Several vaccines have arrived ‘to save humanity’ from covid-19, thanks to the Caucasians. My prayer to the Almighty is that He keeps giving them new ideas on how to preserve humanity even though we black Africans are currently bereft of ideas. But some of the same Caucasians are spreading disinformation on the vaccines! Some say the vaccines will change the DNA of everybody to whom it is administered. Others like the eloquent Dr Vernon Coleman say that the elite spearheaded by Bill Gates have concocted the hoax vaccine to change the genes of all those to whom it is administered to produce antibodies that will defend them against covid-19 but not against its variants. They say most of the vaccinated will be wiped out by the variants coming next autumn and winter. The claim is that 95% of humanity will die which is what those who introduced covid-19 intended.
All the disinformation including the one showing bottles of the vaccines labeled ‘not for use in Europe’ on social media had me dithering on whether to take the vaccine. Furthermore I was afraid of the stories on blood clotting. I had, two years ago, fallen down on the steps of Zenith bank and injured the area around my left ankle. The wound took two months and two ATS injections to heal. Since then I have been having pains just above the ankle and I was afraid of blood clotting if I took the vaccine. Even after I had registered for the vaccination on the Federal Ministry of Health portal and got a vaccination number I was still in two minds. So I went to my doctor, Cosmas, for advice. He said since I take the one-a-day aspirin I should not worry about blood clotting.
Well, to go back to the beginning, it is clear that we Nigerians are ready to mess up even the simplest things in the world. We did not manufacture vaccines and some benevolent Caucasians gave us two million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine. To share and administer these two million vaccines has become a major operation for us Nigerians. A few days before the first vaccines were administered on the president and our other rulers I registered myself and my wife on the Federal Ministry of Health Portal and received text messages giving us vaccination numbers. They said they would email us a date for the vaccination here in the Ahmed Bola Tinubu Primary Healthcare Centre in Festac. So we waited. Ten days later we had still received no email. So I went to the Health Centre and was told they had not yet started vaccinating people. On the 19th March I went back there and they pointed at a canopy and said, ‘Look at them there. They are vaccinating people.’
So I went there. There were quite a few people. I went to one of the officers and said, ‘Madam, I registered on the Federal Ministry of Health portal about three weeks ago ..’
She cut me off. ‘That was cancelled. They just opened another portal three days ago. You better hurry and register. The vaccines will soon finish.’
I said, ‘But they did not tell us our registration was now cancelled.’
‘Oga, dat one no be my business.’
I said, ‘There is a crowd. Is there consideration for senior citizens?’
She said, ‘Senior citizens ke? You see these people there. They are all senior citizens. They are waiting like other people. Oga, if you no hurry, vaccine will finish.’
Later that day my son called, ‘We have been vaccinated in a military establishment at Boundary, Apapa. We will arrange for you to be vaccinated on Sunday or Monday.’
Before we left for Apapa on Monday I called my doctor, Cosmas. I could hardly hear him. There was so much noise and all I could make out was that he was at the vaccination centre in Festac and later that day when I called him he said it was utter confusion. He waited five hours before being vaccinated.
At Apapa it was orderly and the military people were the epitome of politeness. Soon they took our details and we were ‘captured’ and sat waiting to be actually vaccinated. But I had noticed something unusual. Of the about one hundred people sitting in queues half were of Asiatic origin, Indians and Pakistanis (Pakis as we called them in my student days in London). At about 12.30 pm there was commotion. A fiftyish looking nurse in blue uniform began shouting at the top of her voice, ‘All Indians should leave this place now!’ Among other things she was shouting was, ‘if we come to your country you maltreat us. You can’t come here and also cheat us. Go back to Ikoyi and Victoria Island where you came from’. The commotion lasted for a full hour. No begging could change her mind until most of the Indians left. The woman’s annoyance was also partly because a television station had run a progamme showing some Indians who had bribed the police in Falomo, Ikoyi, for preferential treatment for Indians in vaccination. The sack extended to some unfortunate Nigerians who do not live in that zone. She insisted that the vaccines were only meant for health workers, ambulance drivers, and so on.
Soon we had our vaccination and on our way back to Festac my mind was full of thoughts. The Indians and the Chinese were the most industrious people I have ever come across. An Indian could arrive in Nigeria with just a shirt and trousers and the Indian society would shelter him, point him in the right direction and in a few years he would be rich. They simply have a nose for survival. The negative is that they observe the society and do as the society does. Bribery and corruption are rife in Nigeria. So the Indians obey the dictum, ‘When in Rome do like the Romans’. They bribe their way into anything. For the few Indians affected at the vaccination centre today was not their lucky day.
As for the unfortunate Nigerians who were drawn into the embarrassment I would blame the security officials. They should have stationed officers at the gate to keep away unqualified people. As for us, it was our lucky day. Under normal circumstances we should not have gone for our vaccination there. But we knew somebody who knew somebody. And we have an appointment for the second dose in three months. So we wait for that. And we also wait ‘to die’ in the autumn or winter as predicted by Dr Vernon Coleman. In the meantime, Nigeria we hail thee, the suffering capital of the world, the insecurity capital of the world, the poverty capital of the world and the confusion capital of the world!