Nigeria and Covid - 19
“I have seen so many videos of our fellow Nigerians living in slums and ghettos in different states defying stay at home orders and protesting on the streets.
What I find so amusing is how someone living in their mansion or 3 bedroom duplex in Maitama, Asokoro, or Ungwar Rimi GRA, with a store full of food items to last 6 months, a generator filled to the brim with diesel (even when these areas get all the power supple in any case), can tweet from their IPhone 11 Pro Max with 20GB data, has the nerve to insult, criticize and even curse these poor people; calling them stubborn, illiterate and even saying they deserve to be beaten by security agents.
what some of us including the Federal Government seem to fail to comprehend is that for a certain demographically situated persons in Nigerians, this whole Corona Virus pandemic means nothing to them.
These are the same people who are ravaged day in day out, year in year out by hunger, Cholera, Malaria, Lassa Fever, Hepatitis, HIV, Pregnancy related mortality, etc, etc, etc.
NOBODY has given a damn about them and their well being all this while. Now that a disease that can affect “those that matter” is in town, you want to somehow convince them that forcing them to stay indoors and brave hunger and lack of electricity in this scorching weather is somehow for their own good? .....e go hard ooo!
Is Death from CoronaVirus any different from the Death that has ravaged their communities all this while? .NO!
We want them to stay at home and avoid Coronavirus because we know that if they don’t, their children, fathers and mothers who leave their slums and come into our mansions everyday as our cooks, nannies and drivers may bring Coronavirus into our comfortable fortresses and infect our precious “eggs”.
Let us continue deceiving ourselves. Until we the privileged learn to fight for social justice for ALL at all times, not just when we may be affected, then sleepless nights, anxiety and fear of infection and re-infection will continue to be our headache.
We think we can continue to live and support the status quo because we were fortunate to be born with silver spoons in our mouths abi? This is just the tip of the iceberg.
The chickens are finally coming home to roost and I can see a lot of us are not even ready!
Do you see masses defying stay at home orders in any developed nation? , .....DO YOU? Let us look within and ask why?”
Do you know that Lassa Fever has killed over 190 Nigerians this year? ..... why are the billionaires not donating billions to stop or fight it just as they are doing with coronavirus?! .....because it’s a poor man’s sickness.
Obinna writes from FCT Nigeria
