Clay Richie

  Poom! And the man fell facedown, causing pandemonium, disrupting the bubbling sunny afternoon in Oshodi Lagos. A crowd gathered and carried him off to the roadside. They brought a bag of pure water (sachet water), and the people didn’t waste time emptying it on the man who’s now lying supine. He didn’t move a hand, only that he had a pulse.  

  Last week, I recounted my family’s twin ordeal of an armed robbery attack and COVID-19 infection in my column, ‘Gunman, COVID-19 and My Family’. Unfortunately, the publication came on the day we had to move my son to the National Hospital Isolation Centre where he spent Christmas and subsequent days before his eventual discharge. That was why I couldn’t pick (or return) many of the calls or reply to messages I received that day. I am grateful for them all. Paired in a room with a distressed man placed on oxygen, my son experienced considerable trauma and made life difficult for my wife due to his constant updates on phone. But there was nothing we could do to help him. His recall makes him eligible to co-author, with ‘Twitter diarist’, Mr Gbenro Adegbola, an interesting book that would put the fear of God in the hearts of all Covidiots!

  Let me paraphrase the holy prophet Isaiah who said: “For Jerusalem (Nigeria’s sake), I will not be silent until her vindication shines forth like the dawn…..No more shall people call you forsaken, or your land desolate, but you shall be called my delight and your land espoused.” (Is. 62:1,4).

  The 2020 challenge took the world by a storm and crashed economies around the world. The outbreak of covid19 otherwise referred to as “the pandemic” is a foretaste of the 2021 challenges and beyond. Conspiracy theorists would have you believe that covid19 was created by China as a response to Donald Trump’s trade war with China, but scientists have established the existence and occurrence of pandemic patterns over time since the Spanish flu of the 19th century.

  Who is Luis Farrakhan? That was the very first word that reverberated from an old TV set when justice was being done to a nice meal. Hardly do I get distracted when tending to a meal. But not on this occasion. Louis Farrakhan was a lousy brand, polished in eloquent language, but screwed up in bigotry. He was ekking a living and gaining global attention. 1998 was his loudest. He got paid from Nigeria's Oil money, without any value added to our nation and even got a street named after him. Eleke Crescent for that matter! In a bid to get even with the American Government who immortalised Kudirat Abiola's memory on American soil, the junta Government Buhari served threw our pearls to the swine. Little or nothing was known about Louis Farrakhan.

  Individuals, groups and sometimes nations often look above and from without causes to their economic predicaments; however, it is usually from below (neglect of things within reach) that economic predicaments emanate from. The situation in Nigeria is a case in point, as our problem did not as it were, fall from above; rather, the neglected, abused and raped Local Government System in the country gave space for the decrepit nature of the Nigerian state.