Apocalyptus

Fiddling with “Empty Universe”, the latest Sci-Fi game created by my son, Olusola, (https://youtu. be/HelWqwpj6uw), my thoughts are of matters apocalyptic. Away from virtual space, whichever direction I turn to, it’s like the world is preparing to selfdestruct. Science fiction is spoilt for choices in deciding what slice of reallife-armageddon to mirror. In our daily lives, try as we may, we cannot help feeling that the centrifugal implosion of humanity — or at least its ‘natural’ tendency to keep appointment with self destruction — is inexorable.

See China! Doesn’t that country’s battle against the latest scourge, Coronavirus, remind you of the movie, ‘Contagion?’ Have you wondered if this is a case of life imitating art, or whether the original art of the film was but a revelation of a conspiracy in the works — in which case, Coronavirus had been foretold through ‘Contagion’.

In this dangerous world, nothing is beyond those who routinely play god. Let us depopulate the planet, they declare — and the planet will be depopulated! Or, as we have lately seen in America’s version of morality with regard to the current tenant of their White House, L’état, c’est Trump!

Since nine years ago when ‘Contagion’ was first screened, this is the first time the world is confronted with a Contagion-like VIRUS that has its origins in China’s bats, spreading to the Chinese population and from there to the rest of the world.

At the last count, the number of confirmed cases worldwide had increased to more than 7,700 according to Chinese officials and the World Health Organisation, with all but 68 of the infections taking place in mainland China. A total of 170 people have now died from the strange disease which is believed to have originated in the central city of Wuhan, but the number is likely to rise in the coming days and weeks.

The wildfire has spread to Tibet, Thailand Hong Kong, the United States, Taiwan, Australia, Macau Singapore, South Korea, Malaysia, Japan, France, Germany, Canada, Vietnam, Nepal, Cambodia, and the United Arab Emirates. Cases recorded in Taiwan, Germany, Vietnam and Japan involved patients who had not been to China. So, you don’t have to travel to China to catch the virus. Death is in the global air!

By and large, Africa is lucky. If Coronavirus makes an inroad into our borders, we will witness a replay of the Ebola scourge. But it seems we are not satisfied with our luck. We are determined to invent our own equivalent of the disaster. In Nigeria, it seems some people are bent on precipitating war in a country already lying prostrate on the barbecue slab of the zoonotic, acute viral illness called Lassa fever.

Or how else do you describe our refusal to come together to fashion out a rancour-free system that would allow the hawk, the eagle and other birds fly unrestrained without one saying to the other, “Don’t”, or “On my terms only”?

More inflammable is the newfound pastime of ethnic baiting. Conveniently ignoring the fact that virtue and vice are universal and not native to any single particular space, some of our professional hate mongers whose only claim to relevance is in vending negative and tendentious stories about other ethnic nationalities, have taken centre stage, just as happened in SierraLeone several years ago.

The elite on all sides of the raging centrifugal jostling are not interested in consensus, forgetting that when doomsday comes they will all be swallowed by the tide, irrespective of what side they are on. Dear Amnesiac, let me remind you of Sierra-Leone. According to a compatriot, Gboyega Adejumo, who knew that country in better times: “As I recall, the Affluent of Sierra Leone, lacked empathy toward those they had chosen to ride over. Every rich person therefore became a ‘natural’ for the pent-up angst, as targets.

“So, when it happened, eventually, they couldn’t take it anymore, not even the hardworking were spared. Limbs were cut, lives terminated!

“The poor and the oppressed did these things, for a lack of humanity and empathy to which they were hitherto subjected… And shamelessly so.

“Empathy, a once-upon-a-time, innate African virtue, became an alien to the avenging Sierra Leonean…. Angry, revenge seeking, hopeless and lost. All they wanted was to exert the same measure of pain on those that had seemingly benefitted from the repressive system… The exactness of a situation that could befall our nation.”

Got the drift? We are all potential targets of the inevitable explosion that attends festering local political ulcers.

The fact that people chose to shrug away the cause of Patient Zero’s death in CONTAGION did not insulate them from the epidemic. The morbid situation became that of Turn By Turn Unlimited. There is nothing that convinces me that the laws of nature and social relations will make an exception of Nigeria when it comes to just desserts.

So, what to do? Come together as brothers and restructure this house that Luggard built. There are many of us who don’t want this country to break. There are equally many others who would rather every unit went its separate way than be reduced to vassals in their own fatherland. Living together can advantageous; but if there’s no breathing space, our clamour for Ubuntu will all be in vain.

Coronavirus sounds like the name of a beautiful girl from the Far East. But it is the name of death. So alluring. Not muscular; not frightening. In that same spirit of creative understatement, I warn, so does Apocalyptus.