As America battled her over-half a million casualties from COVID-19 pandemic and vaccines began to trickle into the country, a friend of mine’s call from the US to me adverted my mind to the crises ahead of Nigeria. As we spoke, our talks dovetailed into the global vaccine drive. Last week, said my friend, his parents-in-law who lived in the US but had now returned to Nigeria due to their advanced age, got a call from America.
It was their turn to receive their vaccine jabs, the caller had informed them. So they flew to the US to be vaccinated.
How did that happen? I asked in incontrollable wonderment. Of course, America had details of every of her citizens and their ages. So when it was the turn of the age bracket of my friend’s parents-in-law, the system promptly rose to its responsibility.
After passing of bucks and all that, the vaccine eventually arrived Nigeria a few weeks ago. Distribution has promptly started to states of the federation. This is when and where you will see Nigeria in total unfolding and manifestation.
Our ancient corruptive, prebendal, as well as destructive nature and practice of allotting unfair preferential treatments to one person or group, at the expense of another, will begin to rear their ugly heads. Governors and government officials will deploy their “long legs” to get their families vaccinated ahead of essential components in the country; some of the drugs will be hoarded and deployed as political favours; officials will sell them at inflated prices to the highest bidders and if care is not taken, some of the drugs will get spoilt due to our sparse and fossilized spaces for storage.
When they say that we must kill corruption if we want to square up with the rest of the world, can you now see that it is not mere rhetoric?
