can one also ask, “what is the work of our National Intelligence Agency (NIA) and the DSS if they cannot protect the homeland from external and internal attacks?” Agencies like the DSS, as confirmed by their spokeswoman Marilyn Ogar are well paid by the government, and yet they can not prevent a case of bio-terrorism as we were just recently attacked by Patrick Sawyer
As Nigeria battles its worst epidemic outbreak in recent history, it is worth pointing out certain issues concerning the deadly Ebola virus. These issues should not be allowed to go under the radar as our failures give further evidence that Nigerians are caught in a helpless situation, thanks to the incompetence our leaders display.
As far back as March of this year, Foreign ministers of West African countries including Nigeria met under the auspices of ECOWAS in Ivory Coast, to discuss the Ebola epidemic that was then taking hold in Guinea and would gradually spread into Sierra Leone and Liberia. In a communiqué issued after their meeting, they declared Ebola a ‘serious threat to regional security.’ The question is, asides from the usual issuance of statements, what memo did Aminu Wali, our Minister of Foreign Affairs, or the two Ministers of State, Violet Onwuliri and Nurudeen Mohammed, write to the presidency about the seriousness of the issue, especially after attending the ECOWAS meeting? Did any of them write to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Department of State Security – DSS – Police, Immigration and Port Health Authorities about the seriousness of the Ebola virus and its threat to our homeland security? The answer would be no, as they believed the usual communiqué issued after the meeting would be sufficient.
In April of this year,the Minister of Information, Labaran Maku, informed Nigerians on national TV that the Federal Government had taken all measures to prevent the outbreak of Ebola in the country. To say he was just joking and making a fool of himself would be an understatement. As it turns out, there were no health screening checks at the nation’s airport until after the Liberian, Patrick Sawyer, attacked the nation with biological terrorism. It makes one ask the question, how long will we continue to exhibit this childish and immature behaviour of not taking public service seriously? When will elected officials begin to see their offices as a true opportunity to provide services to their country and her people? We had the better part of six months to prepare our borders and formulate a response to Ebola, to identify it as a strategic threat to our national security and well-being. However, we did nothing until we were suddenly attacked; then we rushed into action.
Compare that to more serious nations like the UK, who on hearing of the Ebola outbreak in Nigeria, convened a COBRA meeting chaired by their Foreign Secretary, Philip Hammond. This was based on the fact that they realised that Nigeria is the most populous nation in Africa with lots of visitors to the UK. The circumstances of the disease arriving in Nigeria mean that it could also arrive at their own borders if all the necessary precautions were not taken. Isolation units were quickly prepared at some major hospitals. Immigration and port health officers were put on alert, while internal memos were sent out to all NHS doctors and GPs across the country to look out for cases of people just returned from Africa with complaints of fevers or malaria. That is a country that understands what it is like to handle public service.
It is the same with Senegal who has closed her borders to neighbouring Guinea since March. Mauritania followed suit the same month by closing most of its borders with Senegal. Gambia suspended air travel and the launch of a new air carrier to Guinea. This shows that just like the UK, there are other African countries who understand what public service means and are not into the buffoonery of joking with the lives of their people the way that Maku, Wali, Onwuliri et al. have done with Nigeria.
Can one also ask, “what is the work of our National Intelligence Agency (NIA) and the DSS if they cannot protect the homeland from external and internal attacks?” Agencies like the DSS, as confirmed by their spokeswoman Marilyn Ogar are well paid by the government, and yet they can not prevent a case of bio-terrorism as we were just recently attacked by Patrick Sawyer. In the future, as soon as the Ebola epidemic clears across West Africa, would the NIA do an extensive investigation as to why Sawyer came into Nigeria knowing fully well he was carrying the Ebola virus? There is a possibility that the Liberian government might have a hand in it with the thinking that if Nigeria were attacked with the virus, it would bring international attention to their plight and rescue their country from the epidemic. I’m not making accusations against the Liberian President Ellen Sirleaf-Johnson as she might not be aware of such decisions within her government, but it is a possibility that someone in her government could have ordered the attack. What about the possibility that sympathisers of ex-Liberian warlord Charles Taylor could have set-up the attack to teach Nigeria a lesson. He has many sympathisers still in the Liberian government who are possibly not happy with the role we played in handing him over to the International Criminal Court in the Hague to be tried on war crime accusations.
Will the NIA carry out an investigation in future to unravel all this? In saner climes, that is definitely what a government would do. The information they find out from their intelligence services would usually be made known through press leaks. It took investigations from Premium Times to discover that Sawyer worked for a private company – Acelor Mittal – and not the Ministry of Finance in Liberia as claimed. The Deputy Minister of Finance in Liberia, Sebastian Muah, who authorised his travel now claims that Sawyer was a Public Health officer. It all shows that there is a cover up somewhere with Sawyer having used a false identity to be allowed to travel and that Nigeria has been biologically attacked for reasons quite unclear. I do not need to go into all of Sawyer’s actions while caught on CCTV, before he left Liberia, and his contrasting actions when he landed in Nigeria. They include borrowing the mobile phone of the ECOWAS contact who met him at the airport – who is now dead – the fact that he told lies about his condition at the hospital in Lagos, yanking off his Intravenous (IV) infusion and splashing blood all over his bed sheets and hospital ward. Reports that he deliberately urinated on the floor and on nurses treating him, show that it was a predetermined bio-terrorist attack, but what we need to unravel is who was behind it and why? One wonders why he insisted on being allowed to proceed to Calabar to do more damage, especially considering that Calabar was Charles Taylor’s last known base in Nigeria and that whoever sent Sawyer might have wanted revenge on the people of Calabar who reported Taylor’s movement to security agencies and prevented his escape the year he was arrested and handed over to the Hague.
I’m happy that Sawyer’s body was cremated by the Lagos state government and his ashes returned to his fellow collaborators in Liberia. That should be the message we send out to people or countries who hate us as a nation. However, my grouse is with our government and the incompetence they display. A public servant should be proactive in his thinking and always cover all the bases to ensure that the nation is well served. It’s when Nigerians realise they have a government that is proactive in taking care of their needs that the feel loyalty, patriotism and nationalism. It’s not only when you announce you want to build roads, bridges or award contracts every Wednesday that you believe you are serving Nigerians. At this stage of our lives we all know that is an avenue to loot our resources. It’s the little well considered actions you take to show you care about Nigeria and Nigerians that foster patriotism and nationalism within the people. In a more civilised nation, you can’t come to the people asking for their votes and talking about a seven point transformation agenda when you can’t protect their lives or be seen to be proactively protecting them from bio-terrorists like Patrick Sawyer, or you find it impossible to rescue 219 girls who have been in captivity for close to 140 days and just hope people would forget about it and move on.
Say what you like about the Lagos state government, but their actions since the Ebola outbreak have not only been reactive but very much proactive. I take for instance their call on pastor T.B Joshua, to ban people from West African countries coming to his church for Ebola miracles. It takes a proactive government to think about that and cover that base, otherwise you might see bodies transported into the country for miracles at T.B Joshua’s church, thereby endangering our lives. It is these little actions people see that distinguish followers from leaders, as not all followers would have thought of that angle. It makes people bond with their government, staying loyal to them. It is not when you issue meaningless press statements and releases that you are on top of a situation or you have everything in place that shows you serving the people. Its about concrete proactive actions you take most times that make people realise they have a government serving them.
Now due to the failure of our government, leaders and relevant homeland protection agencies, we have a deadly epidemic on our hands. In case we don’t know how deadly Ebola is, I will explain. Asides from its near 90% fatality rate in most past outbreaks of the disease and the fact that it spreads through bodily contact of all kinds – skin, body fluids, sweat, semen etc. – the virus oozing from the body of one dead Ebola patient is enough to infect the earth’s entire population three times over. It’s the reason the Americans and Spanish had to fly their infected citizens at great risk back home. It’s not because they wanted to prove they could cure them, but because the risk of allowing them die in Liberia – with poor handling of the dead- and then bringing back their dead bodies to their families, was far greater than having them brought in while still alive. Also a patient who recovers from Ebola may still spread the disease to others through bodily secretions up to seven weeks after their recovery, hence the deadliness of the virus we allowed to slip into the country, due to the incompetence of those we gave the mandate to watch over our affairs.
For me, whenever we investigate the reason for Sawyer’s actions, via our foreign affairs ministry and intelligence services, we have to exact some punishment on his collaborators and indeed Liberia, so other nations don’t see Nigeria as a soft target. It’s time we recall some loans from Liberia if they owe us, or dispense with some services we render to the country if and when it’s proven that Sawyer’s attack was deliberate, which I believe it is. It is time we stop playing big brother to a majority of African countries who hate our guts as a nation and always want to prove to us that they are more clever and try to find opportunities to make a fool of us, as they consider us an unserious and weak country that can’t manage its affairs. It is also an avenue for us to find a cure for Ebola and turn a bad situation into a chance to truly claim that title, “Giant of Africa.”
I understand that a Nigerian abroad has donated an Ebola drug he developed but this is calling on all our scientists and traditional-medicine practitioners to come up with a possible cure. The ZMapp product was got from tobacco plants, thus a cure for Ebola won’t be far off from plants similar to that which contain nicotine/caffeine and flavonoids. I would also suggest that we hand out lots of Vitamin C to Nigerians to boost their immune systems. We should also remind them of regular infection control practices like hand washing, sterilisation, disinfection, washing of clothes and sun-drying them. Not to mention the ban on the eating of bats and the sale of bush meats especially in towns and villages across the country. Above all we should handle corpses with serious care at this moment, with families of confirmed Ebola patients signing consent forms not to have public funerals for their loved ones should they succumb to the disease, but leave the government’s public health officials to either cremate the bodies or bury them in graves – which are to be dug a bit deeper as advised by WHO – to prevent the spread of the virus.
I sincerely condole with the families of the health workers who have lost their loved ones and pray for their sake that the at the end of this outbreak, the government investigates Patrick Sawyer’s true mission and uses this Ebola outbreak as a wake up call to their duties. I hope they come to see public service as a chance to show their ability to deliver genuine service to the nation and not just attend meetings issuing communiques and press releases. We want a competent and most often than not a proactive government.
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