The unwanted friend comes when you would rather be left alone. They declare themselves your ally, even when you have sought no war. There is an unwanted friend of the Nigerian poor in town, and much as it has become dreaded and rightly despised, I reckon it’s time to help you recognize the ally in disguise. Imagine if you will, that Covid was a respecter of social class? Race? Ethnicity? Geography?
I settled to the task of writing the final chapters of my new book, but I found that I cannot bring myself to write what I had spent the weekend researching, because I have a couple of thoughts nagging away at my consciousness, and I just have to write these, before I might find the peace to face the task I had originally assigned myself.
Fig leaves. It doesn’t now matter exactly what fruit those two ate in the idyllic garden of Eden, what counts is that they became aware of their nudity, and I guess the two felt that watching dangling appendages in awe wasn’t exactly productive, Mother Eve stitched fig leaves together to cover their nudities. Enter the fig leave as a metaphor for inadequate cover, one that requires the person covering, and the persons seeing, to pretend, that the cover is effective. Not quite dissimilar to the children game of hide and seek. Boju-Boju.
The Nigerian state has pretended to be doing something to fight the Covid-19 pandemic, we the citizens also pretend that they are, and we have now collectively agreed that the time has come to gradually reopen the country, even as the clear evidence of our senses should dictate the exact opposite of the alternative realities that we have embraced. Eke n’ba Eke so’ro, Iro n’pa Iro fun Iro. The liar sells to the fraudulent. Just how well do you think the fig leaves covered Adam’s precious jewels? Assuming he had proper cover, how adequate were the leaves, in restraining the unruly third leg, and just how much of mother Eve’s nurturing mammaries were covered?
The Nigerian has lived a schizophrenic existence. The realities of our country demands that we adjust our standards, definitions, and expectations in order to ensure that we live as productive beings. We live by standards that we must abandon on getting to our own country, and readjust when we go to other countries, including Ghana that is next door. We routinely build houses with boreholes and electricity generating sets factored in ab initio, and we rarely factor the state in planning for our healthcare needs. The Nigerian discounts the state in planning for his children’s education, and in Lagos, hardly anyone plans with the state’s school system in mind. They are grossly inadequate, and badly resourced. Private schools outnumber the state’s schools by a factor of over 5-1. Even the poorest avoids the state’s schools like a plague.
The Nigerian is used to doing everything for himself, and the challenges that have attended the arrival of this pandemic, are merely par for the course. We will survive this as we have survived each and every one of the other things that attends the nightmarish realities of the Nigerian citizen. No be today.
The unwanted friend comes when you would rather be left alone. They declare themselves your ally, even when you have sought no war. There is an unwanted friend of the Nigerian poor in town, and much as it has become dreaded and rightly despised, I reckon it’s time to help you recognize the ally in disguise. Imagine if you will, that Covid was a respecter of social class? Race? Ethnicity? Geography?
The Coronavirus is an equal opportunity afflicter of all of humanity. The Nigerian state is finally caught in the grip of the one examiner that it cannot game. “A o be ese re wo! Ki o to wo ile ogo! A o be ese re wo!” We shall examine you; declares the Anglican Church hymn. Before you may take your place in paradise, you shall be examined. The Coronavirus pandemic is the ultimate examination of the Nigerian state, its governance systems, and its evil rulers. They have pretended to govern for the entirety of my 52 years of living. The Nigerian peoples have covered the lies all my life, and we have paid very high prices. This is one exam that we cannot write for the Nigerian state. It shall either pass, or fail on its own merit.
As virulent as Covid might be, and it is. As deadly as the virus is, and it is. Its effects pale into insignificance, when compared with the number of Nigerians daily lost to the many evils that the Nigerian state has engendered. Malaria will kill more people than Covid in Nigeria this year. Meningitis nko? Lassa fever? Cholera is a much more capable killer of the Nigerian citizen too. The Nigerian state is also a very effective killing machine. Between our gallant soldiers and the burgeoning SARS, they are certain to surpass anything Coronavirus will do. I have ignored to mention our serially defeated Boko Haram, and the armed robbers and kidnappers are not retired, just locked down. Death is served ala carte in Nigeria.
The Nigerian has nothing to fear from the Coronavirus. It is our rulers and their evil systems that need be afraid. They should be afraid because they are the ones that are now marooned in the mad country they have built. They are the ones that have to learn to use the roads that they have ignored to build, the hospitals that they ignored to equip, and the unused brains that are stuck between their deaf ears. Our rulers are as vulnerable to the virus as we are, and as it spreads, they are as susceptible to it as all of us.
When they wrecked the educational system, they shipped their children abroad. After they killed the healthcare delivery systems, British, American, French, German, Israeli, Saudi, and Indian hospitals, became their favorite places to die. They live everywhere but Nigeria, and whilst the citizens cowered in fear at the all pervasive insecurity in the land, they lived secure at public expense, feeding fat, even as the citizens starved to death. The Nigerian poor should not be afraid of Covid.
For the would be Nigerian revolutionaries, embrace Comrade Covid. He is your friend. He is the catalyzing agent that you have awaited for generations; the common affliction of every Nigerian. The task before every conscious Nigerian, is to ensure that our rulers at every levels, are not allowed to run away from their examination hall. The current Fig Leaf strategy for dealing with this pandemic is already a resounding failure, and the result should be evident by the end of the coming week.
There cannot be a standard for governance in other parts of the world, and an abysmally lowered one for Nigeria. It is time to stop celebrating mediocrity. The age of dodging behind the finger is over, these rulers and their governance systems must be examined without blinkers.
DF
Uncle Bola And His Black Shoes…
