By Dr Ugoji Egbujo

Prominent amongst those whose emptiness have been exposed are pastors and imams.

A popular Nigerian pastor has been making television rounds,  armed with graphs and pie charts, telling tales of his abject ignorance. If he had stopped at telling us fables about how 5G caused COVID we could have pardoned him easily. After all in faraway Birmingham, 5G masts have been set ablaze  on the same stupid superstition. We cannot hold our pastor to ransom for believing something religious leaders and self acclaimed wise men in America and Europe believed.

But how can the pastor tell us that the Federal Government sent us indoors in Lagos and Abuja so it can have time and space to install 5G masts?  While our pastor and others are tearing their shirts about 5G and looking out for the Anti-Christ with their telescopes of hallucination, China and others are planning to roll out 6 G.

The funny thing about these end-time propagandists is that their ignorance is loud but not skin deep. Some of them claim they saw it in a vision but in the next few months, once everything dies down,  they will begin consuming 5G services individually more than  whole villages put together. When 5G begins to make the dissemination of church service broadcasts easier they will seek 5G masts in their church premises.

Let us leave Fani Kayode and Dino Melaye out of this.  Dino Melaye has said that he has been receiving suspicious calls from international persons /bodies warning him to desist from his campaign of calumny against 5G. If you believe Dino as I believed him when he met suspected assassins and climbed to the top of a tree and stayed there for 11 hours ,  then believe that Illuminati is after him. He is that important.

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Coronoavirus has shown us clearly how empty and shallow so many people around us are.  It has also shown us that ignorance is very infectious. And it’s not just about 5G.

Two weeks ago, the Katsina state government instituted social distancing to contain and mitigate COVID. Religious gatherings were prohibited. In the  village of Kusada, in Katsina, an Imam defied the order . The police stepped in and arrested him. Folks chanted their way to the police station, razed it down and burnt cars. The state government made arrests and a lot of  noise. But  this week, with one COVID death on its hands,  the state government   lifted the ban on religious gathering. A doctor died from COVID in Katsina. Why is the state government in a hurry to see people gathering in large numbers in religious houses again while the Prophet’s mosque in Saudi Arabia is still closed? Someone in Katsina perhaps thinks that those in Saudi Arabia don’t love God that much or do not know anything about social distancing.

Cross River state has a unique governor. He is a young professor who is addicted to rousing the rabble with a multitude of jargon and  playing to the gallery of the illiterate. The problem is that he jokes too much, with everything.  He claims to know everything about Coronavirus. So rather than stick to NCDC and WHO prescriptions, our professor must tell his people that he went to school, and perhaps borrowing from Achebe, that he is the owner of book. So Professor Ayade has banned movement in his state except if the person wears a mask. He could have stopped there.  He is the governor. He went on to say that if everybody wore a cloth mask then there would be no need for social distancing. Nothing can be shallower. The governor can enjoy himself, entertaining his aides, who appear to have been trained specially in clapping of hands. The problem is that when the shit hits the fan, it is doctors that will be imperiled , that will die for him.

In faraway, United States President Trump is blaming everybody for being sloppy but himself. Trump says WHO colluded with China to hide data concerning the COVID.  The same infection he played down for so long in January and February. But anyone who knows America a little will know that the United States in  December and January would have had hundreds of CIA agents in Wuhan. The  American problem cant be information. The problem was that Trump believed it was a hoax perpetrated by the deep state.  He distrusted intelligence. But same  Trump is now everywhere literally selling Chloroquine on television. And marketing it like  the typical  Nigerian peripatetic luxury bus patent medicine dealer .

The world has been hit by a double whammy. In Nigeria , ignorance is perhaps doing more damage than Coronavirus. That is why we must pray that Coronavirus spares us. A collabo between  inflammable ignorance and  contagious coronavirus will leave Nigeria in tatters.

The NCDC and health authorities are doing well against Coronavirus. We must think up an institution that will tackle , pin down and quarantine ignorance wherever it appears until this scourge abates.

VANGUARD