A friend recently called and announced that he was on his way to our apartment. He lives a few streets away, but the phone call was made just a few blocks away from my house. Mind you, this was amid the current total lockdown. For a moment after the call, I was disoriented. My wife and I were at a deep loss as to what to do to discourage this visit. This friend is a very educated and well-exposed chap. I thought he ought to know better. How did he fail to understand that the lockdown and maintaining social distance at this time was not a policy to be trivialized?…

 Just the other day, I was on a phone conversation with one teenager who is in grade 12 about the impact of the Covid-19 lockdown. Surprisingly, she told me that these have been one of her best moments in her entire life. I had to probe further because that was not the response I had expected from an outgoing and fun loving young lady. She went ahead to explain to me why she considered this lockdown a blessing. One of the things she said that caught my attention was that she had been able to cut off many people who she did not need in her life. This was a…

The  23rd of  March 2020 marked the start of the scary lockdown of the world’s nations due to the current Corona Virus disease 2019 (Covid-19). The unpredictable lockdown had shaken our families and the global economy. According to the government regulations many people started working from home, millions have lost their jobs while others are thriving in various online businesses. The pandemic has temporarily trapped people within their homes, and many are fed up with this new lifestyle. Apparently, nothing so huge has shook the world for the past 70 years. The start of the pandemic had people stockpiling their pantries with the necessities, such as toilet roll. As a…

I have never considered myself an anxious person.  I am generally calm in the face of problems – this is not to say I don’t have the usual human reaction to events.  Somehow, I generally find the strength to carry on courageously. Some of the situations I have been unfortunate enough to witness include a religious crisis in Kano state.  Being a Christian in a Muslim setting, I lived in lockdown mode in student accommodation and still thanking God! The crisis did not spill into campus (subsequent ones did).  So, the situation was that we could not go out and food was not really there to be bought etc.  I think my parents sent a car to…

I was rude. It’s not my usual character, but today was anything but a usual day. A week ago, it was almost comical, but I wasn’t laughing today. I was still praying for people in China when the news over here started showing empty aisles in the shops.  I remember walking past an empty pasta aisle in Tesco and thinking “… did someone miss their shift or did a van breakdown somewhere…?”  I joked about it later with a friend as the reality of what was happening had not begun to sink in at all.  I went about my business as normal, singing about freedom from fear in my head…

10 am, Monday, July 28th, 2003 A date I will never forget, one I worked almost eight years to get to After all the hurdles and humbling of the medical school, I eventually stood up to take the Hippocrates’ oath proudly in front of friends, family, and loved ones. I was happy. I felt elated. Finally, I was going to live the dream. It did not matter anymore how many resit examinations I may have written. The prestigious two letter prefix “DR” had been added to my name and armed with it, I had plans to go forth and save the world. Through the years, every day brought its own…

Conventional wisdom dictates that one runs from the source of danger, not toward it. I was out of Lagos when COVID-19 made landfall there, ordinarily, I would have stayed away, but my placenta is buried in Lagos, and you know how possessive placentas can be…; like I remember where exactly it was buried, and as if it would still be there after all these years! Actually apart from my younger sister, younger brother, his wife and two sons, who live in the UK; everyone else from my immediate family is currently in Lagos viz my wife, son, daughter, my parents, and three sisters. If I include cousins, loved ones, friends,…

From its humble beginnings as an outbreak in Wuhan, China, the Coronavirus has evolved from an epidemic to a global pandemic. Every sector of our society has been affected and the consequences of the spread have affected both the living and the dead. As part of the precautionary measures to curtail the spread of the virus, almost every nation is in the form of a  lockdown More than ever before, the huge responsibility lies on the media as a means of propagating correct information. This would serve to combat the spread of the virus as well as to reduce the anxiety and mental challenges misinformation can bring with the ultimate…