Coro: I still dee here!… EndSARS; No eye had seen, no ear has heard - Ik Muo, PhD

 

For the past 10 days, I have been soaking-in this unbelievable EndSARS phenomenon. It is the kind of thing we have been seeing offshore and have been wondering: where are our youths? And then, suddenly… suddenly.. here we are!  As I x-rayed the happenings over the intense EndSARS weekend(16-18/10/20) what came to my mind was, 1 Corinthians, 2:9: ‘No eye has seen, no ear has heard and no mind has imagined’… what is happening in Nigeria in the recent past .  But before we discuss that, let us give a little attention to  Coro, the elephant in the room. Last week, I wrote on a ‘tale of two wars’. However, the War against Coro and War against SARS are the same thing because Coro is a ‘brand’ of SARS, ‘an infectious disease with symptoms including fever and cough and in some cases progressing to pneumonia and respiratory failure’!

Sometimes in 1995, when I was squatting with a namesake and secondary school mate, Ik Okoye at Shotoyo-Hughes street, Aguda, Lagos, I had one of those unforgettable experiences. I had just returned from the clinic of another school mate, Dr Damian Mbonu, where I was treated for acute malaria.  I lay on the floor, ‘down and almost out’ while my younger brother, Nonso, who took me to the clinic was about leaving when a group of ‘small-boy’ robbers barged in. They dragged me roughly up from the floor and locked both of us in one of the wardrobes while they ransacked the flat.  When we got so uncomfortable and wanted to open our emergency cell, somebody grunted … ‘we still dee here’! It was when it got so unbearable and we shook the door of the cage again and nobody warned us that we came out only to realise that we had continued to stay in the cage long after they had left. Well, Coro is acting like the rascal who kept watch over us. When we (and indeed the world)  started behaving as if Coro had gone or lost its mojo, it  is saying ‘I still dee here’! And it does so by baring its vicious fangs.

 

Unlike my earlier interventions, which usually started from abroad, todays charity will begin from home (but it will not end at home).  It is no longer a ‘new news’ that 181 students and staff of a private boarding school in Lekki, Lagos have been coronised, just  like17 medical students recalled for examinations at  Kaduna State University and 57 employees of a  firm in Ibadan. This is happening in a worrisome situation in which 26 states have not met the low testing target of 1% of the population with some as low as less of 25% of 1%!( That is if they are making any efforts at all!). Indeed, we are far from being there and any  ‘denge’ to the contrary is tantamount to self-deception! The PTF, which is opening up everything everywhere, including the NYSC camps is warning of increased infection due to EndSARS movement and has promised to offer free tests to all  camp-corpers (do they have the capacity?). The CBN has directed banks to clamp down on suspicious  Coro-related financial crimes.  It is also on record that 1031 of our Doctors  have been coronised, with 16 deaths( a mortality rate of 5%, far higher than the national average).

 

Across the globe, developments on the Coro front are not cheery. The world has recorded above 40m Coro cases and there are renewed restrictions everywhere. Wales goes into national two-week 'firebreak' lockdown on 23/20/20. Russia  and Iran recorded the highest daily rises on 18/10/20 and both have  added extra precautionary measures while Ireland has imposed the toughest restrictions in Europe. South Africa had fresh 1662 cases with the Health Minister and his wife, Zweli  and May Mkhize among the victims.   Belgium has re-closed sports and restaurants while UK hospitals are running out of bedspaces. New Jersey is experiencing an unfortunate reversal of fortunes,  doubling it’ s figures over the last month to an average of more than900 cases daily. Argentina has also become the 4^th country to cross the 1m mark However,  it is different strokes as  Israel  is in a relaxation mode while the Chinese Economy is powering on, hitting4.9% growth in the 3^rd Quarter- when Europe is expecting double depression from the second wave. Air travels are upping in the US where airport screening exceeded 1m on 18/10, the highest since March but 60% lower than last year. The UN is also looking forward and is already stockpiling syringes for the awaited vaccines. Some Professors have also authored the  Great Barrington Declaration, which promotes the ‘herd immunity’ theory, proposing that Coro should be allowed to  spread to a point where enough people have been affected and infected to  the extent that transmission is stalled . You want my opinion?  In statistics, at the end of the day, everything correlates to everything else. In science, despite the famed scientific protocols, people end up living their fantasies. The only thing required is to make the right assumptions and to state it clearly!

Meanwhile, Dmitriy Stuzhuk, a Ukrainian   fitness influencer who thought Covid-19 didn't exist has died from it at the age of 33. Hear him from his sickbed:’ I thought that Covid does not exist…"Until I got sick…. "COVID-19 IS NOT A SHORT-LIVED DISEASE! And it is heavy."

As you have seen for yourself; life must go on but Coro is still very much around. Lets take all possible precautions, even those that appear unnecessary

 

EndSARS; No eye had seen, no ear has heard, no mind had imagined…

Last week, I feared (without necessarily praying against it) that SARS would become a metaphor and it is obvious to every observer, even surface analysts, that SARS had become an alias for all that is wrong with this our criminally mismanaged country. SARS has been scapegoated!  5-4-5 was SARS specific. The succeeding 7-4-7 included everything and the 23-point agenda went on to break it down so that even a kindergarten kid would understand. The 7-4-7 covered education and economy, constitutional reforms, the impending debt peonage, security or insecurity, cost of governance and other anti-people policies. Within this package is encapsulated issues like security votes, cost and size of governance, nepotism, sinful and predatory executive pensions, corruption, medical and educational tourism, incredible opulence of public office holders, and village-head mentality of governors. When you start seeing messages like ‘the monthly salary of a Senator is more than the gratuity of a Professor’, you know that the anti-SARS movement  has indeed captured everything and that nowhere to hide for anybody!

Yes, no eye had seen, no ear had heard and no mind had imagined a mass ‘akshon’ like this in Nigeria. We had Ali-must-go; it was nationwide but limited to  university students.  June 12  was political and metamorphosed into a Lagos, South-West affair. We had other parochial protests, but nothing has ever been like this; total, comprehensive and inclusive. It is happening everywhere, ‘home and abroad’, in the cities and the villages, and even in those places where they are earnestly asking for SARS.  Youths in Anambra trekked from Awka to Awkuzu,( about 30 kms  if they took shortcuts) a symbolic march against police brutality. Our youths danced and sang in the sun and the rain; they raised, managed and accounted for funds, they took care of themselves and everybody, including their traducers, they catered, impromptu, for the unfortunate ones and they did all this with visible joy, believing that joy cometh in the morning.

 But it was not just about the youths. Everybody was involved, directly and indirectly and everybody was in support, including Baba go-slow, who declared that youths have a right to protest. That was after the VP had  apologized and admitted that ‘We could’ve moved faster’ and ‘the feelings of frustration are justified’. But the VP is in the habit of saying the right things whenever  he is not under the chokehold of the Aso-Rock spirits. After all, his recent declaration about cracks in the  wall sounded  as if he was quoting  Femi Falana,  Olisa Agbakoba or Shehu Sani! The Catholic Bishops, CAN , individual Priests and Bishops were in full support and  involved.

Fr Emeka Nwosu & another @ Ibadan

Pastor Adeboye and his whole family, father, mother, pikin, were in. Bishop Oyedepo supported the movement because he was strongly convinced  that “Every man has a right, legitimately so, to express his displeasure and pains’.  There were properly conducted Jumaat Service, communal prayers  praise worship and a full-fledged Catholic Mass, concelebrated by a college of priests.

Even the irrepressible Charelyboy authored a prayer for the movement! The animists were also  NOT missing in action as represented by the MR & Mrs deity @ Niger Bridge. The hunters also provided protection for the ‘protestants’

 The doctors, lawyers and teachers were fully involved  and for the first time, fathers and mothers were marching in support of their sons and daughters. The children and  physically challenged were involved.

When they remembered how important cows have become in recent times in Nigeria, they also mobilized some of them

And then, our governors  across the land, became the chief protestants!  CBN was even involved, as it was busy tracing the flow of funds to the end-SARS movement. And they asked, if it quickly traced such funds, why hadn’t it traced the flow of funds to book-haram et al?

 And then it started. The great Lai  declared that the protest was to discredit the Government.  Femi Adesina said it was a child’s play; a  sprinkle of people being funny. The Minister of Defense threatened. Coomassie upbraided the president for being mild. FUNAM warned the South and the Middlebelt. The Indigenous People of Abuja (???) gave ultimatum…  And then it happened in Benin, Abuja, Lagos... Local terrorists were mobilized, encouraged or allowed to commit Octoberhem (mayhem in October), burning security posts. and in broad daylight. And there was no resistance from the security forces. In Canada, the police were protecting EndSARS protestors. In Nigeria, police were firing teargas while soldiers  started shooting. Where then were those overzealous security men, eager and ready to deal with ‘trouble-makers, anti-democratic forces and agents of disunity’, when these destructions were taken place? And to think that they would be the first-line beneficiaries of the fruits of this ‘akshon’ How come idle civilians with sticks and stones were able to overrun the medium security prison( sorry, Correctional Facility) in Benin, not the type of prisons in the villages. When all these is over, there will be several questions to be asked and answered. Ooh, Ooh, Ouch…  I cant breath!

 As I was writing this, I came across this ode to Nigerian youths by one #Jarlat: ‘Your courage is amazing; you have shown coordination and deep sense of purpose. You are not lazy and not in the least vagrants. You are a rare breed, savvy, dogged and irrestably engaging.. you are the heroes and heroin of our time. Your maturity these few days is commendable.  The world stands in great awe of your potentials and enterprise… You have shown purpose, focus, resilience, determination for the cause you believe in, sacrificing all… What other way to shame the ineptitude of our leaders’( or dealers)?

Ahh, Nigeria can’t breath but it won’t be for long. Our youths have done us proud and they have shown that IT CAN BE DONE!

-Ik Muo, PhD. Department of Business Administration, OOU, Ago-Iwoye. 08033026625