Ebolisation of our lives

The Lagos state governor spoke early in June, this year, at the APC governors’ retreat.I started out skeptical of a governors’ retreat that seeks to deliberate on their legacies, just one year to the end of their tenures. Like Steven Covey, the late author of ‘Seven habits of highly effective people’ I believe that deciding […]

The Lagos state governor spoke early in June, this year, at the APC governors’ retreat.
I started out skeptical of a governors’ retreat that seeks to deliberate on their legacies, just one year to the end of their tenures. Like Steven Covey, the late author of ‘Seven habits of highly effective people’ I believe that deciding your legacy should be at the beginning of whatever enterprise you want to start. Mr Covey put it better when he called his second habit ‘Begin with the end in mind.’
But my skepticism soon turned to praise when the ‘action governor’ of Lagos dropped this gem of commonsense wisdom.
Like him, I have often wondered why we annually churn out hundreds of doctors from our universities here and abroad but our people keep getting sicker. I have wondered why we graduate architects, builders and town planners every year but still have no well-planned and idyllic cities to boast of. One can safely say that we had better, cleaner and safer towns and cities before than we do now, though we have all these professionals in abundance.
Then Ebola descended on us and we have to adjust our lives to fit. Suddenly we are faced with a situation that can’t be tamed in any way apart from prevention. As a result we are forced to alter our school calendars, change church procedures (according to information minister Labaran Maku, communions in church now happen without actual contact between priest and the laity) and abstaining from simple social interactions like handshake (the health minister Onyebuchi Chukwu actually warned Nigerians against handshake).  Even the president himself, Dr Goodluck Jonathan, cautioned against the observance of burial rites.
In the ebolisation of our lives, we are faced with the grim reality that we have a government that is stronger on fire-brigade approach to crisis that strong preventive steps to curb it. How else do we explain the plan by government to spend 1.9 billion in buying ambulances, drugs and safeguarding our borders rather than in funding a serious and nationwide environmental sanitation exercise? How can we fight Ebola when we are only paying lip service to keeping our surroundings clean? If there is one thing that is truly a common feature across our nation, it is our acceptance of dirt as a normal thing rather than an aberration.
Except for some sections of Abuja, every Nigerian city suffers from environmental neglect. Our health services personnel see no reason to raise an alarm on the dangers of open gutters and refuse dumps that litter all our streets and alley ways. Our town planners see no reason to plan our cities in a way that will include covered drainages as well as an efficient refuse disposal system that could prevent the spread of diseases. Our architects do not see the wisdom in beautifying our landscape with flowers rather than dirt but go ahead to design world-class buildings in environments infested with eye-sores.
So whether you believe Ebola virus was manufactured in an American military lab in Liberia or you believe it came from natural sources like the flesh of bats and monkeys, you must accept that it can be chased out of our lives faster with more extra effort at environmental hygiene.  Cholera and meningitis have become annual epidemics because we refuse to make environmental sanitation a matter of utmost health priority. We can’t afford to have the very deadly Ebola annually because it can wipe out whole populations in no time.
Therefore the thing to do is for government to emphasize preventive measures and top on that list is to embark on a nationwide environmental cleaning campaign. Unless we do this no amount of re-scheduled schooling and banning of hand-shakes can stop the spread of what seems to be the deadliest disease yet, on the African continent.