Buratai’s Python Pox

LAST Wednesday, there was a trepidation meltdown in my kids’ schools in Abuja and nearly all others in our environs, over the alleged killer immunisation being reportedly administered on students without authorisation from any official quarters, whether federal, state, military or health and education ministries. The rumour mill, however, plugged the military as the culprit. Public villains; General Tukur Baratai and his men, were accused of being on a covert national genocide mission with unsolicited killer vaccine using public relations immunisation programme as a cover.

The grapevine held it as an unimpeachable truth that the first tranche of the military’s rumoured psuedo-euthanasia, is the new dread-in-town; monkey pox, from which the kids would not recover. Theories tumbled from every corner. None absolved the military and the administration of the day. The numerous reasons for government wanting to mass-kill children oscillated between rumoured politicide and democide.

Claims from other states where panic withdrawal of students took place on Tuesday, incensed parents, particularly mothers, who turned down the pleas by various school authorities that the schools’ gates were too bolted for invading death merchants, even in military fatigue. Mothers went haywire, insisting their children must follow them home. For that maddening moment, boko was haram. Attempts were made to pull gates down in my kids’ schools. My wife was shuttling schools, to ensure her harem wasn’t depleted by any unsolicited immunisation, which as far as I can remember, she doesn’t even seek free from government-approved health centres.

When the paroxysm of ikunle-abiyamo (pains of delivery) gripped mothers, some started banging their heads on the locked gates, while a couple went gaga, trying to better the pole-vaulting records of celebrated Olympian Yelena Isinbayeva, with the fence of a particular school (names withheld) where two of my kids attend. Who born school-head? The gates were flung open and the day’s learning ended in a fiasco of children recovery.

The military top hierarchy had denied having anything to do with the report spreading across the country like winter wildfire, but Baratai and his men could be talking to the air for all the parents cared. Who will blame the parents. Official statistics which have no history of reliability and factuality and always deliberately made inaccurate when government inefficiency has to be covered up, said monkey pox has now spread to almost a third of the federating states, with 74 victims. Isn’t that an epidemic proportion in itself? Without even the Baratai’s rumours, should the official numbers not even warrant temporary closure of schools by the federal and state governments if contagious capacity is now at geometric rate while the mouthed curbing-efforts of governments are accelerating on the usual slow-motion button?

Who wan die, especially when you know you are on your own if the racing epidemic catches with your ward. Past and present governments have not inspired any risk-confidence in anyone, for the schools’ plea to sound reassuringly reasonable. A sensible government will take a cue on citizen-confidence from the simultaneous stampede. But here, for where?

I almost believed the military’s denial and government’s subsequent absolution. The claims truly appeared far-fetched. Why would the military which has been at the forefront of a united Nigeria and a society free of crises, precipitate an unprecedented calamity of nationwide genocide, by turning schools to mass graves?

But don’t they say there is no smoke without fire? Even the white smoke from the Papacy Sistine during election of a Pope is always from the fire used in forever burying the voting biases of the partisan Cardinals. However, there are times mere fog without a fire base, could take on a semblance of smoke. But in both cases, the central issue is still lack of clarity.

That is what the military gets with its shady and cloudy conducts in the last two years, usurping statutory functions of others, particularly the Nigeria Police and trying to be everywhere, doing everything. Its unenviable record as a killer force reinforces the public cynicism. Does the military think Nigerians have quickly forgotten about the Kaduna massacre of the Shiite, with the leader of the sect, Sheik Ibrahim el Zak-Zakky and wife still in custody partially blind according to his lawyer Femi Falana, despite several court orders, compelling their release? Were his kids, including university graduates, and hundreds others, not mowed down in the needless killings over alleged provocation by the members of the religious sect? Did Buratai’s operations Crocodile Smile and Python Dance not waste hundreds again in the South-South and South-East geo-political zones over secession and resource control agitations? Does the military under Buratai not always resort to mass killing once provoked? Was the military not already provoked following the first report that its public relations stunt of mass immunization in some South-South communities was the genesis of Monkey Pox? Who can tell what such provocation could breed. Another likely mass killing? This time using the same instrument of PR for RIP (Rest in Peace)? I beg, I no fit speak grammar.

From this sordid episode, I expect the military to take away useful lessons on integrity, instead of the usual gra-gra of “we will fish out the mischief-makers and prosecute them.” If you are unbelievably unbelievable, who do you blame? When your trademark is anti-people as demonstrated when Buratai’s Pythons moved to Abia to dislodge IPOB leader, Nnamdi Kanu and the show-of-force had to include beating up journalists at press centre, whose ears will be there for you even when there is a genuine message and concern? When you have perfected the art of perfect mixture of half-truth and outright falsehood as public engagement creed, why should anyone even listen to you? Romans 14:16 says “Let not then your good be evil spoken of.”

My main worry about this penkelemesi (peculiar mess) Python Pox operations is the grave potential of drawing the immunisation credit we have enjoyed so far, into serious deficit. The irresponsible conducts of the military are going to cost the nation heavily, considering the general resistance now being witnessed to even polio immunisation. The lesson of this cataclysmic operation is for leaders to always consider multiplier effects before seeking immediate gains. The story would have been different had Buratai’s past operations bore no semblance of this Monkey Business.