There is a Yari in all of us. It manifests in the belief that most of our problems – or the seemingly overwhelming ones – are spiritual; a pathetic mentality seeking to place the burden of the resolution of our issues on God, despite His having given us the brains and capacities to tackle them.
One news that broke and shook Nigeria to its foundation, causing serious panic and tension from Aba to Zamfara, was the news of the Ebola virus outbreak in 2014.
The news spread like wild fire the moment a Liberian-American, Patrick Sawyer, who took ill on visiting Nigeria for an ECOWAS conference tested positive to the virus.
Thanks to the brave heroine, Ameyo Adadevoh, the First Consultant Medical Centre’s Medical Doctor, who insisted on Sawyer bieng quarantined on admission. She was Nigeria’s guardian angel as she staked her life for many of us to live to tell the story today.
Who knows how far the Ebola virus disease would have spread or how many Nigerians it would have killed had she been too concerned about her own safety or carelessly allowed Sawyer to rove around the country uninhibited?
Contacting the Ebola virus then was a death sentence without the option of survival. This regardless, the former Lagos State governor, Babatunde Raji Fashola, never claimed it was the wrath of God or called it the consequences of our nefarious acts the moment the outbreak was confirmed.
Instead, he provided the necessary support, even collaborating with a federal government he had deep political differences with, and other stakeholders to curb the widespread of the Ebola virus disease. In the end, the number of those who died nationwide, as a result of false claims and ignorant allusions about the prevention of Ebola through the drinking of and swimming in saline solution, thinking it was a prevention for Ebola, were more than the number of those who Ebola killed.
That points to how ignorance, false alarm and insensitive comments about serious epidemic outbreaks could be fatal.
That also brings me to the crux of this piece: Zamfara State governor, Abdulaziz Yari’s false, insensitive, careless, irresponsible and misleading claim that the meningitis outbreak that has killed over 300 persons in Zamfara and other Northern states is due to the wrath of God.
The culture of not using our God given brains and other resources to provide solutions to issues in our society and then passing off the consequences of our negligence as the “will of God”, the “work of demons” or the “punishment from God”, creates the avenue for leaders like Yari to insult our collective intelligence.
Although, Yari, through his spokesperson, denied his first statement in which he attributed meningitis to God’s wrath, his denial is more of a confirmation of his first statement.
Let’s spare a few thoughts on Yari’s comment as reported in PREMIUM TIMES:
“What we used to know as far as meningitis is concerned is the Type A virus. The World Health Organisation, WHO, has carried out vaccinations against this Type A virus not just in Zamfara, but many other states.
“However, because people refused to stop their nefarious activities, God now decided to send Type C virus, which has no vaccination.
“People have turned away from God and he has promised that ‘if you do anyhow, you see anyhow’ that is just the cause of this outbreak as far as I am concerned.”
From Yari’s stance on the cause of the Type C meningitis outbreak, it becomes obvious that common sense is not common afterall. Perhaps, if Yari were the governor of Lagos State when the Ebola virus disease broke out in 2014, Ebola would have ravaged Nigeria like it did to Guinea and Liberia, because he might have simply referred Nigerians to God for its cure, since we had “done anyhow” and were seeing “anyhow.”
That Yari mystified the Type C meningitis outbreak suggests him a shallow leader who cannot think deep and spontaneously enough to proffer solutions in a period of emergency.
Thanks to Muhammadu Sanusi II, the emir of Kano, who has publicly countered Yari’s claim, telling Nigerians that Yari’s stance is Islamically not correct, and blatantly false.
God cannot punish Nigerians any worse than in allowing inept, utterly insensitive and careless leaders to direct our affairs, from the past to the present.
Come to think of it, if, in the past, there were cases of epidemic outbreaks reported in Jerusalem and Mecca, the respective holy lands of the Christians and the Muslims, what would be the sense in linking epidemic outbreak in Zamfara and other Northern states simply to the nefarious acts of people in the region?
Moreover, contrary to what Yari wants us to believe that the outbreak of Type C meningitis is the wrath of God, Mr. Simbo Olorunfemi, in his piece, “Are We Doing Enough to Contain This Annual Outbreak of Meningitis?”, factually argued “that in 2013 and 2014 in North-Western Nigeria, “two sequential, localized outbreaks of meningitis were caused by a new strain of Neisseria meningitidis Serogroup C (NmC).”
So, it is not that Type C meningitis is completely strange as falsely claimed by Yari, but the fact that leaders like Yari had unfortunately ignored the information about and refused to carry out further diligence and action to prevent the resurgence of the Type C meningitis that was discovered in 2013 and 2014.
But, we cannot blame it all on Yari.
There is a Yari in all of us. It manifests in the belief that most of our problems – or the seemingly overwhelming ones – are spiritual; a pathetic mentality seeking to place the burden of the resolution of our issues on God, despite His having given us the brains and capacities to tackle them.
The culture of not using our God given brains and other resources to provide solutions to issues in our society and then passing off the consequences of our negligence as the “will of God”, the “work of demons” or the “punishment from God”, creates the avenue for leaders like Yari to insult our collective intelligence.
As such, Yari represents the tendency in some politicians to take the glory for everything that goes right, while conversely shifting the blame for all that goes wrong on either their electorate or God, seeking through this to deflect the blames for their non-performance.
God cannot punish Nigerians any worse than in allowing inept, utterly insensitive and careless leaders to direct our affairs, from the past to the present.
Ahmed Oluwasanjo writes from Abuja.
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