As bad as…
Part A
I saw the movie Facing Darkness about the fight against Ebola in Liberia around the year 2014. It is difficult to watch it without dropping some tears. Then I saw 93 days about how Nigeria conquered Ebola in 93 days. I took a few lessons from the latter:
- Nigerians are resilient
- Nigerians are usually not prepared
- Nigerians when united can conquer anything.
Part B
I remember in 2014. I had a movie date which I wanted to cancel because of Ebola. There was no one willing to comply with the rule to use handrails on the stairs because of Ebola. My church distributed hand sanitizers. Several things had to be cancelled. I met an old friend at a local airport, a medical doctor. She wouldn’t sit or touch anything at the airport. In fact, to be patted down, she provided her own gloves. Those days, I began to feel feverish. I called my doctor, and she was locked up under observation having been in a hospital where a suspected Ebola case was treated.
In all of these, one thing was clear: United, we can win!
Part C
Nigeria (and more or less all Africa) is like a culture medium for poor governance. We seem oblivious of what even blind men can see.
Libya’s beauty was an aberration; it had to be ploughed. DRC has the “conflict mineral”–COLTAN–found nowhere else in the world. Instead of this being a plus, it has proved to be a lone minus for the nation. The francophones are grappling with national poverty bestowed by “former” lords. South Africa seems to have been battling deliberate degradation. Zimbabwe supposedly broke free in 2017, the first project they embarked on was the expansion of the Robert Mugabe International Aiport?? Quite timely and strategic?? Nigeria is drowning in the waters of paper-perfect policies which have kept the light bulbs off and the train whistles silent!
What then?
Part D
When Ebola visited Nigeria for 3 months, we came together to fight our common enemy (the enemy of my enemy is my friend). We forgot political alliances; we joined hands and words. We were so determined, even people who were not infected died fighting!
Now, what if we view poor governance as it really is: a silent, audacious killer?
What if we get desperate and fight this enemy like marked men?
We looked Ebola in the face and conquered it. So can we conquer poor governance!