Jean Paul Mira and Camille Locht, two French doctors, have sparked outrage after they were caught on television discussing “Africa as best destination to conduct test for COVID-19 vaccine”. 

In a viral video clip below shared on social media on Thursday, the two medical experts cited the use of prostitutes in Africa to carry out test vaccine for the Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) as instance.

Mira, head of resuscitation department at Cochin Hospital, also pointed out that the continent should be considered because of its perceived toughness to disease outbreaks.

“If I can be provocative, shouldn’t we do this study in Africa, where there are no masks, no treatment, no resuscitation, a bit like it has been done in some studies in AIDS, where among prostitutes, we try things, because they are exposed, and they don’t protect themselves, what do you think?,” he asked.

Corroborating with him, Locht, a research director at Inserm, said similar approach could be adopted as ongoing search for COVID-19 vaccine intensifies across the globe.

“So you are right […] we’re thinking in parallel to a study in Africa precisely to make this same type of approach w/ BCG [vaccine] placebo, I think there is a call for tenders that was released or that will be released & I think we will indeed seriously think about that too,” he said.

Apparently cheesed off by their discussion, Rim-Sarah Alouane, a Ph.D student and French researcher, took to Twitter to describe the video as “horrific.”

It's 2020 in France &we still see people from Africa as subjects for experimentation.This is what normalized racism looks like.AFAIK,nobody jumped in to counter the arguments, both doctors agreed. Same, the way sex-workers are considered: like objects that can be used for tests.

— Rim-Sarah Alouane (@RimSarah) April 2, 2020

The human rights researcher also said it is unfortunate that “France still thinks Africa should be seen as subjects for experimentation in 2020”.

“It’s 2020 in France &we still see people from Africa as subjects for experimentation. This is what normalized racism looks like,” she added.

“AFAIK, nobody jumped in to counter the arguments, both doctors agreed. Same, the way sex-workers are considered: like objects that can be used for tests.”

As of the time of filing this report, Alouane’s post has been retweeted nearly 10,000 times with the video garnering nearly 2.2 million views.

Samuel Eto, Cameroonian football legend, also expressed his anger on the microblogging platform.

Here is what some Nigerians had to say:

@icuprecision

Jean-Paul Mira is The president of French Intensive Care Society, intensivist in Paris.

This man has publicly suggested that COVID-19 Test vaccinations should be conducted in Africa, just as the French did 60 years ago during the colonial times. #coronavirus pic.twitter.com/TV3SQWozjV

— S.DeGwet (@SDeGwet) April 2, 2020

Africa has to become vigilant in the aftermath of Coronavirus possibly during as well.

We MUST NOT allow people test vaccines or drugs on our people because they believe this is the dark continent and everything goes.

— ilsa aida (@IlsaAida) April 2, 2020

For what good reason do they want to test the Coronavirus Vaccine in Africa when it's not even African continent that is highly infected by this Virus? ? If it's a matter of being black, there are black people in Europe & America too... #leaveblackpeoplealone

— Leevi Immanuel® ?? (@leevi_immanuel) April 2, 2020

Corona virus has killed more people in Europe, China and America but they feel Africa is the best place to test vaccines when ready.

The planners of The New World Order surely know Africans and their leaders are gullible.#Coronavirus #COVID19Pandemic #Covid19 pic.twitter.com/rNZqy3IFN0

— Arafrika Sankara (@arafrika) April 2, 2020

African governments must pay attention to incoming threats from the West.

In times of scarcity, attacks on African bodies & our resources are justified.

These medical research French doctors are on television suggesting that Africa be where they test the coronavirus vaccine. https://t.co/kw1F8kClJX

— Doreen ?✨ (@DoreenGLM) April 2, 2020

I did say that this is why they've been waiting for Coronavirus to reach Africa & some purposefully travelled here. They want to test their treatments on us first, as usual. Italy has a 12% Covid19 death rate but no talk of starting there. Black bodies are disposable. https://t.co/NADpMSTBc1

— WASH your HANDS (@_afro_politan) April 2, 2020

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 TheCable

The federal government says a medical team from China will arrive the country in a few days.

Osagie Enahire, minister of health, broke the news at the presidential task force on COVID-19 briefing in Abuja on Friday.

He also said a group of Chinese companies working in Nigeria have donated medical supplies to support the country’s fight against COVID-19.

He said the items include commodities such as personal protective equipment and ventilators.

“I have been notified of medical supplies from China, courtesy of a group of Chinese companies working here in Nigeria. A special cargo aircraft shall leave Nigeria in a few days to collect the items which include commodities, personal protective equipment and ventilators,” he said.

“An 18-man team of Chinese medical experts including doctors, nurses and other medical advisers shall come along with the flight to assist us. I must at this juncture commend our frontline workers who are doing a great job in case identification and management.

“As we prepare to contain COVID-19, we must not lose sight of other health challenges in our country. Routine health service must continue in our hospitals. Only a wing of tertiary health centres should be used for infected patients.”

The minister said nearly 3,000 samples have been tested for the disease, adding that Nigeria will witness an increase in confirmed coronavirus cases despite the lockdown.

Nigeria has recorded 190 confirmed cases out of which Lagos state, which is the epicentre of the disease, has 98 cases.

The federal capital territory (FCT) has 38; Osun, 20, and Oyo, eight cases. Akwa Ibom state has five cases; Ogun and Edo states have four each; Kaduna, four; Bauchi, three.

Enugu and Ekiti states have two cases each while Rivers and Benue states have recorded one each.

In Africa, over 7,000 cases have been recorded with 284 deaths spread across 50 countries.

Globally, the confirmed cases hit one million on Thursday, with at least 51, 300 people dead from complications of the disease.

The infection has spread to 204 countries and territories since the first case was recorded in Wuhan, China, late December.

On March 24, Jack Ma, co-founder of Alibaba, Chinese e-commerce company, donated medical kits for Nigeria to fight coronavirus pandemic.

A Nigerian doctor identified as Apostle Caleb Anya, has died of Coronavirus in the United States. 

The deceased who has been working hard to give treatment to those infected with the virus, died 5 days after he was admitted in a New York hospital for contracting for the virus. 

Apostle Caleb who is from Ohafia in Abia state, will be cremated in line with the directive for for management of Coronavirus patients. He has been described as a "hero" by his close relatives. 

Curvy actress, Princess Shyngle has taken to her YouTube to cry out about her current predicament.

She revealed that she’s pregnant, her fiance is in jail and she’s struggling alone without help from her friends or family.

The curvy actress said life has been hard for her ever since her Senegalese fiancé, Frederic Badji, was jailed for fraud in New York.

She called out those saying she’s sharing her story for clout. She said that if she wanted clout, all she’ll have to do is go naked or twerk and she’ll get people’s attention. She added that she decided to share her story to strengthen anyone going through the same ordeal.

Crying in the video, she said: “My man is in jail, I’m going through all these. I’ve been by myself for months, I’m struggling, I’m paying my bills, I’m going through it.

She added: “It took a lot of courage because I’m the only one in this. Nobody is in support of me, not my family, not my friends, nobody, nobody is in f***ing support of me.”

Watch the video below.

 

 

 

View this post on Instagram

I came out with my story because I know there is someone out there going through the same thing I’m going through right now , but he/she is alone and feels worthless, feels like God doesn’t love him/her enough, well I’m here telling you that God loves us all equally and we’re all going through something in our lives, most of us would never share it because we want to show the world that we have this picture perfect life but I’m telling you now no one, no human has a perfect life. If you’re thinking suicide and in so much pain just use my story as a motivation. Feel free to dm me to talk. I love you who ever you are and wherever you are and I want you to know that God loves you more , have faith it’s surely going to pass ❤️❤️❤️ Episode 3 of Discovering Princess Shyngle in on YouTube now, click the link on my bio and end, don’t forget to comment ??????❤️. Please stay home and stay safe. #stayhome #staysafe #stayhealthy #washyourhands #socialdistancing #wegonnagetthroughthis #discoveringprincessshyngle Happy New Month ❤️

A post shared by Princess Shyngle?? (@princesshyngle) on Apr 1, 2020 at 1:42am PDT

An Indian couple have done the unthinkable by naming their newborn twins as Corona and Covid, names connected with the pandemic raging in the world.

For the couple based in Raipur, in the state of Chhattisgarh, the two words may evoke fear and devastation to the world.

But for them, they symbolise triumph over hardship.

The names remind them about all the hardships they overcame amid the lockdown, to have a successful delivery of the babies in the night of March 26-27 at a government hospital.

“I was blessed with the twins, a boy and a girl, in the early hours on March 27. We have named them Covid (boy) and Corona (girl) for now,” Preeti Verma, the 27-old mother of the newborns, said in a report by The Hindu.

“The delivery happened after facing several difficulties and therefore, me and my husband wanted to make the day memorable.

“Indeed the virus is dangerous and life-threatening but its outbreak made people focus on sanitation, hygiene and inculcate other good habits. Thus, we thought about these names,” she said, giving reasons for their unusual decision.

“When the hospital staff also started calling the babies as Corona and Covid, we finally decided to name them after the pandemic,” she said.

The couple, originally from Uttar Pradesh, reside in a rented house in the Purani Basti area of the state capital.

However, they said they may rename their kids in the future.

Residents of Omole Estate, Phase II, Lagos are now in perpetual fear following the death of a patient suspected to have died of Coronavirus.

Report said the patient who presents with Coronavirus symptoms was rushed to the Primary Healthcare Centre in the area, and that there was no ambulance from the NCDC and the Lagos State Ambulance Service (LASAMBUS) to evacuate her to the Infectious Disease Centre, Yaba.

She was said to have been returned to her residence in a tricycle where she eventually died.

According to Starconnect, her death spread panic in the estate after the chairman, Omole Phase II, Mr. Bamidele Lanisa reportedly issued a notice urging residents to stay indoor over the case.

The chairman, in the notice wrote: “Dear Residents, this is to inform you that there is a confirmed case of coronavirus in our neighboring community (Olowoira).

“The patient was taken to the Health Centre and when the NCDC/Lagos ambulance was unavailable to evacuate her, she was returned to her residence in a tricycle and eventually died.

“As you can imagine, many people came in contact with the patient and the risk to transmission in the neighborhood is real.

“We advise residents to please stay in their houses and refrain from unnecessarily going about. Please safe. We advise a total stay at home for now.”

 Thank you.

Bamidele Lanisa
Chairman OMOLE PH 2

Kogi State Governor Yahaya Bello has ordered a detailed investigation into alleged battery and rape of Elizabeth Oyeniyi by the Commissioner for Water Resources, Abdumumuni Danga.

Narrating her ordeal to the Dorothy Njemanze Foundation, Oyeniyi, a Kogi beauty queen, said the commissioner abducted and battered her for advising him to be responsible to his family members.

She explained that when she saw a photo of the commissioner distributing relief materials for COVID-19, she makes a post on social media asking him to help his (commissioner) sister who happened to be her friend, with the reference ‘charity begins at home’.

Oyeniyi alleged, “On March 29, the commissioner was shown my post and he ordered some boys to pick me. They took me and his sister from Okene to Lokoja, a distance of about 70km, and the commissioner personally flogged us.

“He tore my clothes and made a video of my naked body, which he threatened to circulate while he kept me in his Lokoja residence asking me to make another post apologising and countering my first post where I told him to assist his sister.

“He did not release me that day. In the night, he made sexual advances at me. And I allowed him to have sex with me because of fear. He only took me back to Okene the second day because they had an assignment in Okene.”

Demanding justice, the victim said she was living in fear of another attack by the commissioner.

In a statement issued yesterday by the Commissioner of Information and Communication, Kingsley Fanwo, the governor expressed shock over the story.

“Governor Yahaya Bello of Kogi State, who is an avowed advocate of the fundamental rights of Nigerian citizens, especially within the boundaries of our dear state, is shocked by these accusations.”

“The state government reaffirms its unalloyed commitment to the protection of everyone from all forms of oppression, and will not tolerate violence against women or children under any form or guise.

“We give our word that if these allegations are proven, everyone found culpable will be brought to justice,” he stated.

However, all efforts to speak with the commissioner proved abortive, as he neither answered phone calls put across to him nor responded to text messages.

Mohammed Atiku, son of Nigeria’s former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar has spoken from his isolation centre at the Gwagwalada University Teaching Hospital, Abuja, where he is being treated for Coronavirus, saying he is well and good.

Mohammed, in a video posted by his father on his twitter handle, said he was brought to the isolation centre on 20 March, 2020 and that he had spent 12 days already

“I decided to do this video so that I could speak about my experience to be of help to Nigerians.”

Mohammed stated that when he was brought to the centre, he was asymptomatic in his first few days and nervous

“I was asymptomatic in my first few days here and nervous; I had a level of anxiety and a little bit of trauma, especially being the index case here in Abuja. That was really the main challenge,” he said.

Mohammed added: “But day by day, I grew stronger, thanks largely to all the goodwill and prayers and support I got from a vast array of Nigerians many of whom I don’t know. My family and friends too and a whole lot of people. I thank God I am well and good.”

Watch video below:

My son, @Mo_Atiku shares his experience with #COVIDー19. Together, we can learn from his experience and work to defeat this pandemic for our common good. pic.twitter.com/h4lJ7xIPsx

— Atiku Abubakar (@atiku) April 2, 2020

There is a natural mystic blowing through the air

If you listen carefully now, you’ll hear

This could be the first trumpet, might as well be the last

Many more will have to suffer; many more will have to die

Don’t ask me why 

Things are not the way they used to be…

One and all, we have to face reality now…

- Bob Marley

Mystic, mystery and even a mystique the Coronavirus, otherwise called COVID – 19 is, no doubt and it is blowing through the air like the pestilence that it is. If it blossoms in its full plumule – God forbid – it may aspire to become the 11th of the already ten existing worst pandemics in world history. The Antonine plague of 165 AD which killed 5 million people was the first. Like the Coronavirus, it also sneaked into nations from abroad; first to Rome through returnee Roman soldiers coming back from Mesopotamia. It was the first experience for the world. Antonine not only wiped out the Roman army but spread to Asia Minor, Egypt, Greece and Italy. From Antonine, down to the most recent pandemic before the Coronavirus called HIV/AIDS, which has till date wiped out 36 million people from the face of the earth, like Bob Marley prophetically sang above, one and all, we have to face this reality. And further realities which the virus is provoking about who and what we are. The first and the most potent of the realities came from the church and mosque in Nigeria. The second is the social reality we face as Nigerians; the third, lessons that Providence is teaching us as we are all sequestered at home.

We accept the apologies of highly revered Bishop David Oyedepo on his unconscionable decision to gather his flock last Sunday, in spite of government’s ordered social distancing. However, by the time the apologies came, the eyes of the world were already opened to the calamity of Nigerian religious leaders. Nigerians had hitherto been blinded for over a century. Even with the reality of the destruction of COVID-19, church leaders especially only saw a viral attack “by the devil” on their milk cow. Mosques too initially spurned the order. Congregation at places of worship must continue to be gathered so as to reify the age-long belief that the mosque and churches are the only places where God hears His people. The wells of tithes and offering were drying up in their very before. Religious leaders’ immediate reaction was dissonance to this order. While some actually spurned the order like Oyedepo, some asked for skeletal attendance of churches while many ordered flocks to meet in cells of 50 each. Their immediate haunch was that if people were successfully turned back from places of worship for some consecutive weeks, it could be the point of their liberation from the Plato Café of a century-plus hibernation in a café of darkness. Returns to headquarters must not dry up, pastors panicked in frenzied frustration. The ultimate goal of this “episcopal wisdom” didn’t take long before the congregants saw it clearly: Worship centers merely wanted to keep alive century-old manipulation of people’s minds for pecuniary needs.

COVID-19 might have thus opened a new vista in religious worshipping orthodoxy in Nigeria. Eyes of worshippers may have opened to the selfishness of Nigerian religious leaders who see them more as wares to pawn than sheep to shepherd. For more than a century now, Nigerian religious faithful had been loyal to worship centers which they were told were the only sure routes to meeting God. Today is these religious faithful’s trying time, shut at home by a raging pestilence, a work-and-chop economy that is at best panting for survival and a government too lost in its own conceit to devise a way out. It should ordinarily be the time to requite their abiding followership, a time to throw the doors of those big tabernacles and big mosques as isolation centers. In the same vein, these religious centers should pawn people’s decades of investments in tithes/offerings to offer palliatives to congregants. These are worshippers whose forebears and they themselves had invested their ten per cent earnings in those centers for over a century now. It should be time now to pay back those selfsame people by rescuing them from the jaws of Coronavirus death.   

But for flashes of pro-activeness, COVID-19 also unraveled the Nigerian government as effortlessly as the woodpecker pierces logs of woods for insects. While President Muhammadu Buhari, as usual, hibernates in his queer and taciturn cubicle, pummeling frustrated Nigerians with his artillery of silence, governors and other officials simulate positive actions by regurgitating orders already made by their colleague states. Sensational governance became the order of the day. In clear terms, COVID-19 caught many of the state governments napping. It also revealed the peremptory governance they had been running over the years. Common isolation centres were non-existent. A Nigeria that had been prone to epidemics over the years could only boast of isolation points you could count on your finger-tips. This trying time also raised the bar for some governors. Lagos’ Babajide Sanwo-Olu, hitherto profiled as laid-back and lackluster, took the shine as the people’s friend in time of distress. His novel approach to the epidemic is commendable as he was everywhere. Oyo gladly stepped into Sanwo-Olu’s erstwhile shoes as people lamented governmental absence at a time this critical. What all these reveal is the unpreparedness for office of some of Nigeria’s leaders, aside the sensationalism and glamour of political office that tickle them.

COVID-19, in some cruel manner, has also become a trope, a clarion call on, especially Nigerian political elite, to make Nigeria livable for all. Or else, we will be victims of this gulag. Trapped inside the dross they constructed as a country over the decades, we are all forced to live our choices. Hospitals have transmuted from consulting centers into mortuaries, medical equipment are as scarce as the excrement of the masquerade and medical thoroughness escaped our windows long ago. Those leaders can’t breakfast in Madrid, lunch in New York and dine in Munich today, no thanks to the global lockdown. How could they have imagined that a day would come that they cannot, at a jump into their private jets, access their world-class hospitals? An alleged friend of the Bauchi State governor who himself allegedly tested positive to the virus was said to have stormed out of the isolation center, saying “I can’t stay here!” We should ask if he ever advised his friend the governor to equip those hospitals and build more? Now, we are all lying on our beds as we laid it; both leaders and the led.

Unfortunately for Nigerian leaders, modernity has put them under very serious scrutiny. At the press of buttons of phones, Nigerians see unequal comparisons of leadership elsewhere. At this critical period, leaders of nations are offering verbal and physical succor. In Nigeria, we are afflicted with proxy leadership which is being glossed over by hired demagogues as subsisting for this trying time. Unfortunately for them and for us all, providence is blowing a strong wind to reveal their rumps. The proxy leadership erected by Buhari himself, in the person of his Chief of Staff, Abba Kyari, blew up in his face at the thick of the COVID-19 plague. Highly suspected to suffer challenges which have reduced his capacity to interface with the people to nil, Buhari literally relinquished governance to this unelected aide of his. In spite of this, Nigeria is still enveloped by a miasma of hopelessness while some favoured minions smile home with Nigeria’s patrimony. By afflicting Kyari with the virus that infects ordinary mortals, Providence told him in unmistakable terms that he is not different from the man on the street. He is capable of affliction, sickness and diseases like all of us. Now, even Aso Rock clinic, with billions voted but quaffed by rapacious political leaders, had no arms to embrace the Almighty Kyari. His is now sequestered in a God-knows-where. The gloat-like responses of Nigerians to this fate of Kyari’s, in the wake of his affliction by COVID-19, should therefore be expected. It is a natural reaction of a pauperized people in the hands of a rudderless and inept government.   

The world should wake up from this COVID-19 to realize that togetherness is the only way out and that, rather than bickering and mutual muzzling, there is need for global collaboration. Past recriminations among powerful leaders of the world, even as pestilences raged, only yielded multiplications of graveyards. Between 541-542, the Plague of Justinian killed 25 million people and half the population of Europe. This outbreak of the bubonic plague which afflicted the Byzantine empire and Mediterranean port cities, like it is happening in Italy today, devastated the city of Constantinople and killed an estimated 5,000 people per day. So also was a pandemic that was mischievously labelled the Black Death which occurred between 1346-1353. It ravaged Europe, Africa and Asia and was reputed to have killed between 75 to 200 million people. Like COVID-19, it also jumped continents through fleas that lived on rats.

The period 1852-1860 did not fare better. The cholera pandemic, said to be the deadliest of cholera pandemics, ravaged a 19th century world. From India where it originated, it flew to Africa, North America, Asia and Europe, killing over a million people. Equally of no lesser devastation to the world was the flu pandemic of 1889-1890, also known as the Asiatic/Russian flu which also claimed a million lives, as well as the Sixth cholera pandemic of 1910-1911 which killed over 800,000 people, as well as the 1918 flu pandemic said to have killed between 20-50 million people. In the Asian flu of 1956-1958, the world lost two million people. Having infected the people of the Chinese province of Guizhou, it flew to Singapore, Hong Kong and to the United States. The ninth pandemic, which was just a little older than the HIV/AIDS, was the 1968 Hong Kong flu pandemic, killed one million people and, from its first strain on July 13, 1968 in Hong Kong, within 17 days, landed in Singapore and Vietnam. Within a space of three months, The Philippines, India, Australia, Europe, and the United States had offered the flu a honourary citizenship.

I went into this long history of global pandemic calamities to situate the fact that rather than the daily flexing of muscles by global leaders, global citizenship requires global comradeship to combat our common vulnerability. Nigerian leaders are good examples of how not to lead. We do not see in them those qualities of leadership that made First Republic leaders earn the immortality they have in our hearts today. No selflessness, thoroughness, foresight or vision but kick-and-follow, empty leadership. Going by realities, especially as prophetically projected by Marley, that “Many more will have to suffer; many more will have to die,” there is the need for world leaders to jointly and periodically meet to proactively invest in epidemiology. More attention should also be paid to the process of emergence of leaderships, especially in Third World countries. Leadership is needed at a time like this to rise up to global challenges. Just use the Lagos State example to extrapolate a Nigerian global template and you would see why the flight of leadership is more corrosive than the spread of the Coronavirus. Nigeria is hemmed in. God forbid an implosion in the COVID-19 pandemic. Where is the leader and the leadership that can rescue Nigeria from the hands of this global scourge?

Imam, Dabiri and the Twitter gangs     

There are currently hot and subsisting engagements on Twitter, provoked by a man simply known as Nigeria Imam of Peace, @ImamOfpeace a few days ago. They are causing a seismic upheaval on this social media outlet. Imam has consistently tackled the Muhammadu Buhari government to its hilt, including calling for its resignation. His #BuhariResign forced Buhari out in flowing robe simulating action. In one of such, he tweeted, “Nigerians, your president is incompetent and extremely clueless; you deserve better.”

Each of those tweets has provoked uproar among his followers, as against the legion of Buhari’s recruits littering this social media platform who attempted to tackle him. When Abike Dabiri-Erewa, Chairperson, Nigerians in Diaspora Commission, attempted to weigh in by congratulating what she termed “Great investigative journalism” in a Buhari hireling’s previous tweet which sought to discredit Imam as a “conman,” one lady, @estherolabisi01 gave Dabiri-Erewa a smudge on her face by tweeting, “This isn’t the newscaster I always saw as my role model. Please come and take the handshake you gave me in QCY 2002.”  The ex-newscaster, @abikedabiri, who has become an unapologetic lapdog of the Buhari government on Twitter, also replied her, saying “This isn’t the proud girl I thought you would grow up to be. No morals. No values. But all will be well.”

On Twitter, it is a contest between Buhari’s paid recruits and swelling ranks of Nigerians who cannot stand how the Daura-born General has become a mere Egyptian mummy in Aso Rock, especially with his silence at critical junctures. He exhibits scant leadership feelings and contributes immensely to the literature of atrophy of good governance in Nigeria.

8 new cases of #COVID19 have been reported in Nigeria; 2 in FCT, 4 in Oyo, 1 in Kaduna and 1 in Osun State.

As at 10:40 pm 28th March there are 97 confirmed cases of #COVID19 reported in Nigeria with 1 death.

As at 10:40 pm 28th March, there are

97 confirmed cases
1 death

For a breakdown of cases by states in real time, please see https://t.co/zQrpNeOfet

Currently;
Lagos- 59
FCT- 16
Ogun- 3
Enugu- 2
Ekiti- 1
Oyo- 7
Edo- 2
Bauchi- 2
Osun-2
Rivers-1
Benue- 1
Kaduna- 1

— NCDC (@NCDCgov) March 28, 2020