Abnormal situations breed abnormal reactions, according to a wise saying. However, in Nigeria, abnormal situations also give birth to despicable reactions. We seem to always paint serious issues in distasteful colours.
For example, during the Osun State governorship election a few weeks ago, one of the political parties made it a duty to make Nigerians laugh despite the presence of Ebola. The All Progressives Congress (APC), comprising very experienced election riggers, kept accusing its senior partner in election malpractice, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), of digitally planning to the rig the Osun election.
APC raised so much hell about PDP’s plan to rig the election, mostly through huge security set-up, so much that you would think APC leaders were a bunch of angels from heaven and not who we know them to be.
On one of those days, some newspaper headlines read: PDP prepares election rigging manual. Someone once said, even among thieves, there is honour. Tell me, did PDP need a manual to rig an election organised and sponsored by the government in power?
On another day, we were told that voting in the election had been completed by the PDP at a secret location. The APC went ahead to unveil such gory details that accorded the PDP more election rigging expertise than it really possesses.
But a few hours after voting ended, peacefully, on election day, the same APC was declared the winner. Not a few questions came up: what happened to the PDP rigging manual? What about the votes they allegedly cast days to the election date?
All those allegations have since been forgotten because APC won. The orchestrated rigging manual has disappeared. APC is no longer talking about how the PDP massively thumb-printed the ballot papers days before the election took place.
Can you imagine what would have happened if APC did not win in Osun? The lesson in all of this is that APC has perfected the art of political deceit clothed in pre-historic propaganda colours.
Unfortunately, while APC cannot be trusted in the business of campaign propaganda because it is difficult to draw a line between truth and well-oiled falsehood, PDP also cannot be trusted when it comes to free and fair election.
I guess I’m not the only one caught in the dilemma of not trusting PDP and also not seeing APC as a better alternative. As 2015 approaches, both Tom Ikimi and Bola Tinubu are busy vomiting in the public what they ate in secret. Politics of bitterness is here.
Despite how they disagree in politics, the emergence of Ebola in Nigeria, exported from Liberia by that man whose mission is still wrapped in mystery, has not only awakened unprecedented alertness among the people, it has also created a sense of unity in the fight. From market places to the banks, and from schools to hospitals, Ebola has created a scare never heard of in Nigeria’s health sector. And for the first time, the government of Nigeria has risen as it should to counter the plague in a very practical manner.
Still there are some minuses. Last week, I saw something quite strange at the Maitama branch of a popular bank in Abuja. Positioned at the entrance was a basin of water. Staff and customers were forced to wash their hands and apply sanitisers before entering the bank.
In addition, one of the baton-wielding gatemen had a hand-held device called infrared thermometer to gauge body temperature of staff and customers before they enter the bank. I simply laughed; and I’ll tell you why. For a start, the types of sanitisers hawked on the streets of Nigeria since the emergence of Ebola do not kill viruses as claimed. Such sanitisers only tackle bacteria.
Medical personnel have told me that using the street-side sanitisers to fight Ebola amounts to ignorantly over-stretching the search for a cure against the killer nuisance. Some of them almost equated it with taking a bath with or drinking saline as antidote against Ebola.
Sanitisers that kill viruses within minutes are those used in the hospitals. These are called sterilising fluids. They are not really meant to be used outside the hospitals; they are mainly for sterilisation of hospital equipment and are not meant to be used on the human body.
Available information indicates that having your hands washed with soap and running water, not with water in a basin, in the fight against Ebola, is far better than dipping them into alcohol-based sanitisers.
The good news, however, is that certain viruses like the HIV and the type that causes Ebola, do not last long outside the host. But that must not be an excuse for not having your hands or body washed as soon as contact is suspected.
More laughable, however, is the wisdom of the bank management in giving the infrared thermometer to illiterate gatemen to check the temperature of people entering the premises.
If the bank intends to go beyond eye service in tackling the Ebola menace, why can’t they employ trained health officials with a better understanding of minimum standards in the fight against Ebola to handle the preventive measures?
I believe the fight against Ebola must be taken beyond the realm of mere eye service. It is a fight that must be won. If politicians can pull every dirty trick to win an election, Ebola deserves a better combative effort.
