By Ishaya Ibrahim, News Editor
In his church service on May 9, 2021, Bishop of the Living Faith Church, David Oyedepo, had claimed that the COVID-19 vaccine was a ploy to kill Africans.
“They wanted Africa dead. I heard them say it. When we didn’t die as they proposed, they brought out this vaccination scheme,” the bishop said in front of a 50,000 sitting capacity audience in Otta, Ogun State, Nigeria.
The bishop’s claim was amplified widely in news blogs, social and traditional media.
Other preachers have reechoed the claim with some slight modification. Pastor Chris Oyakhilome of Christ Embassy, for instance, seems to think that accepting the COVID-19 vaccine was equal to a lack of faith in God. “Do you know that if you would believe in Christ and the word of God the way you believe in this vaccine, there will be power in your mouth? He (God) made us healers.” Facts and statistics are however proving the assertions by the clerics, false and deceptive.
A familiar road
In early 2000, polio was widespread in the Nigerian north, fueled by the propaganda of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan at the time who falsely claimed that the polio vaccine was an American ploy to sterilize the Muslim population.
Fundamentalist Muslim preachers in Kano and other northern cities amplified the falsehood at different mosques. Many children were avoidably crippled for life by the wild poliovirus due to the false claim. Fortunately, science prevailed on the hesitant population who later allowed their wards and children to take the vaccine.
Nigeria is now polio-free on August 26, 2020, the last African country to attain the status, but not without leaving the scar of the virus on many.
COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy
The COVID-19 vaccine is being resisted again as a western plot against Africa, an assertion championed by Oyedepo.
Nigeria has administered 3.9 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine. And since the jab is two doses per person, this means only about one per cent of the population may have received it.
Although the vaccine is in short supply, a poll by SBM Intelligence, a data-gathering organization, shows that at least 60 per cent of Nigerians say they are hesitant about taking the COVID-19 vaccine. Of that number, 36 per cent won’t take it. Twenty-four per cent are undecided.
Oyedepo and other clerics spinning conspiracy about COVID-19 vaccine may have contributed to the resolve of the 60 per cent population who are hesitant about taking the jab. And with the aid of the internet, Oyedepo has reached hundreds of thousands of people with the false claim.
For instance, the Bishop streamed his conspiracy theory that Africans are the target of the COVID-19 vaccine to his 384,000 Youtube subscribers and 146,000 Facebook friends.
One of his church members who watched the conspiracy on Youtube said: “I and everyone connected to me are taking cover under Christ against any virus, including Coronavirus.”
TheNiche asked four members of Oyedepo’s church who resided in different parts of Nigeria if they would take the COVID-19 vaccine. All four of them said they would not take the vaccine because Oyedepo warned them against it.
Oyedepo wrong
A conspiracy targeted at Africans is unlikely in today’s globalized world. Africans are on the world stage. Among leading scientists in different areas of medicine are Africans. They are not likely to consent to any plot against their kins.
Also, the director-general of the World Health Organisation, Tedros Adhanom, is an African. He is the first African to lead the WHO, the body which sets the standards for the production of vaccines.
Also, there has been a significant correlation between the mass COVID-19 vaccination and the reduction of deaths.
In the U.S., the Common Wealth Fund says the COVID-19 vaccination campaign has significantly curbed the virus’s spread and national death toll, saving an estimated 279,000 lives and averting up to 1.25 million hospitalizations.
In Italy, a report by the National Health Institute, one of the country’s research agencies, says 99 per cent of COVID-19 deaths occur among those not fully vaccinated.
In Brazil, a 95 per cent drop in COVID-19 deaths happened after almost all adults of Serana, a Brazilian town, were vaccinated.
But in Africa, the story is different. COVID-19 deaths are rising because of the highly transmittable delta variant and the scarcity of the vaccine.
The Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said on July 29, 2021, that the continent’s death toll from COVID-19 has jumped 17 per cent in the past month. Only about 1.7 per cent of the continent’s population, that is, 24 million of its people, have been vaccinated.
Nigeria now records an average of four COVID-19 deaths per day as against zero death in weeks.
Child rights activist Betty Abah says Nigerians should protect themselves from the COVID-19 with the vaccine. “It is a fact that vaccine reduces the number of death rates in Europe, North America…the statistics are clear that the people who are dying are mainly those who have not taken the vaccine. We should follow the medical people who know the best.”
This publication was produced as part of IWPR’s Africa Resilience Network (ARN) programme, administered in partnership with the Centre for Information Resilience (CIR), the International Centre for Investigative Reporting (ICIR) and Africa Uncensored. For more information on ARN, please visit the ARN site: https://africaresiliencenetwork.com/