It is good that the coronavirus pandemic has sharpened our peoples’ creative ingenuity in making face masks. Credit should go to Aba tailors and fashion designers for showing us that Nigeria does not have to import face masks from abroad. Following the example of Aba tailors, their counterparts in other parts of Nigeria have joined the bandwagon and the country is richer for it. We can now boast of custom made or designer colourful face masks.
Face masking has now become a fashion statement. It also shows class and finesse of the wearer. Take a look at the COVID-19 Presidential Task Force briefing or the National Assembly sitting to get my drift. If you see people in the street, behold coat of many colours in masking. You will even think that the ancestral spirits or mmonwu masquerades are having a rehearsal for a reunion with the living. All of a sudden, the coronavirus has made all of Lagbaja, the masked one and everyone is speaking in guttural voices akin to the village masquerades celebrating the unification of the living and the dead in cultural festivals such as Iri Ji or new yam feast.
Apart from making face masks, which Nigerians have so much perfected, the pandemic has tasked the ingenuity of our herbalists and those that practice traditional medicine. The coronavirus herbal remedy made in Madagascar is now the rave of the moment. Many countries including Nigeria are in a rush to import the African wonder medicine and cure for COVID-19 disease. It is commendable that Madagascar has given the world the herbal a possible remedy for coronavirus. It is laudable that Nigeria wants to give it a trial just like some other countries including Europeans and Americans that have or about to patronize it.
While the Federal Government has revealed its plan to patronize the Madagascar herbal remedy on the pandemic, there is need to verify all claims of cure by Nigerian herbal doctors. I am aware that dozens of them have made claims of having effective herbal remedy for the disease that has altered human relations and world of work like never before.
I think that charity must begin at home. These men of herbal cure wonders should not be overlooked or ignored while rushing for the one from Madagascar. Their claims of having the cure for the disease must be verified. Verifying those claims is one of the best ways we can encourage the development of traditional medicine in Nigeria. The global importance of herbal medicine is public knowledge. India, China and other Asian countries have developed their herbal medicine so well that they work side by side with orthodox medicine.
Many countries earn so much money exporting herbal medicine. Nigeria with abundant medicinal herbs can earn so many dollars from them if well harnessed. It is a known fact that Madagascar has developed its herbal medicine that even its president is leading the charge. I gathered that the head of the country’s herbal medicine reports directly to its president. Can we have something like that in Nigeria, the so-called giant of Africa? It can be done if those in charge are willing to copy Madagascar.
While our herbal practitioners have responded to the pandemic by coming up with some remedies, our manufacturers have made ventilators and sanitizers. All them deserve encouragement. With the pandemic, we have learnt to keep personal hygiene with religious zeal. We have also learnt to stay at home with our loved ones and bonded as a family. We have known our children and they have known us. No more absentee husbands, father and mothers.
The disease has made our leaders to stay at home and think of the people that elected them. With the pandemic, they can no longer travel at the slightest excuse to foreign countries where everything works, including steady power, water and healthcare systems. The sick now receive treatment in those best hospitals they built and equipped with state-of-the-art tools. Their children will now school in those world-class universities they built and equipped. All of us are in this pandemic together, whether the rich or the poor and together we shall endure and triumph over the ravaging coronavirus. Nigeria is our own, and together we must strive and remake it in our image and likeness.
We have no other place of abode in this universe except here. We shall together make or mar it. The future of our dear country is in our hands. One of the useful lessons of the pandemic is that our leaders are forced to stay at home and do the work they told us they will do. It has made them see the difficult side of leadership. They have seen that leadership is not about siren-blaring convoyor state dinner parties and traveling abroad with retinue of staff and praise singers and feeding at the expense of the masses for doing less.
Another veritable lesson of the pandemic is the hypocrisy of our religious leaders and miracle healers and the so-called men of God who profess one thing and do the exact opposite. I mean those who want their followers to do what they say and not what they do. I mean those who see the sins of others but cover their own with holy water and incense. I mean those who delight in collecting tithes from impoverished congregation and see no evil in their action.
The pandemic has in diverse ways exposed the underlying aim of the mushrooming of churches and other prayer houses in the country. Most of these churches are meant to service the material lust of their founders and less and less for the spiritual growth of the followers. It is in Nigeria that the Karl Marx’s assertion that religion is the opium of the people finds definitive interpretation. They care less of the spiritualism of the members.
With the pandemic, the judgement day is already here for political and religious leaders. This is the time they will be judged by the owner of the universe about their stewardship to their people and their congregation. The power that holds the universe will be harsh with them if they abuse their position. This is the right time our governors should sit down and think of how they can grow the economy of their states. This is not the time for rhetoric or flowery expressions. It is not time for ambiguities and prattling in double sense. This is the time to remodel Nigeria and make it work. This is the time to truly harness the resources of the country for its overall development.
