Former Archbishop Emeritus of Lagos, Catholic Church, Anthony Okogie says Coronavirus outbreak in Nigeria is a blessing in disguise.
According to Okogie, the pandemic has exposed Nigeria as a country where the quality of leadership is of low grade.
He said, “But COVID-19 is also revelatory, a blessing in disguise, because it has exposed Nigeria as a country where the quality of leadership is of low grade. What we have known but has been denied for so long is now shown to us as an incontrovertible fact: that the quality of leadership in our country must improve.
“In the midst of poor-quality leadership, however, Nigerians must speak in laudatory terms about Gov. Babajide Sanwo-Olu of Lagos, his Commissioner for Health, Professor Akin Abayomi, and his entire team for rising to the occasion. For right or wrong reasons, Lagosians have been critical of his government since its inauguration on May 29, 2019.
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“Thanks to our country’s constitution dubbed federal, government in Nigeria is embarrassingly big, sinfully expensive, prone to corruption, and scandalously inefficient. Nigeria cannot adequately invest in the sectors of health and education because, among other reasons, the constitution of Nigeria has established offices that will require an endless flow of petrol-dollars to maintain.
“By the time low-grade leadership combines with big government and the seemingly irresistible tendency to steal and or waste Nigeria’s money, you find a country whose hospitals are reduced to mere consultation rooms. It is therefore insufficient for our legislators to forfeit their salaries for two months, as they have offered. It is also unsatisfactory for Senators to donate half of their salaries to tackle COVID-19.
“COVID-19 has revealed to us that if we do not do something positive about our hospitals in Nigeria, if we do not invest our money in medical research, we shall one day find ourselves in a situation where we cannot even board a flight out of Nigeria to go on medical tourism. Let us make hay while the sun shines,” he added.
“But if we continue to run the affairs of our country with a constitution that impoverishes and disables the citizens by establishing offices that do not serve the people, then we would not have learnt good lessons from this pandemic.
According to him, COVID-19 had also revealed to Nigerians that there were false prophets living among them, saying that in a country where once “you grab a Bible and a microphone you become a pastor or prophet or apostle, where you can become founder of a church without any serious theological formation, we have seen how some of our religious leaders have resorted to dishing out false prophecies.