Have you come across those Nigerians who think that COVID-19 is the ultimate scam? Unimaginable! A video on the social media shows a crowd gathered in the forecourt of a house, shouting, “Babu korona,” in Hausa.
A friend who speaks Hausa says they were denying the occurrence of COVID-19, even as Deputy Governor Umar Usman Kadafur worries that his Borno State compatriots also doubt it, despite confirmation that it is already spreading in Kano State through community transmission!
Some Doubting Thomases point to Governor Seyi Makinde, who reportedly contracted the virus, but got cured by what some call “folk medicine,” and then insisted that there were no reasons to lock down Oyo State as suggested by the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.) and the COVID-19 presidential task force.
Those, like American polemicist, William Safire, who know how to coin appropriate phrases for wooly and opaque government policies, have described Governor Makinde’s theory as “herd immunity,” where the weakest will die, and the survivors will develop immunity.
To those of the same sceptical school of thought as Makinde, the nose masks, temperature checks, and sanitisers, are the armour that anyone would ever need against COVID-19. Some Lagos State residents, whose businesses are suffering because of the lockdown, think so too.
Many argue that Nigeria shouldn’t have copied and pasted the lockdown template of the Western nations, because Nigeria lacks both the strategic reserves of fresh farm foods and requisite logistical capacities that these countries are calling up in their hour of need.
A friend wonders why, for instance, the state governments that are distributing food palliatives don’t involve logistics organisations, like DHL, NIPOST, and the military, as well as operatives of the electricity companies that distribute utility bills to nearly all households in Nigeria.
He also wonders why cash is not transferred into the bank accounts of others. After all, you can’t deny money paid into your bank account. And because your BVN links all your bank accounts, it should be easy to avoid double payments.
However, it is increasingly looking as if some Nigerians are lucking-in, that is, making a bundle, preying over their unfortunate compatriots in these days of social distancing, and the lockdown imposed by the federal and some state governments.
Some use the more dramatic word, “hammer,” pronounced, “hamma,” or “COVID-419,” to describe the bundle that unscrupulous Nigerians make from the plight of other Nigerians. A nephew thought, “I don get alert,” from musician Korede Bello’s song, “Godwin,” is more like it.
Maybe you don’t get it; some Nigerians exploit their proximity to the seat of power to make money for themselves in the confusion that emanates from the COVID-19 pandemic that has engulfed the entire world.
You may have seen a public hospital prescription form indicating that the patient, who only had a laceration to his head, was recorded as a COVID-19 patient. It however, sounds like it couldn’t be true.
The explanations that the form bears a COVID-19 serial number because the child was treated free as part of COVID-19 palliatives, sounded goofy and plausible, but also fuelled suspicions that it was a ploy to chalk up figures, to wheedle out bigger intervention funds from the Federal Government and other donors.
If this evil report is true, it is sickening. It however confirms the cynical retort by a senior citizen that all, maybe nearly all, the money donated by Nigeria’s emergency COVID-19 philanthropists will be stolen by way of diversion to private pockets.
When you hear about high figures of those who were afflicted or died from certain states, whose governments and citizens initially denied the existence of COVID-19, you wonder where the truth starts, and fiction took over.
It is alleged that some who died of natural causes, including old age, are lumped with the statistics of COVID-19 casualties, to boost the claim for federal grants. Things can’t get more morbid than that.
After somebody suggested that a particular state government should commission tailors to sew millions of nose masks to be distributed free, or sold at nominal price, so that citizens can go about their normal business without locking down the economy of the state, a friend, who is very close to that government, cynically suggested one or two things would happen.
State actors could astronomically inflate the number of the nose masks produced, and the budget expended on it. In other words, such a suggestion only provides opportunity for the predators to further cash in.
But if they felt they would not be able to get away with that, they could ignore or shoot it down, and concentrate on the food distribution option, because it is a lot easier to hide the figures of food distribution.
As you know, there is no auditor that can audit foodstuff that has been consumed and passed down the bowels of millions of people. Somebody here says there is no jupiter that can achieve that. By Jupiter, he is probably referring, not to the biggest planet, but to the chief god of ancient Romans.
You may have seen film footages showing sparse food items disbursed to large number of people in some communities. You may have also seen videos of citizens displaying degraded foodstuffs that they got as palliatives from government.
A particular video, a sequel to another, shows a young lady, who had earlier cursed the state governor and his damaged palliatives, turning around to apologise and declare the foodstuffs as fit for human consumption. You don’t need to be told that there has been some shortchanging or slapping around.
The controversy over the quality of rice supplied to Oyo State presumably from seizures made by the Nigeria Customs Service is still raging. Somebody, who should know, argues that because the NCS has no temperature controlled silos to keep rice confiscated from smugglers, it is possible that rice given to anybody from that inventory could have expired, as claimed by Makinde.
The narrative that supports this position is in the explicit public claim by the Comptroller-General of the NCS, Col Hameed Ali (retd.), that smuggled imported rice had generally taken a long time in the storage in the countries from where they were imported, and was therefore poisonous.
Will the theory suddenly change because government took out of the same inventory for the palliative measures? Well, it could. And there is a word, “New Think,” used by British author, George Orwell, to describe what political theorists define as revisionism, another word for lying.
But you haven’t even heard the full story: Contrary to the impression sold to the public, a lot of the palliatives are distributed with the protocol that the Igbo describe as, “ima mmadu,” or “man knows man,” which could variously mean nepotism, tribalism, sectionalism, or partiality.
An acquaintance, whose family is well-entrenched in her neighbourhood, confirms that the chairman of her local government area personally delivered a loaf of bread, two sachets of tomato paste, and what eventually amounted to a de Rica tin of beans — after the stone had been picked — to her mother, his mentor when he was a youngster.
With benefactors like this “appreciative” municipal alderman, this old woman needs no enemies. In the confusion called “COVID-419,” which suggests corruption, unscrupulous political carpetbaggers, with their hands in the till, thrive.
PS: Last week, I erroneously identified Shehu Abubakar Ibn Umar Garba of Borno, instead of Lamido Muhammadu Barkido Aliyu Musdafa of Adamawa, as the traditional ruler who said he would return his people to Cameroon if the Nigerian state wouldn’t accommodate their needs. The error is regretted.
Twitter @lekansote
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