THANK GOD FOR CORONAVIRUS

The Coronavirus pandemic ravaging humanity today means different things to different people. In advanced climes where it started, it is generally a calamity that has befallen humanity. To us here in Africa, for some people, it’s a disease for the elites and the rich who travel abroad. To others, it’s a disease for sinners who don’t know God hence it won’t affect them “children of God”. Surprisingly, to others, the disease is still none existent. Wherever you fall is not our concern here. Our concern however is on the reality of the disease, its issues, prospects & lessons especially in Nigeria.

Since the outbreak of the virus, different countries are taking various measures to contain its spread and thus save humanity. The most common of such measures is a lockdown approach to reduce human contacts to the barest minimum. This, it is believed, would minimize its spread.

The lockdown measure appears to be the way to go now. While advanced nations can successfully do it, it is a practical impossibility in Nigeria. This is because Nigeria is a country where citizens survive by sheer individual determination to be alive and breath. Nigeria has no government when it comes to provision of welfare for the citizens. Here, we provide everything for ourselves: water, electricity, transport, food, clothes, everything needed to survive that is not given freely by God.

How can a lockdown work when we don’t have water running in our houses? Can’t we go out to fetch water at least for domestic use? If we are in a lockdown without water, won’t we die of thirst before the arrival of Mr Corona?
How can we survive a lockdown without electricity at least to preserve our food (assuming one spends one’s life savings to stockpile food)? Without electricity, everything in the fridge will simply become putrid in a matter of hours.
If in our usual way of taking care of ourselves, we decide to power the generators with fuel as to preserve food and pump water from the boreholes we drilled for ourselves to ensure that the lockdown is effective, where do we get the fuel since the filling stations would be on lockdown too?

Assuming the government decides to assist by way of providing palliatives like food items, how do we get the statistics of who to give it since our demographic figures are forged and falsified for political advantages of certain people? Granted that the government decides to give such palliatives, how can we be sure that those who would be saddled with such responsibility won’t either hoard some or request bribe from the citizens that are on lockdown before giving them.

If the police for instance decide to arrest people who default the lockdown order and arrest many, where do they keep them? In what facility would they stay that won’t facilitate the spread of the virus? The summary is that ours is a tale of a sorry nation. Can anything work here with our failed system of leadership? I doubt.

The coming of the virus has raised a number of issues. In the western world and in most advanced countries, the virus is teaching them that there is a force (regardless of its nomenclature) higher than humans which is responsible for our affairs down here. It is telling them that everything is not just dependent on science and pragmatism. There are things beyond human control. That being the case, it should awaken their consciousness to that reality and tailor their conducts accordingly. To the atheist, the virus is making them have a rethink.

To us down here in Africa especially in Nigeria, the corona outbreak should teach us lessons in an unprecedented manner. It should teach our leaders responsible governance. It should give them the think-home-philosophy. This pandemic should awoken in our leaders, the spirit of responsible governance. It should make them realize that when the chips are down (as they are now), Assyria will not save them as the bible says (cf Hosea 14:3).

Our leaders should know that the only way out is for them to wake up to the responsibility of fixing Nigeria and abide by the tenets of real nation building beyond rhetoric and ethno-religious politics. Going abroad to get medical attention at the slightest headache (and bragging about it) while the statehouse clinic lacks paracetamol tablets is not only shameful and condemnable but should stop with this corona experience. Our leaders should know that those who built such hospitals are not angels from heaven but humans like us.
If our electricity works, I don’t think our name will change to Congo. If we have functional pipe born water, we will not become Zambia. If we become honest people, we shall not be called Norwegians but still Nigerians. If as a people we use world class facilities, it will not reduce us to homohabilis of the evolution theory, we will still remain humans.

If the coming of COVID19 or our version COVIK ONE NINE would make our leaders brace up to responsible leadership and governance and provide the citizens with basic needs, then we won’t be wrong to say THANK GOD FOR CORONAVIRUS