Perhaps the most outlandish thing I have heard
this year, other than the fact that one set of
President Buhari's aides told us he was not sick
while another set simultaneously asked us to
pray for his recovery, is the claim by the All
Progressive Congress governor of Zamfara state
that the outbreak of meningitis in Nigeria is as a
result of our sins. His exact words were as
follows:
“What we used to know as far as meningitis is
concerned is the type A virus. The World Health
Organization, WHO, has carried out vaccinations
against this type A virus not just in Zamfara, but
many other states. However, because people
refused to stop their nefarious activities, God
now decided to send Type C virus, which has no
vaccination. People have turned away from God
and he has promised that ‘if you do anyhow, you
see anyhow’ that is just the cause of this
outbreak as far as I am concerned. There is no
way fornication will be so rampant and God will
not send a disease that cannot be cured.”
The above quote from Governor Abdul’aziz
Abubakar Yari is not only silly and nonsensical,
it is also blatantly untrue.
First of all, it is not true for that there is no
vaccine against meningitis C. There is one and it
has existed for almost two decades. In the year
1999 alone, 15 million children in the United
Kingdom were vaccinated against meningitis C.
Why a Governor of a state prone to meningitis
does not know this beats my imagination. If he
is ignorant of this, I wonder how many more
things he will be ignorant of!
When the Ebola Virus struck in Nigeria in 2014,
the Goodluck Jonathan administration wasted no
time in mobilizing against the disease alongside
the affected state governments. Preventive
measures were put in our airports and those
affected were quarantined. Those who escaped
quarantine were traced, apprehended and sent
back to quarantine. Nigeria made international
headlines for all the right reasons, becoming one
of the first nations in the world to defeat Ebola
even before advanced nations like the United
States and the United Kingdom.
However, in 2017, when meningitis has reached
epidemic proportions in Nigeria with 336 deaths
and counting, the ever blame ready APC
government blames our sins instead of attacking
the scourge!
The annoying thing about Governor Yari's
statement is that he said this immediately after
a meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari.
Who knows what the two of them must have
discussed in secret that emboldened the
Governor to say what he says right after the
meeting.
The APC administration's response to the
meningitis epidemic can be summarized thus:
Repent of your sins and your meningitis will
depart from you!
We never experienced these deaths from
meningitis in the five years preceding this
administration. One wonders if Nigerians were
not committing sins during the years that
Jonathan governed Nigeria.
If Nigerian Governors have any shame left, they
will ask Governor Abdulaziz Yari to step down as
the Chairman of the Nigerian Governors Forum.
What type of leadership can he provide for the
NGF? Over 200 people died from meningitis in
his state and he is blaming the sin of
fornication? This is a man who boasted of
spending ₦1 billion in 2013 to host a Qur’anic
Memorisation Competition, at that time
equivalent to $7 million. If he had used that
money to pay for meningitis C vaccines for the
people of Zamfara, at least 200 of them would
have still been alive to memorize the Qur'an
today! That is the real sin that causes
meningitis, not the sin of fornication.
But rather than dissociate from him, the equally
shameless Governor of Kaduna state, Malam
Nasir El-Rufai invited Governor Yari to have the
seat of honour at the Kaduna Investment
Summit which held on Thursday the 6th of April,
2017.
Seated at the seat of honoring at the summit
tagged #KadInvest was El-Rufai, a Governor who
admitted paying Fulani herdsmen not to kill his
citizens (they took the money and the killings
continued) and on the right was Abdul'aziz Y