The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tony Marinho

  • COVID; Exercise; Research grants; Floyd

    Tony Marinho

     

    COVID-19 records deaths approaching 385,000, infections 6,250,000, with around 10,500 recognised cases in Nigeria. Stay safe!!

    Exercise! Exercise!! Exercise!!! The gold standard is 10,000 quick-purposeful steps/day to exercise your lower body -legs in particular. It is easy to achieve the daily target by incremental efforts over days to weeks if your mind works with your body towards the target and sometimes with family support.

    Most people can walk quickly at 80-100 steps a minute -try it with your phone stopwatch. 100 steps a minute x 60 minutes =6,000, so 1 ½ hours walking will give you 9,000 steps and 1 ¾ hours will make over 10,000.

    ‘Walking is Boring’, maybe but try walking quickly around your sitting room or bedroom watching TV to do exercise and enlighten your mind at any time of the day or night.

    Go on, ‘get up and walk’ about. You can also ‘Run on the spot’, in the bath/bed/sitting room or while watching TV. Check, but you can run at 150-200-250 steps /minute or averaging 12,000 steps an hour and get to 10,000 steps in an average of ¾ of an hour.

    Walking and running do not have to be continuous but can be. You can break at will. It is your body and brain. To exercise the upper body, get bottles of water, fill them with something heavy-water, stones, sand and use them as you see in exercise classes and the gym.

    Carrying something heavy like a bag of books or a bag holding several bottles of water and transferring or swinging it from arm to arm will exercise all your shoulder muscles at once.

    Today’s lifestyle of sitting may cripple you tomorrow. If you are an office sitter and a home couch hugger, test yourself. Try to get up with no assistance from the sitting position.

    Most people use the arm rest or the table or ask an assistant to support them especially from the mid-60s in age. This is an early sign your knee muscles in the thigh and leg are weakening from under-exercise and could predict a wheelchair-bound future at some point when the muscles are too weak to allow you stand up.

    To prevent this, practice sit-stand -sitting without assistance 10-100 times a day. Walk around every 15-60 minutes when confined to an office chair or couch at home. Also test yourself by walking up and down the stairs 10-15 times a day -a perfect leg exercise.

    As you get older, your function will depend on how much muscle mass you have left. Only those who exercise and keep their muscle mass by exercise/workouts will be able to march muscle bound into old age.

    The rest of us, who spent too much time on computers, in front of radios and phones or sitting at meetings will be wheeled or carried into the future. The choice is ours today. And exercise your mind as well!

    There has been so much to steal in Nigeria, making Nigeria ‘‘A thieves’ haven’’ for s-elected, self-imposed and unelected officials and their corrupt collaborators over many years only because the thieves deliberately refused supervision or projects, misallocated and stole and allowed others to steal billions budgeted but unaccounted for and money needed to keep from breaking down or already broken down schools, universities, roads, railways and medical services ‘Great Again’.

    Nigerian authorities almost since 1960 have failed their National Examination attested to in the sworn National Oath, Anthem and Pledge to continue to grow the country and fund and service honesty all aspects of research, practical aspects of education and sport and health leading to a politically caused backtracking of the nation.

    Regretfully, all the appeals and strikes over 50 years by Nigeria’s professionals including teachers and lecturers, all medical personnel, pensioners, and student bodies have yielded too little. Politics is the only recognised profession by politicians.

    It has taken a tiny nasty virus for the federal government, and even the CBN to recognize the need to meet the 30-year demand for medical research and biohazard laboratories nationwide.

    Politicians prefer unnecessary and greedy fat Salaries and Perks, SAPing the country dry which should be cut by 75% due to the pandemic, falling oil prices, high borrowing profile and disgraceful international comparisons.

    Nigeria plans to employ youth at N20,000 each for physical work-related jobs in markets, on roads and in the environment.

    This is better than just giving them money out of hand. Are young women included in this scheme and recruited for work in health facilities like orphanages physically and mentally challenged, and old people’s homes?

    Meanwhile America murders another citizen -George Floyd whose ancestors survived and died in slavery and in all likelihood were lynched as well probably within shouting distance of the site in Minnesota that the descendants of slave masters thrived and once again found a suitable excuse, the law, to murder a fellow child of God. ‘Where was God when they murdered our father’, his children will ask forever.  Why are police taught to shoot to kill? Is that justice?

    Similarly, Nigerians and indeed Africans die every day at the hands of police, armed forces, various ‘uniformed’ security outfits, and for many tens of thousands particularly in Nigeria to herders, Boko Haram and ISWA terrorists and bandits. Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger have lost 4,000 in 2019. Dead, no justice!

  • Loot for expressways/Niger Bridge, not governors

    Tony Marinho

     

    COVID-19 spreads relentlessly and records deaths approaching 325,000, infections 5,000,000, with around 6,500 recognised cases in Nigeria.

    We who are educated or well informed about Covid-19 has a huge responsibility of enlightenment and education to inform those around us about prevention including social distancing six feet apart.

    The return of Abacha loot is welcome. No doubt there is a huge amount of money stashed abroad belonging ‘Fellow Nigerians’ but diverted by different rulers, their spawn, and their cohorts.

    There is a feeling that Abacha loot is all the rage today because he is dead and can no longer retaliate in the manner, he is notorious for and others in his shoes are still capable of.

    Secondly the loot was so huge, approximately $5billion that the foreigner bankers, partners in corruption, greedy, could not hide it even by ‘bankers’ silence and secrecy’ and more in a growing era of greater international transparency with governments sanctioning some banks for corrupt practices!

    The call by the Nigerian Governors Forum for the federal government to disburse the fund through the three-tier system is unfortunately not taking in the whole picture.

    They are not right, just as they were wrong to refuse to save up to $100b, in reserves and other funds like the Sovereign Wealth Fund, during the seven+ years of plenty when requested to do so by Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala for a rainy day. Well it is pouring now and no apology yet and we face a recession because our leaders failed to save.

    The federal government again is correct in the light of falling projecting revenue streams and the urgent need for the ‘quick’ completion of the chosen projects.

    However, it could have carried the governors along with nationwide benefits of a speedier completion of the 20-year ludicrously prolonged rehabilitation of the cursed Lagos-Ibadan former expressway, completing the 40-year overdue Second Niger Bridge and completing the Abuja-Kaduna Road.

    Note that the dreaded eight-year loan of $3.4b from the World Bank is less than the funds looted by one man -Abacha- whose name must be removed from stadia, estates, streets and schools and his GCON honour stripped from him.

    With Ibrahim Gambari as Chief of Staff to President Buhari, who was around during the era of Abacha culminating in the execution of Kenule Saro Wiwa and eight others and the annulment of June 12, is Abacha’s name plate secure, for now at least? ‘Stolen’ means a little, ‘looted’ mean a ‘lot’ was stolen! If this $311m Abacha loot is divided, it will have only minimum impact by being diluted and dissipated by being divided among 1,000 projects [$31,000, N12.444m]/project] among 744 LGAs, 36 +1 states and the federal government instead of into the three projects above, those projects will not be completed in our lifetime!

    All Nigerians are dependent on the roads and the expected bridge to, long overdue, ease their lives. Finish the expressways and 2nd Niger Bridge.

    Nigerians see international quick builds from skyscrapers to 1000 bed hospitals but lack such inspirational events to be proud of at home.

    The poor state of the Lagos-Ibadan road and the trouble visited upon users of the road have been an albatross around the neck of successive governments.

    The Abacha loot will allow the government to ‘quickly’ finish the long overdue project. Why should our citizens suffer forever on and for the road that would have been fixed in a year by a serious government?

    Almajiris are unfortunate religious, economic, political and health victims of a feudal system and a single focus ‘religious education only’ system.

    Nothing however in the 2020s can justify compounding their problem and suffering by forcing them to beg for their food for half of every day as their lot in life.

    Of course, they will become hungry and angry –‘hangry’, jealous, disillusioned and dangerous to any alleged enemy.

    Some observers feel almajiris are beings just sent south to cause trouble and fill an agenda of domination by flooding with young humanity.

    Some think they are sent south because their parents and teachers have realised they can no longer cope and seek to transfer their responsibility to others.

    Some even think that they are biological weapons to spread Covid-19. Whatever the reason, the individual almajiri are the ages of our brothers and sisters, children, and schoolmates.

    While only time will reveal which of the above conspiracy theories they present, they represent a Child Human Rights Humanitarian Crisis with serious social, medical, accommodation and feeding problem perspectives visited up Nigeria by an irresponsible adult-hood and governance system.

    Do they deserve succour or censure, caution or kindness, friendliness or fear, love or loathing, charity, or condemnation? If they are no threat and we see and treat them as a threat, they will become a threat as they will react and remember the bitter pill we asked them to swallow and become a threat to us tomorrow.

    If they are a threat and we treat them well, will that kindness stop them from carrying out whatever threat they have been brainwashed to carry out?

    Yes, the herdsmen and accompanying terrorists have unfortunately changed the South in the last 10 years with murder, slash and burn attacks at or even without the slightest provocation.

    Is ‘The almajiri question’ a cause or a consequence of problems? Is it a part of or separate from the herders and ISIS terrorists campaign? Why is government silent!

  • CBN reserves $100b? 4th Mainland Bridge

    CBN reserves $100b? 4th Mainland Bridge

    Tony Marino

    COVID-19 spreads relentlessly and records deaths approaching 300,000, infections 4,300,000, with around 4,700 recognised cases in Nigeria. Each of us who is in any way educated or well-informed about Covid19 has a huge responsibility of enlightenment and education to inform those around us about prevention including social distancing six feet apart.

    Millionaires and billionaires worldwide and especially African and Nigerian have begun to think not about the big money picture which they may not live to spend and which they cannot carry beyond the grave. Some, but not enough of them are thinking and taking action about the small picture in their community and corporate citizens, and there are over 100million of them. That is the picture they can prayerfully carry beyond the grave to judgement day. That picture is of the life meted out to all citizens and the changes that can be made by outside sources like millionaires and billionaires. That picture is of the love and appreciation or neglect of any nation’s greatest asset -its unappreciated poor. You do not have to be dirty to be poor. One can be well-dressed and be financially poor. A living wage, not a minimum wage, is the key anti-poverty strategy. Even if you grew from poverty to billions, it does not make poverty right!  As we applaud the Africa Philanthropy Forum and individuals, ask the business moguls to care better for their own struggling minimum wage workers, daily pay workers. Conversely, they think nothing of giving Maserati-size bonuses to senior workers. The stock trader and bankers’ bonus are among the insulting bonuses. They insult the intelligence of those who save lives for a living be they bus drivers, ships captains, doctors, nurses, police persons and soldiers risking death daily.  Why is saving or giving a life worth nothing more than late-paid salary while making a stock rise or earning a bank dollar bill is so rewardable in a banker’s bonus??? Everyone deserves a bonus in proportion to good work.

    Aside from that. Back to the poor… Where are these poor? Everywhere! The biggest health challenge to the world is not Covid19. It is the carelessness towards the poor who the politicians and economic leaders deliberately ignore. Politicians out of maliciousness, greed or ignorance systematically denied life-sustaining facilities like adequate sanitation, health, housing, transport to the less-than-wealthy citizens. Please note that during pre-election political debates ‘ignorance’ means disqualification and failure during the election. Knowledge about strategies of achieving SDGs is vital and can only be obtained by study. Which politicians can study anything apart from the amount in their bank account? Most of us study hard to get qualifications to become and remain professionals.

    Nigerian politicians take among the highest fees for questionable quality of service in the world. The Salaries and Perks SAPping Nigeria dry must be stopped. We call for a 75% permanent cut in salaries and perks.

    Today across the world millions of millionaires and thousands of billionaires are forced, under threat of Covid19, to sit at ‘Home Alone’. Money is not bad on its own. Not every billionaire is bad. All money is useless to all the dead. Their children do not guarantee eternal corporate existence. Eternal fame and shame are different sides of the same coin.  Forced to be at home alone, they open the finest wine and Champagne bottles, bringing no lasting joy after the first week of Covid! Luxuries need to be flaunted, shared, stared at, envied for ego-pumping and gloating, the gluttony of the mind.

    Only the magic words ‘Thank You’ from genuine beneficiaries will bring that glow that only ‘Genuine Giving without expecting reward and receiving without guilt or debt’ can do. As they enjoy the fruits of their honest or illegal labour, the wealthy in funds and the wealthy in social and political power know which, they must know that greed and charitable handouts and palliative donations are not enough to save the world. To lift more out of poverty, the wealthy in money or power must plan a better world to avert an explosion of the rumblings of Covid-19 which has unleashed many local hunger and anger or ‘h-anger’ riots.

    The Covid-19 has revealed self-worth jobs besides politics and business. Clapping and pressing car horns in honour of previously denigrated and insulted ‘essential workers’ like health workers, fire personnel, security staff, waste disposal and market staff is good. So, included in any such ‘Nigerian/World Anti-Poverty Strategic Plan’ plan must be improved survivable wages to the lower cadre of workers, and higher percentages allocated to schemes against poverty. Nigeria needs a new generation of service politicians who will go to and return from office without corruption or scandal.

    Nigerian billionaires should come together to raise $50-100billion to donate/ lend to Nigeria to back up Nigeria’s foreign reserves.

    Lagos State must give the 4th Mainland Bridge to a consortium of upright Nigerian engineering companies and engineering faculties of universities. It is a bridge, not nuclear physics. Nigeria has deep sea divers used to welding oilrigs. We have maybe 25 universities offering engineering. Nigerians alone can build bridges! For how long will Julius Berger, RCC continue to spoon feed us? Why do four different Chinese companies want to build our bridges? This is the greatest Nigerian construction of the 2020-2030 decade. Are we again going to be bystanders paying huge funds for foreigners’ salaries and perks? Do not bring more professional shame on us!!

  • Covid-19: Wash masks!! Federalism now!!

    Tony Marinho

     

     

    COVID-19 spreads relentlessly and records deaths approaching 260,000, infections 3,700,000, with around 2,800 recognised cases in Nigeria. Each of us who is in any way educated or well informed about Covid-19 has a huge responsibility of enlightenment and education to inform others about prevention including social distancing -six feet.

    Surely most businesses and corporate bodies who have sacked their workers while pretending to ‘generously’ give token donations should instead pay all and especially their junior workers something close to their salaries during this 2-3-month period of the pandemic as a powerful grassroot-reaching palliative strategy.

    Masks to be worn nationwide, a serious strategy with poor social distancing in public transport and crowded areas like markets and travel. Remember to wash your masks and dry them before wearing them the next day. You need at least two.

    A dirty mask is a dangerous infected piece of cloth. Even a clean but incompletely dry mask is a bed for growing bacteria and especially fungus – a particular danger to the lungs.

    Keep your mask in a separate bag or envelope. Never just stuff it into a dirty pocket. It will just get dirtier and more infected. Masks can save lives or become a source of infection. Care for your mask and it will care for you.

    Covid-19 is initially an invisible disease and for most people the disease is mild. For 2-5%, Covid19 does cause Grievous Bodily Harm and sadly, death. No one is safe, everyone is at risk.

    The list of the dead and afflicted reads like a ‘Who’s Who’ and ‘Who is Not Who’. No one is immune no matter how much money, muscle or mansions people have or do not have. Poverty is an aggravating factor because social distancing is impossible in the close confines of living, working and transportation- added risks.

    The best approach to staying alive is prevention. Self-isolation is ideal but even your safe place is contaminated with household members going to market and not being supervised on return especially when what is delivered or exchanged is not cleaned.

    A big part of prevention, beyond social distancing and hand washing, is to keep all surfaces constantly clean- steering wheels, seats. Keep your hands washed.  Remember everything may be infected by other unseen person’s cough or handling.

    NB: Every bottle should be considered dirty and infected. Every bottle, of water and especially a shared sanitiser bottle, should be wiped with sanitiser BEFORE you use it.

    Women should remember that they carry around with them, of necessity or out of fashion, an infection source which penetrates from contacting an infection in infected markets and offices and public transport right into their bedrooms and children’s rooms.

    It is a major unrecognized carrier of infection but especially in a pandemic- the handbag. Every handbag is thrown around, put on the floor, on chairs and on seats and handled by others -servants, assistants, family members -all are infection surfaces.

    Many women and girls think their own handbags are ‘Covid19 immune’ and exempt from spreading infection. Some bags are easier to wipe clean than others.

    Let us all advise women and girls to please advise each other to use simple plastic, easy to repeatedly wipe clean. And remember bag handles. Only plastic bags should be fashionable during a pandemic.

    Most countries unite during a war. Unfortunately, Nigeria has messed up its ‘unity’ and disappointed approximately 100 million+ Nigerian unsatisfied at the military and ethnically politically imposed warped relationship between the haves and have nots and resultant creation of the single arrogantly supervising ethnic group and oppressed subservient ethnic groups.

    Nigerian leaders must see the big picture, beyond the pandemic, beyond ‘it is okay to fail at government’, beyond self-enrichment, beyond-government backed criminality, beyond party affiliations, beyond ethnic greed for power and beyond greed for the national cake- if any remains after the pandemic, oil price fall and absent seriously saved foreign reserves of $100b.

    The pandemic war, any war, is supposed to clear our eyes, toughen us and point us to greatness as a country still struggling to become a nation.

    Now, political salaries and perks should be cut by 75% permanently. ‘True federalism’ should be dug up from its burial site in 1966 under a military unitary government under ethnic guidance which got too greedily attached to Nigeria’s wealth leaving too little for the citizens.

    The government remains mislabeled as a ‘federal’ government, and even when it became ‘political’ it never relinquished unitary power.

    The pandemic is the time to retrace the unitary steps exacerbated by this government’s ethnic agenda and have it replaced with a ‘true federal government’ as the crowning principle of 2020 governance.

    Nigerians are crying out for a more honest distribution of palliatives. Much has been donated and borrowed and we cannot afford to lose this money in yet another medical or fiscal corruption scam.

    A word about isolation. If we isolate ‘suspected’ cases of Covid19 in dormitory or ward-like situations, we are bound to have cross-infections. Those without the disease will be infected. They must be separated from each other during isolation.

    Leadership and statesperson-ship is about helping people through their difficult and depressing lives imposed by a weak, selfish and greedy and unaccountable governance system. Just perhaps, the post-Covid-19 pandemic era will be the era of mutual respect for all 345 ethnic groups and not just ‘’all power and all wealth’’ in one hand???

     

  • COVID-19, Rice palliative palaver!  

    COVID-19, Rice palliative palaver!  

    By Tony Marinho

    COVID-19 spreads relentlessly and records deaths approaching 220,000, infections 3,100,000, with around 1,200 recognised cases in Nigeria with Kano the new epicentre with its inability to self-distance and its massive unemployed close-living population with no interest in wearing face masks. Costs are unquantifiable but in excess of $15trillion.

    Nigeria struggles under righteous demands for further cuts in petrol and also diesel prices amidst the lower prices, even nearly negative worldwide, Covid-19 induced transport paralysis and the Russian-Saudi Arabian, oil price war.

    Nigerians are questioning unpleasant stories and the nation awaits explanation for the apparent differences in the anti-hunger and anti-violence palliative funds distributed to different states. EFCC, ICPC be proactive; Nigeria cannot afford another international disgrace and enquiry regarding corruption in the billions pouring in for the Covid-19 war! People hear the money but not a recognizable equivalent in palliatives and their tummies are increasingly rumbling in hunger under lockdown. The matter is not helped by the finger pointing, accusations and denials surrounding some palliative rice delivered to many states with some complaints of poor quality of the product in Oyo and some other states.

    I do not want to believe that anyone high up in the federal government, the Customs or the states affected would be so criminally-minded against innocent Nigerians but a full independent examination must urgently confirm the truth and identify. Guilty parties may be guilty by omission of due diligence following unsatisfactory poor prolonged storage and zero agricultural microbiological supervised quality control before quality assurance prior to release and on arrival. Suggesting that such a large volume of rice could have been criminally switched between the warehouse, wherever that is, and the destination without full connivance of customs and police and federal officers is unimaginable. Where would a state get such a quantity of rice- the exclusive preserve of exclusive-listed federal customs service?

    Nigeria is looking around for even more loans from the UN, WHO, European Union, World Bank, International Monetary Fund claiming its entitlement from chunks of money made available to Africa but it should look inward both the fight the Covid-19 and the replenish the foreign reserves. The president should undertake to phone friends and a few enemies. He should remind them of how much individually they have benefitted from Nigeria with facts and figures given to him by Interpol, Transparency International, Boris Johnson, Donald Trump, Angela Merkel, and as many foreign leaders as possible. He could ask for a generous contribution in naira or any foreign currency to the foreign reserves to bring them up to $50b. Covid-19 should have taught many people the valueless-ness of their wealth in the face of such a serious attack.

    Now is the best time for wealthy Nigerians to back the economy by strengthening the backbone of the CBN with a boost to the foreign reserves. It is worth noting that Nigeria repeatedly lost the opportunity to build up its foreign reserves under every single government as it was plagued by a spend-spend-spend political class led by a band of governors, mostly now senators, demanding the undeserved title of ‘Distinguished’, who now shed crocodile tears at the pervading super-Corruption, Incompetence, Negligence and Selfishness -CINS- along with what now appear to be criminally and prosecutable high overheads of governance and legislative greed, compounded by a peculiarly Nigerian politicians’ penchant for perpetual salaries for life, after just four or eight years work, and/or commensurate super-pension scams/schemes even as they transited to other lucrative government offices on full-full salaries and Perks further SAPing the country dry and millions without pensions.

    With Covid-19, we announce the death of gossip: Billions of subjects of gossip and natural gossipers have disappeared in the lockdowns worldwide, so the whispered wicked word and sniggering are no more. No one has done anything to gossip about unless they are foolish enough to put it on social media and then it is often quickly dismissed as ‘fake news’. Suddenly the enemies in the office, always good for gossip, and those lounging threateningly on the street corner, in the park, and in the shadows in the dark have receded, physically and psychologically and are no longer a threat. One fear is gone but replaced by another -Coronarvirus. Gossip, the focus, cause and content of so much conversation, time, effort, emotion and all those face contortions is dead for now at least. That is a good thing. People’s minds are purer as a result.

    With Covid19, the bully is also at last dealt with, a suspended terrorist species! Unless one is living with you, or in a face me I face you, the bully is at last forced to keep a safe distance and is forced to suspend hostilities. The bully, be the person a he or she, in your school, office or on your journey is kept at bay. Hopefully the bullies themselves will realise the beauty of life without bullying and will learn that they too can survive without bullying.

    Will the death of gossip and bullying translate into a better life after Covid-19? Perhaps not. Recurrence is a serious possibility. But we are enjoying the periods of ‘silent conversation’ and the enhanced wellbeing and personal security caused by the suspension of gossip and loss of bullying opportunities worldwide. We must still fight on-line gossip and bullying but we can always switch off the computer.

  • COVID: Exercise; Mass Open Online Courses-MOOC

    Tony Marinho

     

    Exercise, don’t justt exercise Legs are made to walk and run

    Mouths to eat and talk- for work and fun

    If you don’t use your legs

    They become just weak pegs

    Unable to take your weight

    Which you WILL hate

    You will not be able to get out of bed

    On standing they will be lead, feel dead

    If you don’t sing, whistle, chit-chat, smile

    You could lose your speech in a while

    If you don’t listen to others and look around

    You will appreciate and respect only your sound

    There is no body exercise

    Except your brain and fingers

    When you texterise, Twittercise,

    Whatsappercise, Computergamercise

    Sittingworkercise, Sittingplayercise

    Sitndrinkercise

     

    Knees and legs become weak

    And your walking future becomes bleak

    By the time you are 60, or latest 70

    You cannot stand up, without a hand up

    Or a push up from the table or chair

    Take more interest in your body care

     

    You can walkercise, joggercise

    You can runnercise, gymercise

    All are funnercise, smilercise

    But do not sitercise, or just criticize.

    As you get older

    Exercise, exercise, exercise longer

     

    Bathroomrunningonthespotercise

    Legskneesercise, Stairsclimbercise,

    Armsercise, Gardenrunnercise

    Dancercise, exercise a lot

    Can help get to the needy muscle spot

    Everyday do Som exercise

    The lockdown has serious consequences for family health and exercise regimes. This poem can be cut out, kept and read aloud playfully regularly by the family for planning and action during and even after the COVID-19 pandemic has gone. It will go!

    And women please bring out your simple plastic surfaced ‘easy-to-wipe-clean with spirit’ handbags. Hide difficult-to-clean designer bags for any ‘Post COVID-19 Handbag Celebration!

    The COVID-19 records deaths are approaching 170,000, infections 2,500,000 and around 700 cases and approaching 25 deaths officially in Nigeria.  Costs are unquantifiable but in $10trillions+. We are on the brink of civil unrest as robberies and attacks are on the rise. Only massive government palliative support will save the day and night.

    In my clinic, I see many young students from home because Covid-19 lockdown has closed their universities if not the ASUU strike. From their phones I surmise that they have access to WhatsApp and search engines like google. I am sometimes inspired by our conversations but mostly disappointed.

    There are economics, social and political science, communication students, history,  medical and other students who I challenge  will say ‘I get out of bed at 8.30am’ and ‘ I’m bored most days’ and they have ‘zero’ and I mean ‘zero’ knowledge and pathologically little interest in the ‘Great Economic Covid-19 Melt Down’  and consuming all  during their own time.

    They have no eye or head or plan to collect data, record, document, interrogate and interpret the economic impact and cost of the pandemic called Covid-19 estimated in the $10s of trillions and its associated trauma-causing events.

    These events include the effects of the oil price crash to $12, the 30% devaluation of the naira, the worldwide 10-50% unemployment balloon, the medical and health impacts, the impacts on economies of the closed businesses and devastation to the vulnerable unemployed and daily paid left for weeks without a daily meal for themselves and their families or any or a grossly inadequate financial safety net.

    Add the impact on their own home, family, friends, local businesses, neighbourhood, community, country, continent and planet. Every student is sitting on enough material for the best essay on return university.

    ‘What did you do in the 2019-2020 Covid-19 War?’. ‘What is the impact of COVID-19 on Nigeria’. Every single child worldwide will be challenged similarly. Then many of the answers will upset and shock teachers.

    The terror, hunger, loss of parents and friends and relations, hospital stay, uncertainty, loss of focus, mental challenges of isolation and helplessness all weigh down everyone involved and the effect of job losses will produce a plethora of different experiences.

    Some are involved in or witnessing violence due to hunger and deprivation. Of course, there is already and there will be more art, music, poetry, prose, plays and films many of which are already in the writing – all created out of the ‘cancer’ of COVID-19.

    Get your youth to search for Free University Courses from many top university’s and brilliant cutting-edge lecturers. Any undergraduate in Nigeria who has not heard of or explored or enrolled in some ‘MOOC’ or ‘Mass Open Online Courses’ should be informed of opportunities being missed. COVID must not kill our youth brain.

    Nigerians, know Idriss Deby and thank him, if Nigeria will not. As Chadian president, he lost 98 soldiers to Boko Haram, an organisation founded in Nigeria. Within three weeks, he led thousands of troops in counter-attacks and routed the Boko Haram plaguing his country.

    Nigeria was not involved. Probably for fear of a leak by informers observing the military movements or in the ranks of our gallant armed forces who frequently are engaged in fierce battle. We pay tribute to them. The death toll to Boko Haram and Fulani and other herdsmen’ attacks rivals total deaths to COVID worldwide so far. Who cares?

    Certainly, the still displaced in poorly managed IDP camps, 2+MILLION and scattered around Nigeria 3+million, are about double those infected by Covid worldwide at present. That is the extent of our delusion in Nigeria. We react to crisis and ignore our daily responsibility to the citizenry. Common market fire-fighting is nuclear physics in Nigeria. We must step-up against Boko Haram.

     

  • COVID-19@Easter, Palliatives & Media Strategies

    COVID-19@Easter, Palliatives & Media Strategies

    By Tony Marinho

    Happy Easter2020: Hopefully it went well even though it was different and many were broke in pocket but not spirit. It must have been strange to view the world and witness several billions of human beings silently using traditional electronic and social media as they bowed and knelt in front of televisions, radios and cell phones communicated, if they had electricity or battery power, with their chosen Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, with ringing Resurrection Halleluiahs as did many worshipping other religions.

    What has Covid-19 not done to the human race? It has interacted and degraded every aspect of human life. But did you listen to the stock market trader who said some have been praying for this pandemic because it is a great opportunity to make money? Stock markets like commercial markets should have been closed down and stock speculation banned and not admired. Shamefully many such stock and futures betting traders will get COVID-19 caused ‘BANK BONUSES’ in 2020. But no bonus for saving lives or dying as medical and other staff killed in action against COVID-19 on the virus warfront. Coffins have no colour and are colour-blind to contents-corpses. In a capitalistic world, cash made even from coffins for pandemic deaths is evergreen and rewardable with bonuses. We learnt nothing from the US stock market crash due to the housing loan scam debacle.

    COVID-19 records deaths approaching 120,000, infections 2,000,000 and around 350 cases and approaching 15 deaths in Nigeria.  Costs are unquantifiable but in $10trillions+. In Nigeria, we expect a deeper cut in petrol and also diesel prices. With perhaps a N500billion federal fund added to the already huge individual and corporate support, how do we avoid a repeat of our traditional ‘Epidemic Corruption’ in Nigeria? Shall we call it ‘COVID-19 Corruption’?

    In Nigeria, transport like the cramped 16-passenger danfo or the spittle from the speeding okada rider talking backwards actually entering the passenger’s mouth will spread the virus.  Reusable masks must cover both the mouth and the nose, not to be decoration around the throat or neck. Make your own from scarfs. Never go out without a facemask. The life you save may be your own.

    It is worth repeating that infected hands are never cut off but always recycled – washed in soap and water, rinsed in methylated spirit. Medical professionals must recycle mask, plastic apron and gloves.

    Though frequent hand washing and social distancing are essential, a lockdown is now known to cause several societal effects. There are prison riots, serious civil unrest, armed robbery and strangely even a fall in gang warfare. In some countries, dangerous murderous drug-running gangs are now jointly distributing palliatives to the communities they plagued. Police in the area, knowledgeable in the viciously violent history of the gangs, are cautious and not particularly hopeful that the usual intergang warfare that turned into ‘intergang welfare’ and goodwill will outlast the virus. Nigeria does not usually follow any established plan and by some miracle there may be ‘Peace On Earth And Goodwill Towards All Men, Women And Children’ as a result of COVID-19. Too many pockets and stomachs and days are empty. Unfortunately, even the dustbins are hungry.

    While the politicians are not directly responsible for Covid-19, though some arrogantly contributed to its spread, they are collectively as a body directly responsible for our poor health service. When comparing their budgetary approvals, and the fat Salaries and Perks SAPping the country dry, to salaries of professionals, politicians have behaved badly. They have a malignant history of foreign medical tourism, all expenses paid by the rest of us. Now they must be treated in rubbish hospitals they denied an upgrade as they can no longer travel. No one is sorry for them as they have nowhere to run for their medical needs. They flaunt undeserved titles of Excellency, Distinguished and Honourable and recently purchased 2020 series NASS utility vehicles. For years, they have waved a red flag before a ‘hangry’, ‘hungry and angry’ bull -the citizens who have so far contented themselves with fighting for and feeding on the droppings by political horses at elections and on visits to their ‘country homes’.

    What else needs to be done to create a social crisis? The crude scattering of over-labelled and highly publicised but often ‘petty or mini-palliatives’ by our over-bloated politicians is already backfiring and being rejected in many communities. Ask yourself in your neighbourhood, ask your friends, and report if the government-backed financial and food support scheme is working. Also examine the palliative efforts of businesses and NGOs in your area. Only such ‘SITREP’ observations will give an early warning about any coming social unrest problems to prevent a complete breakdown of law and order.

    The government must use many more known artistes and musicians as ‘anti-covid-19’ health and anti-violence communication ambassadors to publicise the anti-Covid-19 strategies and social packets. This may allay the fears and violent tendencies of the suffering people. Even the hungry sometimes smile between the frequent wincing from the hunger pangs of stomach ache. But the smile is temporary and not relief. Every government must bring new ‘honest male and female’ faces and voices with ‘reliable hands’ faces and voices much closer to the people on daily TV and radio updates discussing where the relief is distributed on a daily basis and get the people’s voices heard and faces seen on TV and radio.

  • Covid-19: Recycle PPE; Lockdown: Even the dustbins are hungry!

    Covid-19: Recycle PPE; Lockdown: Even the dustbins are hungry!

    Tony Marinho

     

    A HOSPITAL without ambulances cannot be a hospital in 2020. Nigerians should jeer and not cheer long-denied corrections in the health system. The ambulance and fire brigade siren should replace the politicians’ sirens on our roads.  Ambulance delivery and not donations but just catchup with normal health facility standards worldwide. Nigeria lowers standards in everything except political Salaries and Perks, SAPing Nigeria dry! Only permanently renouncing of 75% of the salaries and perks SAPping the country dry and also renouncing the undeserved titles of Excellency, Distinguished and Honourable by NASS and state political officials will help calm the masses.

    COVID-19 records deaths approaching 80,000, infections 1,500,000 and with around 300 cases and approaching 10 deaths/40 discharged in Nigeria.  Costs at world country and individual level are unquantifiable but in $10trillions+. With perhaps a N500billion federal fund added to the individual and corporate support, how do we avoid ‘COVID-19 Corruption’? Already everything from masks to spirit to infra-red thermometers have gone through the roof in costs.

    The Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) and Nigeria’s microbiologists should issue ‘Guidelines for Specifications for Production and Recycling’ [yes, Recycling] of Personal Protection Equipment, PPE’. Infected hands are never cut off but always recycled – washed in soap and water, rinsed in methylated spirit. Nigeria does not have enough PPE. Medical professionals must energise recycling or go naked into the Corvid -19 War. Re-use personal PPE. This recycling cannot apply to active COVID-19 wards, unless high heat, chemical hose-down facilities are available. Recycling is for peripheral medical centres dealing with other medical cases.

    We work in a Nigeria with a culture of low capacity medical facilities, you are not in the NASS now. Soon there may be no trustworthy equipment. Trust what you recycle. Your family depends on your ability. Do the math: 20 ancillary staff, nurses, and doctors=20-100 masks, 20-100 pairs of gloves and 20-100 aprons/day x week x months. No facility in Nigeria has ever been given has that quantity of disposal equipment. Every request for disposable equipment was reduced or cancelled. RECYCLE PLEASE.  And when in public, in the market, at the petrol station, in the shops, please use a mask of any description, even your harmattan scarf. If you cannot give infection, perhaps you cannot get infected! The danger of virus spread during use of transport like the confined space of the 16 passenger danfo or the spittle from the mouth of the speeding Okada rider talking backwards threatening to or actually entering the passengers mouth.  Always wear a mask of good homemade quality. The life you save may be your own.

    Who is making ventilators and PPE and the needed masks and visors to protect the eyes from direct spray or the hand touching the face? Even before COVID-19, we, health professionals, worked in often appalling conditions. Regular theatre microbiological checks are infrequent and infections are followed back to source in wound infections in operated patients. Unfortunately, because of persistent failing in the purchase, preparation and dispersal of PPE, dealing with COVID-19 crisis means we must highly professionally standardise recycling.

    Though social distancing seems to be the way forward, a lockdown in Nigeria with 80% of without work or working as fragile daily paid persons will precipitate unrest unless masterly managed. Nigerians in authority are usually not master managers. They failed at ID cards, voters register, IDP camps, refugees from Bakassi to name a few spectacular failures with costly consequences for the country and the citizens. From vulcanizers and mechanics-there are few cars reducing punctures and breakdowns, news vendors- no one can afford papers, Buka food sellers- no assembly, nightclubs from under bridge and under tree to hotel based clubs-closed, transporters -local and interstate drivers, conductors and motor touts-travel restrictions-closed motor parks, domestics- asked to stay away to avoid infecting host families, air-transport-touts, bag carriers, petrol attendants closed stations in some cases. And we can go on and on from event managers, photographers to the corner food seller denied an income from selling to now non-existent workers to the army of proud women who specialise in inspecting the estate and neighbourhoods’ dustbins and rescuing recyclables like glass, plastic, left-over food. They receive financial help from many dustbin owners.

    Unfortunately, even the dustbins are hungry, with too little in them. The time of discarding items out of hand is passed as all containers may be reengineered for reuse especially with perpetually poor master management of the falling value of the currency which used to be $1.5 : N1 when I started work in 1975 and is now $1.5 : N600ish in 2020.  Add the devaluation of life itself as high-handed uniform authorities brutally enforce and we have created the pepper soup of rebellion. The recently purchased 2020 series NASS utility vehicles must also be renounced. They will be waving a red flag before a ‘hungry and angry’ bull. These, with much better masterly management of so far poorly managed government backed ‘Covid Poverty Alleviation support scheme delivering food and finance directly using all registered and some unregistered artisan, blue collar, social, widows, religious and neighbourhood youth associations, may save Nigeria from the spark that will lead to anarchy. These are perilous times. Arrogance is a disaster at this time. Humility, even false humility, on the part of the leadership and middle classes is the only way out.  Watch the Covid Victims’ temperature. Watch the citizens’ temperature.  Anyone with a car, could be and will be a victim.

  • Computer Olympics; Recycle PPE? Club noise post-Covid  

    Computer Olympics; Recycle PPE? Club noise post-Covid  

    By Tony Marinho

    My last post encouraged the International Olympic Committee, IOC to create a huge website ‘Reality E-Olympics’. It was not an alternative to the COVID crisis and postponed Olympics 2020. It is an addition, dating from 2013-2016 identifying an opportunity for the Olympic Movement to expand into year-round activities. Computer-generated ladders with age opportunities worldwide, gives reality time, recognition, on a massive home-sports scale. Participants will compete in traditional Olympian competition on the [Junior] Olympic ladder with daily updates, coaching tips and inspiration worldwide, creating a massive ‘Sport Penpal Olympic Movement’, year-round. The IOC can add this to expand the ‘Olympic Dream’ portfolio. The world needs the ‘COMPUTER OLYMPIC GAMES’. Camera phones can confirm results.

    The 21st Century world is a VIRTUAL REALITY WORLD with billions of followers. As a result, youths would be spotted for professional training and coaching tips. Coaches could coach millions at once. The Computer Olympic Games would answer coaches’ worries that ‘the world overlooks the best athletes, undiscovered and uncoached till their ‘sell by sports date’? The Computer Sports Games will open-up the sports playing field by Olympian proportions.

    Recycle PPE, pls: COVID-19 records deaths in the region of 40,000, infections 800,000 and with around 150 cases in Nigeria involving all including high political and now medical citizens. Costs are in excess of $5trillion. We expect further cut in petrol and also diesel prices. How do we avoid a repeat of our ‘Epidemic Corruption’ in Nigeria? Shall we call it ‘COVID-19 corruption’?

    If even the West runs out and does not have enough tools, the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) and Nigerian microbiologists should issue ‘Guidelines for Specifications for Production and Recycling’ [yes, Recycling] of Personal Protection Equipment, PPE’. Infected hands are never cut off but always recycled-washed in soap and spirit. Nigeria does not have enough PPE and the profiteers have triumphed. Medical professionals, knowledgeable in cleaning infected patients, beds, equipment and their own hands, must use their initiative or risk going naked into the Corvid -19 war. If you get a mask, plastic apron and gloves, you must keep them, wipe them down, clean them with soap and then spirit dry them in air and re-use them personally, not for others. Or you will have nothing. This may not apply fully in a COVID-19 ward, unless hose-down facilities are available but is effective in peripheral medical centres.  This is Nigeria; you are not in the National Assembly, NASS. Soon there will be no equipment. Do the math: 20 ancillary staff, nurses, and doctors=20-100 masks, 20-100 pairs of gloves and 20-100 aprons/day x week x months. Almost no Nigerian facility has that quantity of equipment. RECYCLE. PLEASE.

    Which academics, scientists, fabrication factories have been challenged to make ventilators locally, even despite the insensitive ASUU strike? So too for scarce PPE. Even before COVID-19, we, health professionals, were traditionally forced to work in appalling unhygienic conditions. To save lives, I have operated without gloves and with a torchlight. COVID-19 crisis means we must recycle maximally. Do not dismiss this advice. Exam it, live with it, bring it to fruition and standardise it to prevent cross-infection.

    Club noise controls post Covid: The COVID-19 will change the world long after the epidemic is overcome. People will insist on contracts allowing them to work from home1-4 days a week. Office dynamics will change. Offices will shrink and be rented or shared. They be converted into flats.

    I hope some changes will be permanent. It is quiet. No noisy traffic, tormenting noise throughout the night mistakenly called music, hysterical shouting and fighting, horns blaring till 5am daily. Paradoxically COVID has brought normalcy- peaceful nights to tens of millions!! We sleep. Why? Same in your neighbourhood? The unusual silence in Bodija, Ibadan is only because the four nightclubs each a mile away have stopped blaring surround-sound every single night till 5am.  The reason? Not efficient government! It is ‘thanks’ to COVID-19. It succeeded where 25 years of pleas to government failed. Bodija was a ‘Sleepless Zone’, for the school child, worker and especially the pensioner seeing their dream of terminal tranquility dissolved in the daily dread of their terrifying sleepless nightmare retirement home. Shutting the windows even on hot nights, sleeping tablets, earplugs and two pillows over the head cannot keep the screaming music from vibrating the bed, making some wish they were dead. Of course, the nightclub owners wisely live far away in estates banning nightclubs and hotels. They should be forced to live on site!!

    To correct this nightclub nightmare, all governors after Covid-19 must keep all nightclubs in residential areas shut until fully sound-proofed and they pass the test ensuring their music is 1]. Confined, in-house, not in garden, and 2]. Does not filter into the road and 3]. Is not heard in the compounds and houses immediately around them. 4]. No one but guests should hear any music. Legal and scientific decibel checks have failed due to collusion.  And Nigerians especially DJs and band members only know ‘full volume’ -’Off’ or ‘On’! Nightclubs must never again destroy neighbourhoods by ignoring the law and silencing officials. However, we did stop one nightclub actually being built.  The four Bodija nightclubs can move to the ‘hotel on Mokola Hill’ nightly.

    We demand nationwide Post COVID Night Club Noise and Environmental Cleanup control involving the neighbourhood associations!! No club cover-up bribery!!!

    PS: How are groundnuts forced into narrow-necked water bottles? Hygienic?? COVID-19 compliant?

  • Virtual Olympics in the time of COVID

    Tony Marinho

     

     

    The media reported the army set fire to seized products and vehicles intended for Boko Haram. Economics demands we use the vehicles and goods for Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) or the Army.

    COVID-19 records deaths around 16,000, infections 370,000+ and growing, 35+ in Nigeria and an unknown number not tested. If the world can quake before the virus, what is our plight with a serially neglected health service with less beds, ventilators and poorly trained medical staff in-country than the US has on one county?

    Social spacing is our only chance but who will combat shoulder to shoulder market trading and taxi travel? Who will fund the feeding of the poor as the non-poor run short of daily bread funds? Who will prevent crime from hunger and other crime during the lockdown?

    It has taken COVID-19 for Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to reduce interest rates. Daily wages for 60-80% of informal sector will stop during lockdown- creating a timebomb and time frame for social upheaval. We await a further fall in petrol price and also diesel by 50%.

    The government should buy five years supply of oil at $20+/b and remove any petrol subsidy. Government failed to refine our oil in-country, an economic failure.

    The pandemic has highlighted home-working with voice and video-conferencing, e-learning and e-commerce. Environmentally, the world has cleaner air, sea and water from pollution. The world has faced fire, flood and now a paralytic air droplet virus attack. The Post COVID-19 world will be radically different. What next? Take the Olympics.

    Sports and the arts always suffer during adversity. Everyone, everything, everywhere is in COVID-19 jeopardy. Olympic staff and administrators, coaches and athletes, and families, like us, face problems from the distress, debility, deaths and timetable disruptions.

    Read Also: JUST IN: COVID-19: Ganduje orders civil servants to stay- at- home

     

    Teams in contact sports, a major avenue for sports COVID-19 transmission, will face more restrictions and dangers in training preparations, limiting potential. In every participating country, training venues are closed, social distancing has banned close contact and travel. ‘Sponsorship’ funding for training, travel, transport, accommodation and food will plummet.

    All these compound logistics planning, training and qualification options. The Olympics is the great international treasure. But it will be postponed or cancelled. 2021 is probably the earliest the tourists and the corporate sponsors would recover.

    Perhaps the Winter Olympics 2022 is the next best thing, interestingly holding in Beijing, China. A virus vaccine should be in place then. But we can create other hidden Olympic Games opportunity by diversification and dissemination.

    The world requires an additional new all-year-round Virtual Olympic model in the time of COVID-19.  The International Olympic Committee is the largest NGO in the world. It has unused clout across the computer world.

    It must immediately open new Olympic Computer window for the known and unknown world’s athletes, young and old. The Olympic Committees can offer the world’s citizens an E-Olympic Games with opportunity to climb reality ‘Local Country Olympics Ladders’ in every registered community.

    This needs a massive computer platform for real human participation at every sports age and facet of every sport even beyond the current Olympic sports portfolio. Adding this to the current Olympics system will capture those outside opportunity, sponsorship, promotion or discovery.

    Undiscovered athletes will discover themselves and put their ‘school/coach/parent authenticated times etc.’ on the computer ladder. The IOC has the power to add this to its portfolio and bring the Olympic opportunity to everyone. It should introduce the ‘COMPUTER OLYMPIC GAMES’ or ‘COMPUTER OLYMPIC SPORTS GAMES’.

    Recognition and fame and an Olympic T-shirt and Certificate with no international travel. Your qualifying time will slot you on the ladder and compete with someone your age/sex in any country worldwide. The Olympics can then support and promote the best to the Olympic Games.

    The project may help solve the migration problem with increased self-worth at the local level with international and local recognition at home.

    It really would make the world a global Olympic-like sports village without the need for finding money for costly travel except for the very best during economic crises and political upheaval.

    A variety of names can be used. ‘Welcome To ‘The Computer Olympic Games’ or ‘Thecomputerolympicgames’ or ‘The Computer Sports Games ‘or  ‘Thecomputersportsgames’ or ‘The Computerised Sports Games’ Or ‘Thecomputerisedsportsgames’

    ‘Welcome to The Sportsladder’. Country Eg Sportsladder.Naija, Nigasportsladder Or Sportsladderniga. Or

    Country Specific Sportsladderghana Etc Sportsladder.Ghana Sportsladderafrica, Etc  Or Sportsladder.Africa

    Sportsladderworld Or Sportsladder.World

    Almost everyone knows someone who has access to a camera phone for photo-record. The 21st Century world is an ‘I’, ‘notice me’, ‘look at me’, ‘look what I am doing/did’ virtual reality world.

    The opportunity for self-development measured by established Olympic yardsticks with public credit for advancement would be hugely valuable and attractive as a VIRTUAL REALITY PROGRAMME as competitors could move up or down the ladder based on performance criteria without leaving home.

    The project would establish a million names in a Virtual E-Olympic Data Base categorised by  sport- track, field, teams-and skills in subjects, co-curricular, hobbies, talents, performance – distance, height, weight, times, dexterity, endurance, age and sex targeted at each age year from 10 to 18+ or grouped -10-12, 13-15, 16-18, 19-21.

    Viewing audience will be participants, peers, parents, educational institutions general public, sports coaching community, sponsors, international sports enthusiasts. So, village sprinters or goalkeepers can send data for all to see.

    NB: WASH= Water, Soap/Sanitise and ‘Avoid Handshakes/Hugs/Hand-Head touching/Hisses/Kisses’. Social distance -keep six feet from any walker, sitter, stander around you. Change Your Lifestyle =Save A Life!