Few days ago, High Chief Raymond Dokpesi, Chairman Daar Communication, was discharged of the cruel pang of corona virus which has held him down in isolationism and under treatment for some weeks now. Immediately he was out of corona’s hook, he made a shocking statement.
According to him, “I still have doubts in my mind and I need to be educated. What’s the difference between COVID-19 and malaria? Every drug we were given were malaria medications”.
Trust Nigerian media, it has become a teeth-bite for all and sundry. It has especially highlighted doubt and skepticism as to whether malaria reincarnated in the flesh of corona virus or just the usually politics, since everything settles around politics.
Recall this prognosis in early March. I am sure High Chief Raymond Dokpesi may not have been the only one trapped in this waterloo; even the US President, Trump does. Of course, in March, it was initially rumored that the president prescribed chloroquine for the treatment of corona virus.
In a related development, the Nigerian Centre For Disease Control (NCDC) has been at logger-heads with Gov. Yahaya Bello of Kogi state for the refusal to allow the NCDC’s activities in his state to raise some numbers of corona virus’ patient. I am sure Gov. Bello’s action may be deliberate. And this may not be unconnected with what the governor felt could be a shoddy deal and dark secret in the way and manner the development has cast doubt and put the flaws of some short-sighted, exploitative, hyper-individualistic in glaring focus.
Of recent, I wrote on corona virus, the palpable manipulation, the complications, the secret skepticisms, via market economy and other undertones of the pandemic.
In my last article titled “Covid-19, U.S-China Geo-Economic Competition and the Rest of Us”, I specifically interrogate the strategic availability of neo-liberal occupancy in the formation and spread of corona virus; arguing that the geo-strategic strive for economic dominance may not be far-fetched from the origin and spread of the deadly pandemic that has kept the world under threat of fear, sorrow and death.
No doubt, the tragicism and the shock at which this pandemic travelled brew whole lots of suspicion. And at that departure, journalists, scholars, are forced between the edges of their skull to unraveled the cynicism, the secrecy, the naturalness and or its artificiality.
Meanwhile, a lot of questions have come on board in the meantime; probing into several dualities in the opinions of scholars worldwide, whether Coronavirus is a ‘nature-made’ or ‘man-made’ pandemic. How scientific research can sort out the truth from various conspiratorial assumptions about a ‘deliberate’ causality and possible ‘manipulation’ of the virus and could it be that the United Nations, European Union and even the global world powers are ‘deliberate’ to have balanced the highly-sought nuclear deterrence with some virus deterrence or minimum strategy of biowarfare? Of course, minimum of these strategies may have played out.
Now, the trickle-down effect in Africa is daily brewing a tough hype of skepticism leading to critical examination and counter-examinations with the growing radius of Coronavirus’s health and economic implications, humanity is sliding downhill. It is an atomized chaos, no doubt, the transformation of corona virus as catchall for anything that smacks of deregulation, liberalization, privatization, fiscal austerity and a postcard for cash-cheque. Like it has become a meal ticket for the big nations and their errands institutions. But wont anybody feels disgust about the hits of this pandemic in U.S, and especially in China, and their relief efforts in Africa and countries termed the third world?
The after-effect of corona virus is becoming a deadly blow on the face of African countries most especially. In this trickle-down-effect, the neo-liberal merchandise is beginning to reel into Africa with IMF, U.S, China supports mechanisms; using WHO to enforce compliance and to run a shoddy venture in Africa.
About few days ago, the Burundi government expelled some of the WHO experts in the country for over-playing script and constituting nuisance to the welfare of Burundians. In the same vein, Madagascar have proffer herbal solution to nip covid-19 in the bud, unfortunately, WHO considered that development as a frantic affront to their antics and thereby want their herbal solutions dead before arrival.
It was widely breezed on the media, particularly the outcry of Madagascar President, Andry Rajoelina reported on the “Tanzania Perspective newspaper” of how WHO bribed official of Madagascar’ health body of $20million in order to poison CVO-Herbal made from Madagascar. Among other measured to strangulate the third world countries by the buffer states is the enforcement of lockdown to ruin global economies and lives.
However, the threat of corona virus has been portrayed as ‘foreign’, whether man-made or natural – African gesturing response is to now build a home walls and stop the flights. Only for global super powers using WHO to frustrate this development. Now the question some of us are asking is, what does global powers want from the rest of us?
I asked this question because, so far, some promising news have emerged about a possible breakthrough in designing a foreign drug to fight the pandemic by the Australia disease experts at the University of Queensland in Brisbane still balls down on mere hope on two existing medications that would eradicate the Coronavirus infections: Chloroquine, an anti-malarial drug, and HIV-suppressing combination lopinavir/ritonavir. But the validity of these medical experiments is not yet certain. This development no doubt justify the distance between fiction and reality of High Chief’s experience and would vindicate in the event that anybody might think he is hallucinating.
My view about all this, is a really bad one. “Trump returns in the Coronavirus engulfing Crisis to face memories of 1929 and expect a scale of harm unparalleled in the modern U.S. economy. Now, the potential for millions of jobs lost in a single month, a drastic and unexpected fall in national economic activity and a rate of rapid price volatility unprecedented reminds me of the great depression. What’s is the fate of the rest of us aftermath of corona virus, such is my deep depression right now, especially as many people are losing their jobs and families in a geometric rise across Africa.
– Martins Mejabi, a Journalist and social critic, writes from Kogi state, Nigeria.
