By Ezekiel Nabieu
To think that the raging Ebola plague is a creation of the APC or the White Man is to exhibit the height of idiocy. It will surprise rational minds that some so-called educated citizens are mainly responsible for peddling this myth.
It has become fashionable to say “Ar nor believe say Ebola dae. Befo Ebola cam people bin dae vomit en run belleh.” That’s their skewed reasoning. For goodness sake how can a government be so sadistic as to kill off citizens whose only crime is the maintenance of peace?
Rather, any sane government would delight in more numbers – the quintessence of political victory. No euphemism can cause Ebola to be regarded as a mere epidemic. It is in fact a plague (a deadly disease). Let us only hope that this is not the beginning of biblical plagues as of old. “O death, where are your plagues”? –Hosea 13:14.
The APC government may not be out of the woods when it comes to the matter of the pending census. It is observed that there have been suspicious moves in the recruitment of staff of the Statistics Department from the top down with a view to influence the figures in its favour. This is an allegation that needs confirmation.
In this country that has been tagged the most corrupt on planet earth (in terms of giving and taking a bribe) it is not unreasonable to give credence to the nation-wide allegations that some of the funds for the plague are being squandered according to the negative local proverb “wen you play wit sugar you for lick you han” (when you handle sugar you should lick off the remnant on your hands).
With this abhorrent idea in mind criminals have a field day while others perish. We should not profit from misery. People are still refusing to go to the hospitals and health centres because of the sinister rumour going around that as soon as they get there they are injected and they die. Where are all our multifarious information systems? We have the information ministry, SLBC, SLENA, State House Information Unit etc.
Have they succeeded in dousing such deleterious information? Can any of them answer in the affirmative? After all they are Defenders of the Faith (DF). Is that why they are paid from the consolidated revenue fund? The fact is that there is an explosion of sinecures in this Republic.
The Traditional Healers or Herbalists Association do not seem to be helping the situation. By now if they were sincere they should have come out with a trenchant statement forbidding patients to seek any medical or witchcraft cure for Ebola from them.
For the fact that they are profiting hugely from quackery their silence is not golden. We should not as a state indulge these professionals to hide behind their fingers. They should be made to put a hold on their attempt to cure Ebola. That should be their contribution to the national cause.
One phenomenon in our struggle against Ebola is the fact that too many cooks spoil the broth. Out of the bevy of advisers that are now clogging State House comes Professor Monty Jones discoursing on the topic of Ebola which is not his catchment area. Don’t blame him! In Sierra Leone a professor suddenly becomes a generalist. And this happens when there is a Special Executive Assistant (SEA) to the President who is a qualified medical doctor.
What then are specialties for, if I may ask? Are we now virtually conferring the “omniscience” of the Head of State on technocrats? This is the syndrome that has caused us to start the fight against Ebola on the wrong foot. The irrelevant spokesmen are all in this information muddle.
They say they are now acting as lymph, the middle man in the human system taking messages from health officials to the public. What a job!
It is rather soul-searing at this point in time to learn that some community radio stations have not received money from the government for the use of their air time in spite of Le14,597,750,000 (fourteen billion five hundred and ninety seven million seven hundred and fifty thousand Leones) releases since 26th June, 2014. But who cares?
There was in fact no explanation or elaboration of the day of mourning. Therefore it became a day of curfew for some people all due to the veneer of sycophancy attached to the Presidency by our information conglomerate. They have just been busy falling over one another. The day was spent in correct information and misinformation within families and friends because there is no central information command.
This is why some people fleeing Freetown from rumoured injections lost their lives. There were no media messages to counter the injections rumour. And talking about rumours let it be known that “They say so,” is half a lie. Even when rumour brings some truth in it, it is not free from the flaw of falsehood because it takes away from and adds to.
Let this be our slogan: EBOLA IS TREATABLE IN ITS EARLIER STAGES AND INCURABLE WHEN FULL BLOWN.
Dr Amara Jambai - the Director of Disease Prevention and Control - cannot convince us that the less deadly Ebola was not curable in its early stages in Congo and Uganda. It is just a matter of jumbled communications from the disreputable government systems that has led to avoidable deaths.
Pling the Elder wrote: Ex-Africa Semper Aliquid Novi (out of Africa there is always something new). There cannot be a truer statement. But the fact is that Pling was only presaging what is divine and out of human control.
The HIV/AIDS that is now worldwide, sprang from Africa in spite of the fact that chimps that are the putative hosts also live in other continents. And now this deadly scourge. Not only that. The syndrome of denials also springs from Africa.
Together, we can scupper this invisible war waged by Foday Ebola. Let’s do it.
(C) Politico 12/08/14
