizens and we call it sanitiser. Last week I walked into a facility where I was offered hand sanitiser that felt like glue. After I left, I felt like my hands were dirtier than when I went in and had to scrub and scrub before I had some peace of mind.
All over the internet are fly by night doctors and experts in Coronavirus. Everyone is speaking at once and those addicted to social media including mischief makers are everywhere giving idiotic advice and reposting what they do not know anything about. I have also seen people refusing to heed government advise and acting like, Hey I am Covid -resistance. My friend, get indoors and stay there if you have nothing doing on the street.
It is time for us to be self-disciplined and do as we have been told. The health minister has been doing his best. Listen to the authorities, do as you have been told. The centre for disease control has its updates and are doing their best. Pay attention and the Presidential task force has also joined.
At first everyone thought it was a joke or that Nigeria is immune and yet our people are some of the most travelled citizens of any black nation in the world. We are everywhere returning from everywhere so now most of our Covid-19 cases are imported. Sad. Very Sad. But what about those of us who did not go anywhere minding our business this side of the divide. After that index case, we could have immediately begun to shut down entries. Now we have no choice but to stay home and stay safe.
About a week ago, I went to the bank and the bankers were tearing their hair out just trying to get Nigerians to stay a few metres away from each other but like everything else we felt like if we moved away from the man in front of us on the queue, someone will get in the space for social distancing. So my compatriots stood resolute behind each other within breathing space of each other. To tell you the truth, I fled the bank. People stood against each other like sardines. It was a spectacle. In other public spaces, coughing people do not care and cough on everyone. In other parts of the world they would employ citizen’s arrest, mob action or call the police and shove the coughing fellow out of the premises. Even the service spaces like supermarkets and banks did not think it wise to have a health check officer whose duty it is to send snivelling, sneezing and coughing persons out of the promises. A day before lockdown ago my daughter came home with a hilarious story. A coughing citizen who did not care about others was coughing all over the place at a pharmacy she was about leaving. You heard right, a pharmacy. Then staff of the pharmacy began to offer everyone some hand sanitiser. Really? I was as crazily amused as you all are. My daughter asked them as she fled. How does hand sanitiser help anyone who is inhaling this man’s cough. They did not shove him. What kind of silly politeness is that? Then add the sanitiser. How bizarre!
I also hear that in this lockdown regime, some persons are insistent on infecting others and most are religious leaders and others who insist on marrying in the time of Covid and gathering crowds. These people have been shut down by security personnel. Then there are those who do not believe. I am at my wits end. With pictures from all over the world? Merde!
I have been wondering why some returnees who claim to be big men and women who failed to submit themselves for temperature tests have not been arrested or those who returned and failed to self-isolate. A lot of this boils down to how we believe money can be thrown at everything and how undisciplined we can be. Well, in the event you have not heard, Coronavirus knows no friend, knows no status and takes no prisoners.
It is time for us to be self-disciplined and do as we have been told. The health minister has been doing his best. Listen to the authorities, do as you have been told. The centre for disease control has its updates and are doing their best. Pay attention and the Presidential task force has also joined. Listen! Listen! And report yourself if you are not feeling well. This is not the time for parties or that girlfriend or that roadside fish. Stay home. Learn more about your wife, spend time with your husband. Learn about your children and let your children try and understand their parents! I know we are a communal nation, we hug, we shake hands, we touch each other’s cheeks. No more. We can do this and only together can we succeed. Let us not allow anyone give us a bad name to hang us. We did it with Ebola, we can do this! And don’t carry rumours, you will hurt someone and it could be your family.
In the middle of all of this, Nigerians can still laugh at themselves. The coronavirus humour is unflappable.
Stay safe everyone and this too shall pass. Amen.
