THE HIDDEN MESSAGE OF COVID 19 FOR YOU

                     THE HIDDEN MESSAGE OF COVID -19 FOR YOU 

I read the news in recent times and what I see as headline is Covid 19! Covid 19! Covid 19! If it is not about new cases, it is about the number that just died, or how the relief funds have been spent, are being spent or should have been spent. These and many more flood the news and social media today. Every aspect of our existent today seems to be determined by Covid 19: worship, entertainment, movement, education, employment, etc. I never imagined that everyone’s constitutional rights could suddenly be limited by one strange virus that is alien to us in this part of the world.

Just some days back a new array of Youth Corpers passed out into the Labour Market. Then I started thinking: Where will these fellows go? Those before them are all ‘locked in’ in this lockdown that seems not to want to end. At least while they where serving, their monthly palliative was guaranteed. Many of them still managed to take care of their aged parents or siblings from that ‘allowee’ with stipends from hustles here and there. Believe me Nigerians, our Corpers can hustle sha. They can do PP! Very few people may know this terminology. I will let you in on the secret. Its ‘Private Pupil’ or ‘Personal Pupil’ or ‘Private Practice’, meaning Home Lesson. I knew one who went to two different homes every day for this ‘home delivery’ after she was through with her place of primary assignment where she also worked as a teacher. I didn’t blame her, I encouraged her. When you listen to these young Nigerians unburden their hearts to you, you will understand why some of them do what they do to make ends that are very far apart, manage to meet.

For some months now, many of these channels of survival have stopped. Service is over, movement is inhibited as everyone is apprehensive of the ‘mighty’ Covid 19 which has proven itself as a worthy adversary to scientists and herbalists around the world. Believe it or not, many Nigerians, not just the youth fall into the sphere of this hardworking lady Corper. Not everyone is ‘lazy’, not everyone is a ‘Four One Niner’.

As if that is not enough, many companies are folding up, not without its accompanying consequences. Many workers have been laid off as the companies can no longer pay their salaries. Since I am into education, the associating problems of Corona Virus’ advent are so devastating for schools (particularly the privately owned) and their proprietors. For a great number of them, their only source of revenue is the school fees. Some of them are on loans which they service monthly. Some are on rented properties. The reality here is that many of the workers in the private sector have not been paid for a couple of months now and there is no hope that they will be paid anytime soon. We are talking about someone’s husband, someone’s wife, someone’s father, someone’s mother. Some have survived by living off the little they had been putting aside for the rainy day. The sad thing is that this particular rainy day has stubbornly refused to come to an end. So what happens next?...to be continued

Maryprecious Dike