Ba cinya ba…, Governor Yari

To be entirely honest with you, I can’t see the difference between Governor Abdul’azeez Yari’s two comments regarding the outbreak of Meningitis in Nigeria. Whichever one he claims was the right quote, it shows his belief that spiritual reasons rather than physical and attitudinal are responsible for this annually recurring scourge.  In the beginning he […]

To be entirely honest with you, I can’t see the difference between Governor Abdul’azeez Yari’s two comments regarding the outbreak of Meningitis in Nigeria. Whichever one he claims was the right quote, it shows his belief that spiritual reasons rather than physical and attitudinal are responsible for this annually recurring scourge. 

In the beginning he was reported to have said that the epidemic broke out because Almighty God was angry with Nigerians, due to our sinful ways. He said that fornication and other vices were the reason God decided to punish our compatriots. When several high-profile reactions greeted his emergency fatwa, he withdrew it and claimed that he was misquoted. 

Governor Yari now insisted that what he said was Nigerians should repent for their sins so that God can keep such epidemics away from them. The more you look at them, the more the difference between his two utterences looks like that between six and a half dozen. It is like the Hausa proverb says ‘Ba cinya ba kafar baya’.

This is not to say that Nigerians have not given God enough reasons to punish them, no. A look at our news headlines every day shows us that the sins being committed daily make us more than eligible for some negative divine intervention. But we also believe in a just and merciful Lord who will not be selective in punishing His erring slaves. 

So far there are no well-known or high profile victims of this meningitis outbreak. Is His Excellency trying to say that poor, ordinary Nigerians are the sinners in this country? As expensive as certain vices are, is the governor claiming that commoners have the ability to afford such sinful acts, when we all know that their daily struggle is for their daily bread?

No way Sir, my own belief is that if Almighty God decides to punish Nigerians for indulging in sins, He will certainly send an affliction that will affect the high and mighty in our society. We do not need to look too deep to see that they are the lead sinners in our country. They have the ability and the means to indulge in whatever sin and depravity money can buy. 

We are all living witnesses to how those entrusted with public office loot the coffers and divert the funds for their private use. They build mansions here, buy mansions abroad, live a jet set life and indulge in every kind of luxury available. They leave the people they lead in abject poverty and illiteracy and totally prone to diseases. Are these the people our Most Just (Al-Adl) and Most Kind (Al-Halim) God will spare while He punishes their victims?

For sure every meningitis victim in Zamfara state is the victim of the present governor and his predecessors. Along with cholera meningitis has become an annual epidemic in most parts of Northern Nigeria. Did the Zamfara governor make it his priority to see that his people are living hygienic lifestyles by keeping themselves and their surroundings clean? Did he prioritize the construction of proper drainages so that liquid waste can flow freely and not become a source of water and air borne diseases as well as floods? What has Governor Abdul’azeez Yari done to ensure that Zamfara people have imbibed preventive measures against these annual diseases? 

Is it enough for him to become judgmental and ascribe sin to these poor people when all they are are unfortunate victims of serial governments with misplaced priorities?

In the early days of the present administration, the governors of Kano, Kaduna and Sokoto made a great show of spearheading environmental sanitation but they soon abandoned it and left the people to their devices. 

But at least they tried, Governor Yari of Zamfara State made no such attempt. And today, he is not willing to look beyond lack of vaccines and sinful masses for the reason he suffered the most fatalities in the scourge. 

Unless we begin to look inwards and lay more emphasis on preventive rather than curative measures for these annual epidemics, we will continue to have them always. State and federal governments will have to reinstate and ensure compliance with monthly environmental sanitation exercise, as the first step to curb these epidemics. Then people must be sensitised to embrace and keep to the culture of personal hygiene. They must be made to see refuse dumps and fetid gutters as an aberration and health hazards not as things to be seen and tolerated. 

If sin has anything to do with these air and water borne diseases, then the people in developed countries will suffer from not just annual but monthly epidemics too. This is because most of them are secular and therefore not bound by any laws which compels them to worship God, yet He tolerates them. Additionally many of them indulge in the kind of sins our masses here will be horrified to even hear about, yet The Almighty didn’t send to them His armies of meningitis and cholera, so how can sin be the reason 215 poor Zamfara citizens died of disease?  

Mr Governor, the simple answer is a clean and healthy environment. In the developed world people strive to keep clean, with the help of their governments, which provide all they need to achieve a minimum standard of cleanliness and hygiene. Here, our leaders don’t care a hoot about enforcing hygienic standards. Their priorities are self-aggrandisement and marriage bids that may or may not come to fruition, how can their people not die of preventable diseases?