By Divramredje Lawrence Efeturi KSJI
It is now obvious that since the advent of this menace ravaging the entire world, both past and present Nigerian leaders and politicians, have been humbled to remain in the country. Prior to the COVID-19, they fly to London, Dubai, Germany, Italy and other developed nations to seek for medical check ups and treatments, perhaps because of poor health facilities in our hospitals. But now, emergency Health and Test Centres are being set up, both at the Federal and the States across Nigeria to cushion further devastating spread and its effects. The question begging for answers is: why would the government wait until the nation is at war, especially of this kind, before scouting for remedies? This pandemic has barefaced the follies of the past and present government at all levels.
One more question is: why are these insensitive politicians and leaders no longer fall sick and flown abroad to seek medical attention, during this COVID-19, yet they are still alive? It becomes crystal clear that they wickedly courier our collective resources abroad and lavish them on foreign lands. All their children are flown to attend expensive schools and universities in Europe and America. And, when they are done with their university career, they will finally come home and occupy the juicy offices they inherit from their parents, leaving the poor masses to suffer their dire fates.
Now, with COVID-19, everyone is hurrying to come home because all the hospitals in Europe and America are already saturated with victims of this pandemic. Those who were able to beat the international borders closure are lucky, while the others are still struggling. They can no more put up with the unfriendly manner, racism is trending in Chinese, American and the UK hospitals they stole our resources to build. In chapter eight of ‘HONESTY is a FAILURE’ by Dr Goodnews Agbi, the author, aptly says:
‘If we destroy our country now by our shameless plundering of her scarce resources, what will we leave for our children’s children? Even if our children flee abroad, they will not escape the stigma and scapegoating wherever they go knowing that they are scapegrace children of egregious demagogues”.
I hope bitter lessons have been learnt. It is believed that when this global war is over, the Nigeria government at all level, would allow the Health and Education sectors take the chunk of the budgetary allocations in every Fiscal year and strictly monitor the procurement of sophisticated health equipments for our hospitals and health centres. I hope also that the government would create a social scheme to help ameliorate sufferings its citizens might encounter, in case of any outbreak in the future. It is hoped that the Nigeria government will not wait for any war of this kind before it puts its house in order. Experience is not always the best teacher.
