Welcome to Ebere Samuel's Blog: discrimination

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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">In Lagos, newspaper stands are not spots for idlers. They are meeting points for thinkers, intellectuals, and public speakers. There is no discrimination: everybody is welcome. Sometimes, there are fights; many times people shout and scream and curse and swear. But since Ebola became an issue in Nigeria, newspaper stands in Lagos have become a rallying point for concerned voices.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">New Garage in Gbagada, Estate Bus Stop at Alapere and Ketu Market are just a few of the most rowdy spots observed by Saturday Tribune. On this day, most of the dailies had reported that Patrick Sawyer, the Liberian whose visit to Nigeria a couple of months ago, ushered the deadly virus into the country, was indeed aware he was infected before the visit.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“God will punish this man!” one man exclaimed, at New Garage.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“He will rot in the pit of hell,” another man agreed.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“Ah…ah! Some people are very wicked!”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“Heartless!’</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“I say it will not be well for him and his generation!”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“Please, don’t say things like that,’ a bespectacled middle-aged man said very quietly.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">And it was at this point that all hell was let loose. Almost everyone turned to face this man.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“Mr Man if you don’t know what to say, just keep quiet!”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“Do you know how many people have died?”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“Do you know how deadly this disease is?”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">This argument continued for a very long time. Sometimes, smaller groups are formed out of the larger group, particularly when there are too many dissenting voices. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The fear of Ebola in Lagos is as real as the disease itself. Fear, panic, worry, frustration and disillusionment have been unleashed on the streets, markets, schools and offices. It is difficult to find people in groups discussing issues that are not related to Ebola. Where this is not the case, one has only to wait for a few minutes and Ebola is sure to creep in. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The search for the cure of the virus is a common pastime in Lagos. Not many people appear to be waiting for help to emerge from the laboratories of Nigerian scientists, and there are already a lot of conspiracy theories concerning America’s unwillingness to dispatch to Nigeria the drug they worked so hard to produce. Left to their own devices, many Nigerians (particularly those in Lagos) have taken to mischief-making and storytelling. The myths about Ebola cure and prevention continue to multiply on a daily basis. From kola nuts to hand-sanitisers, and from salt to alcohol, they are so numerous. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Indeed, the claim by Professor Maurice Iwu that bitter kola could cure Ebola was interesting on many counts. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">First, it was quite simply refreshing: Nigerians were really talking about research and innovation. Second, it was bitter kola! It was not some chemical or some ancient plant; it was kola nut. And third, it was Professor Maurice Iwu.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">And as if to further heighten the tension in Lagos over the menace, several media reports soon began to allege that the price of bitter kola had, in fact, increased dramatically in Lagos. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">This, however, did not prove to be the case when Saturday Tribune visited Bariga Market last weekend. It was available at different shops, and along the road. An average nut cost N10: it had always been sold at this price, a seller told Saturday Tribune. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">There is also the case of hand sanitisers. A trader told Saturday Tribune that the prices of hand sanitisers did not exactly change. ‘It’s just that it’s in demand now,’ he said. ‘More people now come to ask for it than before.’ Different brands were on offer. Most prices range between N500 and N1000, depending mainly on the size. But hand sanitisers have indeed become very popular in Lagos. It is quite common to find people (particularly women) applying it every now and then – on buses, along the road, at events, and so on.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Nobody knows who it was that ‘discovered’ the ‘salt treatment’ for Ebola. But, really, people somehow began to hint that salt possessed the power to prevent and cure the virus. It was said it could either be ingested or used in bathing water. The Federal Ministry of Health has however stated that salt and water do not in any way cure or prevent Ebola. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">There are still a number of people who believe it’s not salt but alcohol that can perform this all-important task. The problem, as with salt, concerns the dosage. People ask: how much need to be taken? The danger, again, of this belief becomes immediately obvious.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Workplaces in Lagos, particularly those in the posh parts, have put several measures in place to manage this situation. A young woman who works at Victoria Island told Saturday Tribune that workers at her office are subjected to medical screening, every morning, before they are allowed to go in; whenever a worker’s temperature is observed to be high,  he or she is asked to go home, and to return as soon as their health improves.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“It is not fashionable anymore to get sick (it probably never was!) But nobody likes to talk about sickness any more. Ebola symptoms are sometimes similar to those of malaria or typhoid, reports have shown. There is also the fear of visiting hospitals: there is no telling whom one may run into, or have contact with!,” she said. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">But by far the most intriguing aspects of the fear of Ebola in Lagos are the jokes that are spun almost on a daily basis. Many people however have pointed out that the Ebola situation is far too grave to warrant any form of jokes. But Nigerians in Lagos are fun-loving people: such puritanical views do not mean much to them.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">One of the earliest jokes comes in the form of advice. Names such as ‘Adebola’ ‘Oyebola’ and ‘Irebola’ are identified as carriers of the Ebola Virus. To avoid contacting the disease, one must stay away from people who are so named. Well, it is not clear whether this is exactly funny. But that itself may well be the source of its humour.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">There is another. A man is hospitalised. His wife and his children are devastated: they suspect it’s Ebola; all the vital signs are there. At the hospital, however, they are told that it is HIV. So great is their joy that they organise a get-together to announce to their friends that it’s only HIV. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Yes, there is Ebola in Lagos, but there is also a shared resolve by residents to make it go away. In fact, someone has even said that Ebola cannot survive in Nigeria, but it was not clear whether this speaker intended for it to be a statement of faith, a call for action or yet another joke.</span></div>
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Ebola in Lagos: The fears, the jokes

In Lagos, newspaper stands are not spots for idlers. They are meeting points for thinkers, intellectuals, and pu...

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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Team Nigeria Pulls Out of Nanjing 2014 in China over discrimination of Ebola</span></span></h3>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0Te33UfWe4-4kAJsU1pXP6xy6zQEbkoBIQz4095ede9tx5TIJPy9nx93WS-NA380_pMA1B8k-vGMy5YQYm__4VgQ1C-iKU38APkO5trz6Ij5fGKCPt8KJQN7zFoLfwAcXAWXyWqXw-0Cc/s1600/Licensed_Products_of_Nanjing_2014_Youth_Olympic_Games.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: black;"><img border="0" height="476" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0Te33UfWe4-4kAJsU1pXP6xy6zQEbkoBIQz4095ede9tx5TIJPy9nx93WS-NA380_pMA1B8k-vGMy5YQYm__4VgQ1C-iKU38APkO5trz6Ij5fGKCPt8KJQN7zFoLfwAcXAWXyWqXw-0Cc/s1600/Licensed_Products_of_Nanjing_2014_Youth_Olympic_Games.jpg" style="-webkit-box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0980392) 1px 1px 5px; border: 1px solid rgb(255, 255, 255); box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0980392) 1px 1px 5px; padding: 8px; position: relative;" width="640" /></span></a></div>
<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Nigerian athletes and officials to the on-going 2014 Youth Olympics in Nanjing, China have been directed to leave and come home after the country pulled out of the competition on Wednesday following discrimination against its athletes.<br /><br />Acording to reports, Sierra Leone were the first country to reveal that they had pulled out following pressure from the Chinese authorities. A few hours later they were joined by Nigeria, who withdrew their team in protest at how they had been treated in China. Gbenga Elegbeleye, director general of the National Sports Commission, said:</span><blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">"Nigerian athletes were quarantined, isolated and barred from training alongside athletes from other countries since they arrived the competition venue over news of Ebola virus in Nigeria. Following this discrimination, we have resolved to pull out from the Games."</span></blockquote>
<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">In a statement signed Wednesday by the Director General of the National Sports Commission, Hon Gbenga Elegbeleye Nigeria protested to the organisers that the treatment to the Nigerian athletes were inhuman.<br /><br />The decision to withdraw Team Nigeria from the Games was taken after a meeting with Sports Minister, Dr Tammy Danagogo, Nigeria Olympic Committee, NOC, President, Engr Sani M. Ndanusa and the Director General of the National sports Commission, Hon Gbenga Elegbeleye.<br /><br />The Youth Olympics is scheduled to hold from August 16 to August 18, and team Nigeria were to participate in three sports – Athletics, Wrestling and Beach Vollleyball, with twelve athletes.</span></div>
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Team Nigeria Pulls Out of Nanjing 2014 in China over discrimination of Ebola

Team Nigeria Pulls Out of Nanjing 2014 in China over discrimination of Ebola Nigerian athletes and officials to the on-going 201...

Ebola in Lagos: The fears, the jokes

Team Nigeria Pulls Out of Nanjing 2014 in China over discrimination of Ebola

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