He lit up his cigar and held it in-between his two jerky fingers, the crazily dirty that one could swear that he hadn’t gotten a shower in ages. He adjusted his torn tie and smiled at the airport health check personnel. He groaned to the scorching Lagos sun and to the buzzing smelly odour coming from the trash outside the airport gate.
He whispered to himself, This is gonna be one hell of a ride.
That’s Mr. Corona, who just made his way to Nigeria to have a dinner with some of Nigeria’s leading stakeholders.
“Hello Mr. Corona, it’s nice to finally meet you. We no know say you go dey show sooner. That’s why we were not alerted at the airport. You know our testing kits are not yet in place,” Mr. Nigeria said, extending his hand full of diamond rings for a handshake.
But Mr. Corona refused and replied, “We don’t do handshakes, we dab.” After a while, Mr. Corona asked with a mocking smile, “So Mr. Nigeria, what do you have in place for me?”
“Mr. Corona, if you got us infected we would be flying out to UK, USA, Germany and other developed countries for medication, so don’t mind our health system, you can feast upon whom you want.”
With one leg on top of the other, Mr. Corona continued his questioning, “What do you mean? Nowhere is safe now! So I’m afraid you don’t have a place to go now.”
“But Mr. Corona, you would not feast upon us, right?” asked Nigeria fearfully.
In a dreadful voice, he replied, “I don’t discriminate. I am an NGO, everyone is mine to cuddle with.”
He picked up his luggage and disappeared into the shadow of Lagos.
Nigeria, sweating in panic, begins to call relevant authorities.
NCDC: Hello, this is NCDC on the line. Nigeria, what’s up?
Nigeria: It’s time to open all the centres you have in each state.
NCDC: But sir, there are about 3 to 5 centres in the country, and zero in the northern part!
Nigeria: How I wish I had built this places. Angrily ends the call.
Hospitals: Hello, this is the nation’s hospitals on the phone.
Nigeria: Get your beds, doctors, nurses, and other health personnel ready now and don’t forget to have ventilators, oxygen gas cylinder on standby.
Hospitals: I’m afraid that this is not like Ebola where one of our own with hazard allowance of only 5,000 naira sacrificed her life to save our asses. Besides we don’t have beds, nor enough man power; as for the ventilators, I’m hearing this for the first time.
Nigeria: Ends the call.
Nigerians: Hello, this is the office of the common low class citizen of Nigeria.
Nigeria: Can you shut down your works and lock down your houses?
Nigeria: We dey survive below 350 naira per day, wetin we go chop? Don’t even say you would feed us because you won’t.
Nigeria: Ends the call.
A reflection of himself (Nigeria) appeared in front of him with white kaftan and said, “I always used to tell you that you should update your health care facilities, but you enjoyed flying out, leaving Tunde, Chukwuemeka and Ibrahim to suffer, now what?
“You budgeted 37 billion naira just for painting and decoration of the National House of Assembly and now people are complaining of insufficient ventilators. Would they sniff the paint and get better?
“Your whole salary and allowance is more than the whole country’s health system annual budget, now what’s up?
“ Face the reality.
“Meanwhile Mr. Corona is in town, operating his gadgets freely, when he encountered this set of people that made him grab a seat and keep his butt down to listen to different opinions of Nigerians regarding him.”
Marlians (with weed dangling on their lips): Mafo, this Corona no dey infect Marlians. Even the smoke wey we dey inhale go roast it down.
Mr. Corona (chuckles): Mad oh!
Aboki (taking tea at Suya Junction): Like filay like filay, this matter is serious oo. This birus 19 gaskiya nei.
Mr. Corona: You finally get sense.
Intellectuals (shivering): I thought this Corona is conspiracy theory, but I was wrong.
Pastors: Take this anointed oil with detol mixed with methanol; they want to end God’s religion.
Imams: They want to kill us all, this is nothing but end of time
Babalawo: Drink goat’s urine mixed with tabacoo extract and have this amulet with you all the time.
Meanwhile out there in some GRAs, returnees from abroad with their children are having this conversation:
Kids (with American accent): Daddy, we wanna grab a bite of burger with cheese.
Father: My dear, continue managing with Mama Iya’s akara for a while.
Days later, Mr. Corona said to himself, I pity those Nigerians citizens that don’t even know I exist or denied existence due to their corrupt leaders. But I love this people, even though the way their leaders have robbed them off their future, they still have hope that I would be kicked out of their country. So I will let it slide soon and leave. They already have enough problems on their plate.
