I wish the governors of the 19 northern states will meet and have a comprehensive plan for preventing and/or containing the spread of this virus. One of the key aspects of the plan should be to engage religious and traditional leaders who should in turn carry out a thorough and continuous sensitization of their followers/congregations. It is evident that we listen to our traditional and religious leaders far more than we listen to government, which is constituted by politicians, and you can't really blame us if you know our little history with politicians. So far, I see people assuming that their freedom of worship is under attack... This may be true, but the attacker is wrongly assumed to be the government (herein lies the error). Our freedom entirely is restricted, but not by government or any other than the dreaded covid-19. We need to realise that to practice our faith, we need to be healthy. The hatred we have had for politicians due to failed promises and poor governance is being carried over into the the current issue which threatens our life as a people. The short clips flying around social media of some youths in Kano washing their hands and drinking the water therefrom is not good at all. If such attitude continues unabated, we may live to regret it in every way possible. Another case is that of Katsina youths setting a police station ablaze because they were asked to suspend jummaat prayer for the time being, as well as the way and manner some churches violate the social distance policy in my location is quite worrying. We are in a critical time no matter how stubborn we are to accept it. We are fighting a war, and the enemy is covid-19. I am writing this because I am worried that the numbers may keep growing to the extent that even some of us may end up making up the numbers. Let's do all we can in our little way to educate others, while we hope the government will engage the traditional rulers and religious leaders as key stakeholders in sensitization.
Let us remember to be humans first, before we are Christians, Muslims, Igbo, Hausa or Yoruba.
God bless us all.
~ Joseph Adamu Keman.
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