MzAgams

Diezani Allison Madueke released the most pathetic pictures with an interview yesterday. I read the interview but its the images that haunt. How did you feel about them? Did it leave a sour taste in your mouth? How do these pictures of a once vibrant woman looking old and wasted make you feel? Shocking, isn’t it? Did you find it traumatic too?

Dora Akunyili coming out despite her battle with cancer to appear at the National Conference felt brave and right. This feels self serving and wrong. This feels repulsive, an ill advised media display calculated to elicit sympathy for a woman who displayed little sympathy for any body. She visited Nigeria flood victims in 2012 wearing diamonds and LV.  Stories from her former employees and associates reveal a callous insensitive woman.

Her story has sparked a hot debate on empathy vs. retribution. Some folks are saying its just karma and she should just die already. The backlash is not pretty. Will they publish Part 2 of that interview? And a lot of compassionate do-gooders suddenly find themselves forced to defend the woman. {Sorta like some folks are forced to defend Biafra even though they disagree with Kanu maybe?)

You must ask yourself honestly- Diezani has cancer. So what? Do you know how many women die of breast cancer every day in Nigeria because Diezani and others like her selfishly accumulate wealth for self and family instead of developing the nation like they’re are supposed to?

Recent data by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) shows that one woman is diagnosed of breast cancer every 20 minutes in Nigeria and about 40 Nigerian women die of breast cancer daily compared, with 30 women daily in the 2010 report. Sadly, the incidence of breast cancer rose from 38.7 per cent to 42.2 per cent between 2008 and 2012 with about 35 per cent increase in the number of deaths within the same period. Here

Diezani is privileged and lucky to afford expensive treatment in London. And she detected  it early. So why exactly are you supposed to feel sympathy and pray for her? Because you don’t wish such a fate on our enemies? Did you wish this fate on her to begin with? Its not ‘jazz’, its cancer. There is clear cause and effect. Or is it because you are just more compassionate than everyone else? That’s ok but why are you insisting everyone must feel compassion and sympathy with you? Why are you judging those that do not?

Go ahead if you want to start prayer rings, night vigils, fasts and praying for her health and cure. Just don’t pretend to do it because  of some divine love for her as a fellow human being. Ask yourself whether you are praying for her to prove to your invisible God that you are capable of forgiving and therefore deserve His forgiveness too.

There will also be those who will pray for her because they really and honestly do not see anything wrong with what she did while in office. They will pray for her because she is their ‘leader’ (whatever that means), because she is from their ethnic group, because she is a woman who accomplished something, because she is their sister, mother, friend, aunt, matriarch etc etc etc.

Have you been so mind fucked you think its more important to be solemn and sober in the face of grave illness and possible death than to focus on the great prize which is Freedom? Have you been so brainwashed you put religion before good governance in support of an elite class of rulers you call leaders?

You should direct your sympathy to the efforts by Professor Ifeoma Okoye‘s early detection campaign to end breast cancer for all Nigerian women. You should check out what the Breast Cancer Association of Nigeria is doing here. You should do more to make cancer detection and treatment accessible to all Nigeria women and pray for the more than 14,600 Nigerian women that die of breast cancer every year.

What will be will be. Save your sympathy for a worthy cause. And turn your prayers into actions that support good governance, cancer research, early detection and affordable treatment for all Nigerians.

YES, You Can

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