Covid-19

Open Letter to Fela Kuti on Covid-19, current affairs

Published

5 years ago

March 28, 2020

Olu Emmanuel

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Dear Fela Kuti,

We are still gullible and a lot of us still have the slave mindset.

At a time like this I remember you and what you stood for. What you preached.

All you said are quite still relevantly true.

Our people will beg for their rights. And they will suffer and smile.

I don’t know where you are now. I rather not bother writing about my guess. But so you know, your music is played everywhere in the globe.

Once in a while, Burna Boy steals your sound or lines. Most of the time, others do your dance steps. They say you are a prophet.

Many agree with many of your messages. Although most of us do nothing with it. We still make same mistakes.

What’s even so disturbing is the current mindset of the people. While an American understands his slash her rights and demands for it. Here, we still beg to be pardoned after our rights are abused.

Fela, there’s a disease in town.

Actually it’s global.

They call it Covid-19.

I know you will be disappointed at us. But hey, Buhari is President. I don’t know how you will process that.

But I am sure you would have done more than Imam Of Peace. Yeah, that dude recently went on Twitter to spit a lot against our dearly beloved Buhari.

Yes, Twitter.

Well. It’s a social micro blogging platform that wasn’t there in your time. Maybe I should open an account for you and attempt to tweet your mind from time to time.

Things are quite bad at the moment.

That Covid-19 virus broke out in China. Spread across the continents. In January, 2020, everyone knew the situation was terrible in China. Between that January and February many great nation fell to it. Italy, UK and even the U.S.A.

No.

It didn’t hit Nigeria then. All we had to do was the needful.

A simple needful.

Ensure that flights coming from those areas submit the travellers or visitors to a quarantine center. Where they will observe 14 days isolation before they enter the society.

But no.

At a time where Italy was leading in figures of death and infected cases. We still allow an Italian enter the country.

We didn’t do anything until inside March.

You know your people na?

We can’t stop flights coming from these countries. Our leaders have their kids in the best schools of these terribly affected countries.

So the ‘Ogas at the top’ couldn’t restrict or be strategic with the management of our airports and borders.

Not until they all came in with the virus before the ‘ports were closed.

And even then we pretended like nothing is happening.

Until the spread started happening.

We just recently started some levels of lockdowns. And those in charge of the situation say about 39k persons could end up being infected.

The number of cases of those that have tested positive are now over 70.

Lagos and some other states are practicing social distancing and technical lockdowns.

Atiku (yes o, baba, same Atiku) has called for parliatives for the citizens. Especially those people who can’t afford daily living unless they earn daily.

Lagos State is planning to share foodstuffs. They will start soon. We have condemned that move, but some people rather we appreciate it.

You know your people na.

They are happy about these crumbs the Government splash. And they position like beggers.

So they will attempt to share food stuff to Lagosians. When they can afford to pay minimum of N5k to all Lagosians through their Bank Account (BVN).

Anyway, let them do what they want.

Some of us are tired of talking. Your people don’t listen. I was with your son, Femi Kuti. He also seemed tired of talking. He said all the talking you did should have been able to change things for good. But unfortunately they still voted Buhari (and Obasanjo too also became a civilian President).

Baba. I need to drop my pen now. Been up all day and it’s 3:15 in the morning now. They say sleep helps to boost the immune system.

Baba I will send you some more letters. I just felt like sharing these stuffs with you.

Your Truth spotter,

Ediale

#ForTheCulture

PS: By the way, we still don’t have stable electricity supply. It is still as epileptic as your left it. So there’s a huge gap between what lockdown and social distancing mean in Europe (also some Africa Countries) and in Nigeria. It’s easy to stay indoors abroad when there’s no power shortages. Some Nigerians don’t even have good water. They must go to the stream to get water. But what do I know? Let’s collect Lagos State’s cups of rice and beans and be appreciative.