REFLECTIONS!

I've been away from here for quite a while. Reason: don't actually know. Maybe it's brain fatigue. Or the numerous trips I've been making recently from my kitchen, to the living room and all the other rooms in the "new house" as my older soon will call it. So much has happened also since the last time I was here. As much as I try not to see the news channels I always find myself scrolling back to Al Jazeera, Euronews and CNN. I don't know whether my mind has been remotely paired with bad news - wars in Gaza, Syria, Iraq, South Sudan. Then Ebola in Liberia, Guinea, Sierra Leone and over a thousand dead already. Then, in the spirit of negative black comradeship, Patrick Sawyer decided to invent the deadly disease to my dear country. Since then, so much has happened! From bitter kola, to salt solution and while the whole world is waiting for the American Zmapp, our honorable Minister for Health tells us we are royals who must use precious ornaments - in came Nano Silver. Just imagine, while the rest of Africans are taking the last of the letters of the English alphabet, Z, we the royals decided to make it expensive by going for "silver" with the prospect of regrading to gold. Then a volte face, the Minister recants. I saw his quivering lips as he makes incoherent clarifications on how the so-called Ebola-land returnees made their journeys back:

"Was it Nano Silver that was used?" came the query.
"No. It is a combination of nutrition and other things."

Did I forget to add that the American Ambassador Enstwile (or something like that, guess he can't write mine correctly either) was in the background?

Honestly, this is where I don't like Nigerian journalists. Either they are the most I imaginative or they have "chopped awuuf" that they even take leave of their common sense. In the midst of the Ebola crisis, everyone is running belter-skelter to find answers. What remains is for oyibo journalists to go and interview monkeys and bats. They ask questions that unintelligent people like me find very challenging for the intelligent ones at their mercies. And here in Nigeria, a sitting Minister of Health, in the manner of our less informed ancestors (this needs some qualifications, please) tries to mystify a healing process that is working and then the journalist who is interviewing him decides not to probe, I really don't know what to think.

People are still dying in Guinea. America has sent the untested Zmapp to Liberia. WHO has said that it is ethical to use untested drugs in the fight against the Ebola epidemic. And here, our Minister says that Nigeria is still testing and verifying Zmapp. Yet he endorsed Nano Silver while they were still expecting it. Then, maybe when the American Ambassador duly informed him that Nano Silver is a pesticide, the man becomes CDC and NAFDAC boss overnight. I don't really know, but I still miss Pate (erstwhile Minister of State for Health who moved to an academic position at Yale or somewhere like that in the US). I know my Igbo brothers will have my head for saying this, but I have always said time without number that what we need in this country is not a southern or northern leader, Igbo, Yoruba or Hausa/Fulani; what we need are round pegs in round holes and square pegs in square holes!

2015 is around the corner again, and the selective amnesia that has been the bane of our development has arisen again. We follow politicians sheepishly without remembering that they know nothing else other than their pockets. They care for no one but themselves. They love a Nigeria in disarray and squabbles because it favors them. Their future is secured by the trillions they loot. They can fly to any part of the world at any time due to their deep pockets. They have succeeded in making our nation a laughing stock. Just take for instance, the last US-African Summit. In the group picture that was taken, our dear president was standing at the back row that the photographer who got him didn't even see Obama!

Chai! The most populous black nation on earth? The so-called fastest growing economy in Africa or is it the world? And America, with its love for money ignored a fast growing economy? Tell me something!

Before some people run off with their imagination and bring in their myopic APC/PDP banter, let me state categorically that GEJ is just a victim of the rot and decay created by past maladministration in Nigeria especially the type created by IBB and Abacha. They will as usual ask me to provide proof and I will ask you to check or compare Gowon and IBB especially after they left office. Also throw in Buhari, Murtala, etc. How rich were they when they got in and how rich were they when they got out? Is what they now have commensurate with what they earned while in office? And what of their people? Have they fared any better while their brothers were ins office? Note that I didn't add OBJ because any good thing he did in his first coming was obliterated by his vicious second coming.

I started this blog without a title and now I have one: Reflections! Now to the next point!

Let me get back to my sleep. Thanks for all the support, people. My birthday is in four days' time. Spread love! Celebrate me now.,don't wait till I become governor or president! *laughing in Greek*





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