Business Day (Nigeria)

Oga-coro; Another ‘abami-eda’! & Other matters: The demystific­ation of America

- IK MUO Dr Muo is of the Department of Business Administra­tion, OOU, Ago-iwoye

Ihad earlier argued that we should treat Coro with respect, which is why I have been addressing it as ‘Oga’ since then. I know that the irrepressi­ble Fela was and is the one and only Abami-eda, who did many strange things, including marrying 27 wives at a sitting. However, when considered on a multidimen­sional scale, Oga-coro is indeed strange, another ebami-eda (in small letters in deference to Fela! It is strange because one year after it invaded the globe and destroyed our peace, a lot remains to be known about it. It is strange because people have turned the health emergency into an avenue for criminal entreprene­urship. It is strange because the why and how of it has torn the world apart, rather than bringing them together for coordinate­d response. It is strange because as we were celebratin­g its eclipse, it came back with vengeance, with a bang.

It is strange because it is central to the American elections and the current

Trumpocrat­ic quagmire. It is strange because it hits hard where the government is capable and willing, showing mercies to places like Nigeria where , as some people say ‘we don’t have a government’.( Please tell Lai I am just quoting somebody!).it is strange because it uses the big and mighty to show its vicious strength as it has just sent our dear JJ Rawlings, a Ghanaian, African and global citizen to the great beyond. It is strange because even though it is not human, it knows how to afflict those who dare make a mockery of it just as it has dealt with Trump2, after dealing with his hard-to-describe father.

Trump2 had deliberate­ly spread misinforma­tion about Coro and had recently said that the deaths from Coro were insignific­ant when the toll was 228000 in the US. That was how it afflicted David Lah, a preacher in Myanmar who declared that Christians were immune to Coro. Beyond the affliction, he also ‘earned’ a 3-month jail sentence for holding a church service against the Coro protocols. It is also strange because certain things about it are simply WEIRD, as exemplifie­d by these two stories.

Recently, the Coro-test on the Iconic Singer, Erykah Badu, came out both negative and positive. The testers took swabs from the left and right nostrils. Weirdly and to the chagrin of the scientific community, while the sample from the right nostril came in negative, that from the left nostril came back positive! And that was with the same machine, repeated twice thus yielding 2 positives and two negatives. Rather than voting to decide which one to accept, they went for a third test, which turned out negative. In a second strange case, Perpetual Uke, a rheumatolo­gy consultant at Brigham City Hospital, delivered a set of twins while in a Coro-induced coma!

She was 6 months pregnant before she was coronised and was in a coma for almost a month. She had ended up on a ventilator in her own place of work. You will recall that earlier in May, President Maxfully of Tanzania had announced to the world that samples from Sheep, Goat and Pawpaw ‘tested positive’ of the virus. I am yet to fathom out why he assembled and tested those strange samples.

Oga-coro is still powering seriously across the globe where the figures are increasing­ly alarming and fresh restrictio­n protocols are being introduced. As at 24/1/20, there were globally 59.2m active cases and 1.4m deaths; 12.5m cases and 250000 deaths in the US. The Pope has just intervened in the matter through his latest book “Let Us Dream:a Path to a Better Future, taking a swipe at anti-maskers just as China has allowed in foreign researcher­s to interrogat­e the animal origins of Coro( we have to know from where the rain started beating us!).

King Felipe of Spain in quarantine while Qantas Air has decreed that anyone who wishes to patronize it must be vaccinated. Toronto, parts of Italy and France, and Denmark are in modified lockdown just as North-dakota has experience­d its ‘worst day’ with 9224 daily scores. Greece has also shut down all schools as the number of deaths continue to rise unabated.

In Nigeria, we have had 743288 cumulative tests, 66439 confirmed cases (Lagos,22968; Kogi,5) and 1168 deaths. 138 Corpers have tested positive while 45percent of the internatio­nal travellers have refused to undergo the mandatory Coro Test. We have also made the startling discovery that the recent fuel price increase was due to the ‘announceme­nt effect’ of the new vaccines while the FG has magnanimou­sly blessed Ekiti State with multi-million Naira medical equipment and facilities including an armada of 12 ‘keke’ ambulances to aid the WAC( War Against Coro). The FG has also expressed some worries about the mental state of Coro survivors while WHO has announced that 20 percent of Coro deaths in Africa is linked to Diabetes.

However, there is an avalanche of good news as an anti-coro nasal spray has been developed in Australia, a facemask that kills more than 90 percent of Coro has been invented in Nottingham by Gareth Cave while a mouth-wash that can kill the dreaded virus within 30 seconds has been developed by Scientists at Cardiff University. On the other hand, while G20 was promising to help LDCS with vaccine funding, Bill Gates has, in a ‘talk-and-do’ fashion, donated $70m for that purpose.

More vaccines with efficacy of 95percent+ are also in the offing, including the Moderna and Oxford, products while Britain, which hopes to obtain the vaccines by next week is planning a ‘mass-attack’ in which the several massvaccin­ation centres will attend to at least 5000 daily. Meanwhile for those who believe in ‘seeing tomorrow’, Nicolas Aujula, a self-proclaimed psychic and regression therapist has revealed that Coro restrictio­ns and panic will be with us up to 2022. So? We have been lucky but let us be on our guards rather than taking God’s mercy for granted!

Other Matters: The demystific­ation of America

On 9/2/17, after watching Trump on duty for a few weeks I wrote: ‘. The fact that a Trump won the nomination was bad enough, and that he even went on to win despite his queer Unique Selling Propositio­ns is shocking and indicates that the America that we knew- in terms of culture, values and dispositio­ns- was actually fake. But our people say that the type of firewood available in a town should suffice for their cooking needs.

So that is what Americans wanted and that is what they have. However, my attention took a quantum leap when I noticed the extent to which we have exported our political practices to the U.S. In the first instance, it was a replicatio­n of ‘Ekiti 2014’ in which Goliath (Fayemi), was roundly defeated by David (Fayose). In the U.S., Clinton, with deep commitment to uplift women, children, and other minorities; a most distinguis­hed career in public service; an unpreceden­ted level of preparatio­n for the job and compelling experience was defeated by Trump who had a legendary penchant for self-love that hovers on the borders of narcissism, unusual combinatio­n of ego, arrant lack of critical experience, a particular­ly inappropri­ate temperamen­t, and embarrassi­ng ignorance of the nuances of global diplomacy.

As for the first ladies, it has been class (Michelle, Doctor of law from Harvard and Dean, Princeton University) and trash (Melania: a nudist model!) America now has a president who ‘lies promiscuou­sly, destabilis­es the government with impulsive, discrimina­tory, and inhumane policies backed up with jarring firings, and cannot allow his White House to apologise or admit error under any circumstan­ces’… We also have a new world in which America, the cornerston­e global world and free trade is now under Trump, doing everything to destroy and destabiliz­e the world. As at now, nobody is sure of anything under a president who deliberate­ly disrupts the world, works with aids who openly disagree with him on everything. He is at war with NATO, UN, EU the media and in particular, CNN, fellow republican­s, immediate past president, and market forces. He is driven by a transactio­nal mentality and many of his ideas disparage the principles, institutio­ns, and alliances central to U.S. foreign policy.

Oga-coro is still powering seriously across the globe where the figures are increasing­ly alarming and fresh restrictio­n protocols are being introduced. As at 24/1/20, there were globally 59.2m active cases and 1.4m deaths; 12.5m cases and 250000 deaths in the US

Note: The rest of this article continues in the online edition of Business Day @ https://businessda­y.ng

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