Good morning,
A nurse in Bafwasende, eastern DR Congo, went out on Friday to answer an Ebola alert. He was trying to help his neighbours understand the disease. Youths armed with machetes and batons set upon him and a colleague. He died at the scene. His colleague is recovering under police guard. DR Congo’s Bundibugyo outbreak has now recorded more than 9,760 cases and some 4,727 deaths since it was declared in May, and misinformation has convinced entire communities that the disease is imaginary. The UN coordinator called the killing a devastating blow to trust. May his soul rest in peace, and may the people who killed him one day understand that he died trying to save them.
Here at home, the same outbreak is quietly becoming a political variable. Nigeria confirmed its first Bundibugyo case in the FCT on 20 October, a 42-year-old woman who arrived from Uganda via Addis Ababa and visited two private hospitals before anyone notified the NCDC. 53 primary contacts are being monitored, and a suspected case in Rivers has tested negative. Health Minister Muhammad Pate has projected 7 December as a possible date for declaring the outbreak over, based on the 42-day countdown. NCDC Director-General Jide Idris, on television, said the 2027 election could be postponed if the outbreak spreads widely, before adding that there is no need now. That is a remarkable thing to say aloud with the presidential election on 16 January. Disease outbreaks shape politics. In 2014 it produced a genuine national effort and a martyred doctor. This time it has produced a whisper about postponement, which the opposition has already seized on. Containment is not just a health matter. It is now a democratic one.
The rest of the week showed institutions doing their work and dodging it in equal measure. INEC has finally uploaded the national voters’ register after Yiaga Africa pointed out that the law demands it and warned of prosecution, a reminder that compliance arrives fastest when someone makes threats. NAFDAC has raised the alarm over drug expiry dates that conflict with its own records, and JIBWIS has disowned a viral video of children in its First Aid Group uniforms chanting for AK-47s to attack Christians in Enugu and Jos, demanding a probe. Amnesty called it a vicious display of indoctrination. No arrests have been announced.
On television, Reuben Abati and Rufai Oseni fought over the President’s poverty record, with Abati citing $3.5 billion in NG-CARES, SOLID and Renewed Hope programmes and Oseni calling the Kaduna rally speech the worst stump he had ever heard. Both were right. The programmes exist. Poverty sits at 63 per cent. Meanwhile, the EFCC has arrested 14 Chinese nationals and one Nigerian at four illegal lithium processing plants in Ogere, Ogun State. Nasir El-Rufai has been ordered to open his defence in his alleged wiretapping trial, having failed to convince the court there is no case against him. And in Barkin Ladi, a community that has buried its people repeatedly has now told the soldiers to leave, accusing them of shielding the armed men who keep coming back.
A nurse killed for trying to help. A virus that might delay an election. A register uploaded only under threat. Children chanting for rifles. These are not separate stories. They are the same story: a country where trust is the scarcest resource of all, and where the institutions that depend on it keep finding new ways to lose it.
Warmly,
Lolade