BY UGOCHUKWU EJINKEONYE<\/p>\n
Even though by 2015, the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) had
\nperformed below the high expectations of many Nigerians and had rightly
\nearned their rejection, I highly dreaded the disastrous possibility of
\nNigerians falling for the massive, overwhelming but vacuous propaganda
\nof the All Progressives Congress (APC), backed by a formidable coalition
\nof tragically na\u00efve activists, intellectuals and opinion leaders, to
\nseriously consider that the APC could by the widest stretch of the
\nimagination, qualify as even a manageable alternative.<\/p>\n
There was massive corruption in the PDP, but it was just impossible for
\nme to buy the tasteless myth that the APC which was mostly made up of
\nthe very characters that gave the PDP its unwholesome image could, no
\nmatter the relentless efforts of their tireless spin doctors, qualify to
\nbe classed as something that has the slightest resemblance with a party
\nof saints and an assemblage change agents, and that once a person moved
\nfrom the PDP to the APC, the person would receive instant beatification
\nfrom a band of holy angels waiting to perform that sacred assignment.
\nThis should make no sense even to a two-year old!<\/p>\n
Also, despite how strongly they tried with their humongous\u00a0 propaganda,
\nthe APC\u2019s leading lights failed miserably to inspire any confidence in
\ntheir capacity to effectively manage a modest government department or
\nmere small public corporation, let alone a country as large and complex
\nas Nigeria. Looking at the monstrous antecedents of several of them,
\ntheir brazen insistence that they were on a mission to cleanse Nigeria
\nof corruption and change her for the better sounded so terribly
\nridiculous, even exasperating. Their hypocrisy and chicanery stank to
\nhigh heavens.<\/p>\n
The evidences were too glaring for everyone to easily see. That was why
\nI kept wondering how my otherwise brilliant and perceptive friends who
\nhad remonstrated with me for holding a different view about the
\nself-anointed \u201cdeliverers\u201d from Mars could not see that they were
\nbeing led by the nose to eagerly embrace a well-packaged and overly
\nscented fraud. The APC completed its distasteful image by the egregious
\nconfidence it exuded about its ability to continue mesmerizing Nigerians
\nwith outrageous claims and the tantalizing promises it recklessly
\ndropped which even Kindergarten kids could see were clearly
\nunrealizable. Although, many chose to blindly flow with the herd, it
\ntook only a few months of the APC being in power for scales to fall off
\nmany eyes and my friends to be astounded by the insufferable deception,
\nhowling inadequacy and irredeemable incompetence they had willingly
\nagreed to temporarily live in denial of, which they probably thought
\nwould go with the aggressive campaigns, but which had now become the
\ndistinctive feature of the \u201cChange\u201d regime. Sadly, it was now too
\nlate. The eagle already had the chick securely in its claws. By the time
\n2019 arrived, the party was already too powerful to be voted out despite
\nthe widespread disgustful feelings of many Nigerians towards it.<\/p>\n
Sadly, nothing seems to have changed even after five years of being in
\noffice. The same propaganda has remained about the only thing the APC
\nregime has continued to deploy to consolidate its hold on power. It is
\noften safe to make all sorts of claims about your accomplishments when
\nyou know that people are too sick and tired and too busy trying to exist
\nin an impossible economy to bother about their falsity, until a real
\nchallenge that threatens something as sacred as lives emerges. Then even
\nthe best of propaganda will readily betray its limits. That is what
\nCoronavirus has achieved in Nigeria.<\/p>\n
When news of the approaching Covid-19 was everywhere, the federal
\ngovernment confidently and repeatedly told Nigerians that it had put in
\nplace formidable measures to halt its spread if it eventually strays
\ninto the country. I doubt if Nigerians took the assurances serious but,
\nthen, what would they have done than sit in their various corners
\nnursing their benumbing doubts and fears quietly. Even when calls began
\nto be made by well-meaning Nigerians on the presidency to halt
\ninternational flights to Nigeria and close all entry points into the
\ncountry, they all fell on deaf ears. By the time President Buhari was
\nable to come around to agree to close the airports, seaports and land
\nborders, the number of infected persons had already exploded, and the
\nacclaimed efforts by the Lagos State Governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, to
\ncontain the spread had been badly sabotaged by the sad delay.<\/p>\n
Gov Sanwo-Olu lamented this tragic failure in his interview with the CNN
\na few days ago. He stressed that if the borders had been closed early
\nenough, and people who had recently come into the country were isolated
\nand their contacts carefully traced and equally isolated, the pandemic
\nwould have been easily contained. What was mostly done at that time was
\nto simply advise returning Nigerians and visiting foreigners to
\nself-isolate which many of them simply ignored. Some were given papers
\nto state their recent travel history and several of them filled the
\nforms with fictitious details. Which serious country does that? Should
\nnot the people have been compulsorily isolated if there were enough
\nisolation centres ready to receive them? That\u2019s the problem.<\/p>\n
The truth was that the presidency had enough time to prepare for
\nCovid-19, but it was merely savouring its familiar game of making empty
\nclaims and probably hoping that the virus would never enter the country
\nto explode their imaginary claims.<\/p>\n
Despite being widely regarded as the richest country in Africa, the
\nNigerian government seems to derive immense pleasure from flaunting the
\ncountry as poor, helpless and beggarly. If her resources are not
\ncontinuously mismanaged and looted by her leaders, shouldn\u2019t several
\nAfrican countries by now be looking up to Nigeria for help, especially,
\nin desperate and trying times such as the one the world is in now? But
\nthe sad situation is that even the most leanly-endowed African countries
\nhave since left Nigeria very far behind in the area of provision of
\nbasic amenities for their people. For instance, whereas other African
\ncountry have since achieved reasonable stability in power supply,
\nNigeria is still very far behind, struggling with debilitating darkness
\nand has remained the proud, pathetic dumping ground for mostly
\nsubstandard power generating sets from China. The same goes for
\nprovision of potable water, another sector in which government has
\nfailed so woefully. If the Nigerian government is allowed, it would beg
\nfor alms from places like Togo or Swaziland!<\/p>\n
And so, always shamelessly wearing its beggar mentality, when the
\nAmerican billionaire, Elon Musk, announced on twitter that his
\norganization had some ventilators to give out in support of the
\ntreatment of Covid-19 patients, Nigeria was the only country in Africa,
\nto the best of my knowledge, which through the twitter handle of the
\nFederal Ministry of Finance publicly begged the US billionaire to donate
\nthe ventilators to her! It was such a disastrous and self-diminishing
\nmove that instantly attracted angry reactions from embarrassed Nigerians
\nacross the world, forcing her to quickly withdraw the request. Yet, as
\nthe pandemic gained strength in the country, and Nigeria still proudly
\nwore the same badge of shame as that \u201cvery poor country\u201d that could
\nnot afford ventilators, enough testing kits and centres and Personal
\nProtective Equipment (PPE) for her toiling and sacrificial health
\nworkers (thereby, exposing them to serious dangers of being infected),
\nthe dishonourable characters that converge at the House of
\nRepresentatives as lawmakers were before the world, busy, celebratorily
\nsharing very expensive, imported luxury cars to themselves, and the
\nwhopping sum of N37 billion had already been put aside to renovate the
\nNational Assembly. That is the face of the \u201cChange\u201d on whose back
\nthey rode to power, although, they rarely mention that badly abused word
\nthese days.<\/p>\n
Prodded by Nigerians to do something more meaningful to lead the
\nanti-Covid-19 war from the front like his colleagues across the world,
\nPresident Muhammadu Buhari emerged from his hideout, locked down Lagos
\nand Ogun states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) and vanished
\nagain. Nigerians who depended on their daily earnings to feed their
\nfamilies were the worst hit by the hunger that immediately followed.
\nAlthough palliatives were promised to cushion the harsh effects of the
\nlockdown, what most Nigerians only heard were the outrageous figures
\nwhich government claimed had already been spent as disbursements to
\n\u201cpoor and vulnerable\u201d citizens. They were not even privileged to
\nperceive even the smell of the disbursements!<\/p>\n
It became clear then that the government would badly mismanage the
\nno-movement restrictions and stay-at-home order. And Nigerians wasted no
\ntime in voicing their anger at being asked to stay at home and be killed
\nby hunger. Unable to respond to this all important need to feed its
\npeople rendered incapable of earning a living by the lockdown, a problem
\nthat even countries Nigeria is supposed to be richer than had managed so
\namazingly, the Buhari regime has now decided to ease the restrictions at
\na time the number of infected persons was rising alarmingly!<\/p>\n
Why is this government too eager to show that it is too impoverished to
\ngive palliatives to needy Nigerians? Only a few days ago, the Central
\nBank of Nigeria (CBN) announced that the private sector relief fund it
\nis organizing to raise money to fight Covid-19 has now hit N27.160
\nbillion. Recently, the European Union (EU) donated EUR 50 million (N21
\nbillion) to help Nigeria fight Covid-19. There have been reports of
\nsundry monetary and material assistances that have come in from within
\nand outside country, so, why is Nigeria about to further compound the
\nCovid-19 pandemic by its strange claim that there are no funds to
\nsustain the lockdown?<\/p>\n
Recent reports suggest that very soon, Nigeria might consider the option
\nof home treatment for positive cases because of lack of bed spaces to
\nkeep them. It is dreadful to imagine such a possibility and how far it
\ncan go to complicate the pandemic. Please, can somebody who has the ears
\nof President Muhammadu Buhari walk across to Aso Villa and ask him to
\nbring in knowledgeable, altruistic, honest and competent people to help
\nhim manage Nigeria at this very critical period before the country is
\nplunged into a boundless and unmanageable health disaster? It should
\nnever be imagined that anything slightly similar to the experience of
\nItaly or Spain, UK or the United States with Covid-19 (countries with
\nworld-standard healthcare systems) be repeated here. Indeed, I have
\nnever seen where such level of unseriousness is being brazenly applied
\nto the running of a country, more so, at a time of a dreaded health
\nemergency and in a large, complex country of more than 200 million like
\nNigeria, with one of the worst health facilities in the world!<\/p>\n
EBOLA WAS MORE VIRULENT WHEN IT HIT NIGERIA IN 2014, BUT THE
\n\u201cCLUELESS\u201d GOODLUCK JONATHAN REGIME WAS ABLE TO SWIFTLY CONTAIN IT
\nTO THE ADMIRATION OF THE WHOLE WORLD. IN FACT, AN AMERICAN MAGAZINE_,__
\nFOREIGN POLICY_, SCREAMED IN A HEADLINE, _\u201cIN FIGHT TO STOP EBOLA,
\nNIGERIA GOT RIGHT EVERYTHING AMERICA WRONG [1].\u201d_<\/p>\n
Nigerians are, therefore, right to demand the full accounts of how the
\nsuspicious disbursements of billions of naira purportedly made by the
\nfederal government were undertaken. With the pandemic already badly
\nmismanaged, the future is indeed heavily pregnant. Only God will save
\nNigeria.<\/p>\n
_*UGOCUKWU EJINKEONYE IS A COLUMNIST AND MEMBER, EDITORIAL BOARD,
\n__Daily Independent NEWSPAPERS. (SCRUPLES2006@YAHOO.COM<\/a>; @UGOWRITE.)\u00a0 _<\/p>\n