Its hearthbreaking as one set of President Buhari's aides said he was not sick while
another set simultaneously asked us to pray for his recovery, is the
claim by the All Progressive Congress governor of Zamfara state that the outbreak of meningitis in Nigeria is as a result of our sins. His exact words were as follows:
“What we
used to know as far as meningitis is concerned is the type A virus. The
World Health Organization, 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. There is no way fornication will be so rampant and God will
not send a disease that cannot be cured.”
The above quote from Governor Abdul’aziz Abubakar Yari is not only silly and nonsensical, it is also blatantly untrue.
First of
all, it is not true for that there is no vaccine against meningitis C.
There is one and it has existed for almost two decades. In the year 1999
alone, 15 million children in the United Kingdom were vaccinated
against meningitis C. Why a Governor of a state prone to meningitis does
not know this beats my imagination. If he is ignorant of this, I wonder
how many more things he will be ignorant of!
When the
Ebola Virus struck in Nigeria in 2014, the Goodluck Jonathan
administration wasted no time in mobilizing against the disease
alongside the affected state governments. Preventive measures were put
in our airports and those affected were quarantined. Those who escaped
quarantine were traced, apprehended and sent back to quarantine. Nigeria
made international headlines for all the right reasons, becoming one of
the first nations in the world to defeat Ebola even before advanced
nations like the United States and the United Kingdom.
However, in
2017, when meningitis has reached epidemic proportions in Nigeria with
336 deaths and counting, the ever blame ready APC government blames our
sins instead of attacking the scourge!
The annoying
thing about Governor Yari's statement is that he said this immediately
after a meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari. Who knows what the two
of them must have discussed in secret that emboldened the Governor to
say what he says right after the meeting.
The APC
administration's response to the meningitis epidemic can be summarized
thus: Repent of your sins and your meningitis will depart from you!
We never
experienced these deaths from meningitis in the five years preceding
this administration. One wonders if Nigerians were not committing sins
during the years that Jonathan governed Nigeria.
If Nigerian
Governors have any shame left, they will ask Governor Abdulaziz Yari to
step down as the Chairman of the Nigerian Governors Forum. What type of
leadership can he provide for the NGF? Over 200 people died from
meningitis in his state and he is blaming the sin of fornication? This
is a man who boasted of spending ₦1 billion in 2013 to host a Qur’anic
Memorisation Competition, at that time equivalent to $7 million. If he
had used that money to pay for meningitis C vaccines for the people of
Zamfara, at least 200 of them would have still been alive to memorize
the Qur'an today! That is the real sin that causes meningitis, not the
sin of fornication.
But rather
than dissociate from him, the equally shameless Governor of Kaduna
state, Malam Nasir El-Rufai invited Governor Yari to have the seat of
honour at the Kaduna Investment Summit which held on Thursday the 6th of
April, 2017.
Seated at
the seat of honoring at the summit tagged #KadInvest was El-Rufai, a
Governor who admitted paying Fulani herdsmen not to kill his citizens
(they took the money and the killings continued) and on the right was
Abdul'aziz Yari, a Governor who believes the sin of fornication causes
meningitis. It was definitely not a successful Summit! Google the
pictures from the summit and you will notice the empty hall. It seems
herdsmen killings and or death by meningitis affected attendance!
If,
according to Governor Yari, illnesses are the result of sins, then pray,
can he tell us what sin is responsible for President Muhammadu Buhari's
ill health? And while he is at it perhaps he can tell us what sin is
responsible for his own illness of diarrhea of the mouth?
The fact
remains that it is not sins, but lack of leadership that has caused the
meningitis outbreak currently plaguing Nigeria. Our leaders have refused
to spend the wealth of the Nigerian nation on the welfare and wellbeing
of the Nigerian nation. More money is spent by states like Kano and
Zamfara on sending their elites on pilgrimage to Mecca at public
expense, or on organizing mass weddings for people that are ill prepared
for marriage than is spent on defeating the meningitis scourge.
If at all
sin caused this meningitis outbreak, then it is the sin that Nigeria has
enough money to pay for President Muhammadu Buhari's London treatment
but not enough money to give citizens in vulnerable areas the meningitis
C vaccines!
Could this
be the reason why the Presidency has refused to reveal how much of our
money President Buhari spent on his medical tourism visit, also known as
'vacation', to London?
But the more
I think of it, the more I am convinced that If at all sins cause
diseases, it would not be the sins of Nigerians, it would be the sins of
their leaders.
President Muhammadu Buhari alone has committed more than enough sins to saddle us with enough plagues.
Do we have
to talk about the sin of his hypocritical letter to the Senate of the
National Assembly in which he made excuses for his own Secretary to the
Government of the Federation who had been caught, red handed, in a
contract scam?
The
President's actions were made even more hypocritical by the fact that he
recently fired a Permanent Secretary for doing the exact thing that
grass-cutter Babachir Lawal did.
By sacking
the Permanent Secretary and retaining and defending Babachir, President
Buhari proved the truism in George Orwell's words from his seminal work,
Animal Farm, that 'all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others'.
Going back
to the President's sins that may have ignited the meningitis outbreak,
could it have been his sin of failing to take any disciplinary actions
against those involved in the killings of over three hundred Shiites in
Zaria including defenseless babies, women and children?
Or perhaps
it is failing to bring anyone to book for the bombing of hundreds of
innocent Internally Displaced Persons and the medical officers who were
helping them at the Rann IDP camp in Borno state?
It could
even have been the fact that the President condemned Dr. Goodluck
Jonathan for allowing the Naira lose value to the extent that it
exchanged for 199 Naira to a dollar only to watch, almost helplessly, as
it devalued to as high as 500 Naira to one dollar during his watch.
The fact
remains that the President has committed enough sins, including
relegating women to the 'other room' and calling Nigerians 'criminals'
(to the Telegraph of London) that Nigerians do not have to have sinned
to bring this plague on us. Our President has committed enough sins to
pay the price of our plagues!
To those who
believed President Muhammadu Buhari's allegation that Dr. Goodluck
Jonathan looted, do you also believe his statement that 'Abacha did not
loot'? To those who believe the President's allegations that Jonathan's
cabinet was corrupt, do you also believe that Babachir Lawal, Rotimi
Amaechi, Fashola and
others in the current cabinet are angels? To those who believed the
APC's allegations that Jonathan was training snipers to kill opposition
members, ask yourself how many opposition members were killed under
Jonathan and how many are being killed now. Finally, if you believed
Jonathan was clueless, how come your economic situation has deteriorated
since the clueless one left the scene for the clueful Buhari?
Life in
Nigeria is already a hardscrabble and Nigerians do not need insults
added to their injury by this infantile talk from the Zamfara state
governor. If Governor Yari wants to make himself useful he should stop
misrepresenting God and appeal to President Muhammadu Buhari to tell us
how much of our money he spent on his London medical tourism.
I mean, this
President is just too secretive to hold a public post. He spends our
money to treat himself and he will not tell us how much of it he has
spent. Even something as elementary as his School Leaving Certificate is
a mystery!
A corruption
fighter who hides behind thirteen Senior Advocates of Nigeria instead
of showing his WASSCE certificate and behind National Security instead
of revealing how much of our money he spent on his London doctors, and
writes a letter defending his appointee caught red handed in corruption,
is that one a corruption fighter?
In June of 1975, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan sat for his West African School Certificate Examinations and made the following results.
A2 economics
A2 biology
A2 chemistry
A2 Geography
A3 CRK
C6 English
C5 physics
Mathematics
was canceled, so the next year he wrote GCE in November and got A3 in
mathematics. So before you call Dr. Jonathan 'clueless', please show me
your own champion's School Certificate result.
Former
President Goodluck Jonathan made 6 As and 2 Cs in his WASC School
Leaving Examinations. I have Dr. Jonathan's original certificates! If
you want to see it I can show it to you without you having to pay
thirteen SANs to raise objections and 'gift' a judge ₦500,000. That is
transparency. That is integrity. That is straightforwardness. Dr.
Jonathan signed the Freedom of Information Act into law so that all
Nigerians have a right to know vital information which those in
government want to keep from them. President Buhari, prove that you have
integrity. Prove that you are transparent. Sack your thirteen SANs and
show us your certificate! You have been pointing one finger at others,
now your own four fingers are pointing at you!
In the year
of our Lord, 1981, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan graduated with a Second Class
Upper degree in Zoology from the University of Port Harcourt, Rivers
State. At that time, there was nothing like 'blocking' in Nigeria. If
you were not intelligent you could not graduate with such high scores.
And yet, a Senator who has been exposed as having graduated with a Third
Class degree and a former (?) dictator whose School Certificate status
is yet to be determined had the temerity to once call such a man
'clueless'. Yet in less than a year they turned the prosperity Jonathan
gave us to recession. Now, who is really clueless?
On January
25, 2011 the Arab Spring began in Egypt. In less than a week after that
date, then President Goodluck Jonathan issued an Executive Order for
Nigerians to be evacuated from Egypt. On the 1st of February, 2011,
Nigeria became the First Nation to evacuate her citizens out of Egypt.
When the Arab Spring spread to Libya in February of 2011, President
Jonathan ordered evacuations there which began on Thursday, February 24,
2011.
Recently,
there have been consistent xenophobic attacks on the life of Nigerians
in South Africa and India. What has the reaction of the Muhammadu Buhari
administration been? Criticize Buhari and the Nigerian government
reacts, but going by the reaction of the Buhari led administration to
South Africa and India, it is almost as if nothing is happening to
Nigerian citizens in those nations. Yet, this is a government that
called the Jonathan administration clueless.
They have
failed to stop the deaths of Nigerians at home by being responsive to
the meningitis outbreak or the rising cases of mass killings by Fulani
herdsmen and they have also failed to arrest the ugly trend of
xenophobic killings of Nigerians abroad. What then is this government
good for?
I admire the enthusiasm Nigerians have shown in voting for #BBNaija. Eleven million votes in one week
is no joke. Now, all that remains is for Nigerians to use that same
enthusiasm to vote out the man who called us 'criminals' in his February
5, 2016 The Telegraph of U.K. interview. In case you are a criminal and
you do not feel offended that President Muhammadu Buhari defined you as
such, then you should go ahead and confirm your criminality by voting
for him!
Thankfully, I
conducted a poll on Twitter which was well covered by the media. My
question was simple: If an election is held for president of Nigeria
today, who would you vote for between Efe and President Muhammadu
Buhari? Needless to say that Efe won the vote by a landslide margin of
over 80%.
And why have
Nigerians rejected the President so soon? It is because he is being
unraveled by his actions and by his kitchen cabinet.
Look at the kerfuffle between El-Rufai and the cabal? Look at how the so called anti-corruption war is being exposed as a sham.
First Orubebe, now Justice Ademola and finally Dame Patience Jonathan. In one week, all three of them have been vindicated by the courts! The courts are dismissing trumped up charges.
Until
Babachir Lawal, Buhari's grass cutter Secretary to the Government of the
Federation is charged, the anti corruption war is a sham! How can the
President wine and dine with Babachir Lawal, a man caught red handed in
corruption and unleash the EFCC on opposition figures like Orubebe and
the judge trying his certificate scandal? Perhaps President Buhari will
now instruct EFCC to charge Kola Awodein, one of the thirteen SANs
defending him from showing his WASSCE certificate. After all, Awodein
admitted giving Ademola a 'gift' of ₦500k while President Buhari's
matter was before Justice Ademola!
Let me at this point conclude by again quoting from Orwell's Animal Farm:
"The
creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from
pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which."
Reno's Nuggets:
As I
promised last week, I will give my readers a bit of the Nuggets I use in
my teachings to my mentees as a pastor. Today's nuggets appear below:
Any woman
who expects a man to look after her or give her money because he is
dating her should not look down on prostitutes. Women, emancipate
yourselves from this mentality that boyfriends are meant to foot your
bills. Once money is involved, it ceases to be a relationship and
becomes a transaction. In today's world, women do not need men
financially. Men and women need each other emotionally and biologically.
They complete each other. They do not contract each other. Start a
business if you want a financial partner instead of getting a boyfriend.
Boyfriends aren't poverty alleviation schemes. Poverty is a painful
cancer. A job is like a pain killer to reduce pain. Having a business is
like surgery to remove the pain. Do I offend you with my truth? The
highest ignorance is to reject truth because it came from your enemy and
accepting a lie because it came from your friend #RenosNuggets
Reno Omokri
is the Founder of the Mind of Christ Christian Center and author of
Shunpiking: No Shortcuts to God, Why Jesus Wept and his latest book,
Apples of Gold.
After she read out the Brief, she joked at first about re-electing herself as the Igwe
again amidst laughter from her fellow Housemates. Then she put on her
serious face and opted to elect captain Nipples as her successor.
Efe's FAMILY
