Ebola: National Assembly wants everybody screened at the border, and the border has questions

Good news, my people. The National Assembly has finally woken up and discovered that Ebola can enter Nigeria through airports, seaports and land borders. Take a moment. Some of these men have just realised that borders exist, and they have a resolution.

They want mandatory screening everywhere. Everywhere? Sir, which “everywhere”? The airport, fine. We can screen the airport. There is a thermometer gun, a form, and one officer who has been looking at the same queue since 2019. But the land borders? Do you know how many ways there are to enter this country without meeting a single human being in uniform? There is a path behind a mango tree that has more traffic than Third Mainland Bridge on a Friday.

Picture it. A man arrives at the border on a motorcycle. He also has a goat, a generator, and a cousin who “knows somebody.” The officer lifts the thermometer gun, scans his forehead, and says, “36.5.” Then he lowers the gun and asks the real question: “And what did you bring for the screening?” That is the actual screening we have been running for decades. Ebola will be turned away at the first checkpoint. It cannot pay.

Now to the funding. I am told the House of Representatives itself raised a funding alarm about the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control, with delayed releases, unpaid contractors, and laboratory reagents running low. So the same people asking for screening are the ones worried that the screeners have no money. It’s like a landlord shouting at the tenant for not painting the house, while the landlord holds the paint and the receipt.

Let’s give them credit where it’s due. A resolution is a beautiful thing. It begins with “Concerned that...”, moves on to “Aware that...”, and ends with “Resolves to urge.” They always urge. Nobody has ever asked a National Assembly to do. We only ask them to urge, and they urge so well, with such depth, that you want to give them a certificate.

Meanwhile, the thermal scanner at the airport is working today, but only because someone from a private organisation came to fix it. This is important. If it breaks, we return to the traditional method, where a friendly officer looks at you and says, “You look okay. Pass.”

Right, enough joking. Remember the real work. In 2014, Nigeria stopped the spread because doctors, nurses, and contact tracers did a hard job quickly, and one doctor refused to let a patient walk out of the hospital. That is the standard. Resolutions are fine, but pay the people who do the screening, restock the labs, and keep the scanners fed.