Does Obaseki think Covid-19 does not go to market?

From Prof. Idemudia Oviosun (PhD) 

What Governor Godwin Obaseki of Edo State was thinking when he issued a gazette banning congregations of people numbering more than 20 in Edo State remains a mystery to people of perception, who had presumed that the governor was a man in possession of insight. According to the gazette, no gathering of any people in the state should number more than 20 people and no political parties were to organise any rallies anywhere except the Samuel Ogbemudia Stadium in Benin, and only by his express approval.

Those people of perception, who know that the governor is an irredeemable merchant of incompetence, are aware that his stuttering silvery tongue spoke little or no truth when he cited a fancy epidemiological report that the inconvenient coronavirus would spike in the state around June 28. Chris Nehikare, a man of many contradictions and the publicity secretary of Edo State’s chapter of the PDP has since come forward to express his pleasure and that of the PDP that they have applied for and been granted permission to hold their direct primaries at the Stadium in line with the facetious gazette.

A quick survey of the markets in Edo state can confidently report that there is no adherence to the Governor’s gazette. At every market in the state – from New Benin Market in Oredo, through Iruekpen Market in Esan West, to Bode Market in Agenebode – there is documentary evidence to show that the gazette was targeted at anything but the spread of Covid-19.

People at the markets converge to buy and sell, and the number at least 1000 in each market. These people may know of the existence of facemasks, but they clearly do not use them. They do not carry passes signed by the governor allowing them converge at the markets. They do not respect or obey social distancing at the markets with many of them clustering barely inches apart from one another. There are no security outfits or task forces stopping these commercial gatherings of thousands of people across the state.

This calls into question the wisdom of the gazette. Did Obaseki’s epidemiological report sing to him that the coronavirus is so intelligent and specific that it does not go to markets but pops up infectiously at only political rallies? Did the report tell him that the coronavirus will not pop up at rallies that have been expressly authorised by his person? Does he know that these same markets where the people move about without face masks and in flagrant disregard of social distancing is where his meals come from?

The governor is treading an unwise path. Those around him, who know history, should advise him that the gig is up. He should put his office in order and bid farewell to a stint in office that he never deserved. His name is already soiled, but it can be soiled even more if he persists in eschewing wisdom. His increasingly bleak fate is in his hands.