AIDS : a Fashionable Disease

Mbeki might still be correct

Some years ago, Mr. Thabo Mbeki stirred a hive hornets when he and a few (Canadian) experts openly expressed an unconventional view on the cause (or causes) of immunity deficiency in human beings. Individuals and groups, almost all, opposed his view. They railed, ranted and raved. On land, in the air, at sea: the chorus was AIDS! AIDS! "AIDS is annihilating the inhabitants of Africa." It was as if other peoples should export and transport parts of their communities to repopulate Africa.

The NGO's and the pharmaceutical companies patched up their punctured ranks. They sensationalized deaths; projected the false view that every death on the continent was from AIDS.But they did not refute Mbeki's views with facts. Rather, they hushed him. The man "soft-pedalled". That was their concern.

Then the chorus began to be hollow. The song became noise. Even unenthusiastic people understood that there are big deals of guile; a big deal of capitalist commercial interest in all this. With their drugs, the NGO's and their sponsors proved it: they were not sincere. Money is the aim, therefore more important than the elimination or reduction of AIDS. Otherwise, why all the litigation against the democratization of anti-HIV drugs, especially in SouthAfrica? Why were nothing done against the behaviours and attitudes that distribute HIV?

Not that there is no AIDS or its syndromes. But that there is much less AIDS than there are consultants and consultancies about it.
When AIDS is decimating Africa, and at same time the populations of traditional nations (of which Africa is almost entirely made up) are exploding, Which is the fact?


In two cities in Nigeria recently, I keenly observed the campaigns against HIV-contraction. I even came close to participating in the campaigns.
Knowing that in this zone, most people expend their freedom doing what they have been informed not to do, I contemplated summarizing the words about AIDS, and applying it ironically in addressing people. I intended to ask them to get it. After that , I would their responses.
*1. AIDS (a syndrome, not a typical disease) is not yet curable.

*2. HIV (the AIDS' germ) is contracted majorly through promiscuous sexual intercourses; or, seldom, unpromiscuous intercourse with who already had it. Akin to promiscuity.
And minorly by other ways such as non-sexual trans-deposition of body fluids (phlegm, mucus, blood, serum et cetera). This may result from unaccountable (indiscriminate) use of injection-needles; violent kissing; ...and in the course of nursing an already infected person.

*3. Treatment is expensive and lasts for the rest of life.

*4. To avoid it, be faithful to your sex-partner

*5. Or have no sex partner at all (practice sex abstinence)

*6. There is no "safe sex"; there can only be "safe non sex".

*7. If you love your child, unborn or born, endeavour to avoid these avoidable things lest the child gets them from you.
Besides, through sexual fidelity, undesired children may never be conceived, let alone being born or aborted. So one would get an optimum of what one wants, and none or a minimum of what one does not want.

I wanted to tell people: now you've heard these and other things; you've seen some frightening sights of the consequences of AID syndrome; go ahead and acquire HIV! Because you get lost to AIDS by your lifestyle. Reasonable people will have to labour less since there will be less people to feed, clothe and house.

I discovered there was no need for that. It would have been against the aim of the core (professional or career )campaigners and the retro' drug dealers.
What's their aim? The entrenchment of HIV in people. AIDS-workers actually want people to get AIDS and develop the syndrome. Hohaa!

Although they talk against discrimination and stigmatization, they promote them. It is a strategy in the successful merchandising of their "retro viral stuff".

*In one youth Empowerment programme in Lagos, the primary requirement for admission is HIV test.
*In one big advert directed at youths and job seekers, the pre-requisite for application for whatever job there is is:you must be HIV-positive.
*One microfinance outfit that advertizes that it gives loans to people also says that it increases the loan and decreases its interest for HIV- positive applicants, even if the ones lack the skill to invest and manage the loan. This is plausibly a cover for some corrupt NGO-ism.
*Recently, two women: one pretty and her hefty colleague were appearing in a television station's broadcasts. They were boasting to their viewers that they were HIV-positive. They talked a lot. Of all they said, none was about how to avoid HIV. Instead, they preached condom and sexual promiscuity; that sexual promiscuity is natural; that animals practice it; that anti-retroviral drugs are available. In fact, they succeeded in glamorizing HIV and its syndromes. unfortunately, they did not tell how affordable those "available drugs" are.

Nearly 80 dollars per dose, those "available drugs" are simply out of the reach of 'ordinary' people. It may sound far-fetched. The fact is that 80 dollars is more than the equivalent of the monthly income of most South-of-Sahara Africans.

*I heard a woman advising some younger women not to "play it recklessly" because they may not be as lucky as she herself had been. HIV-positivity secured her a job with an NGO. Some other people had been denied that "job" for testing HIV-negative. Among her audience were university graduates (she herself was one) already getting fatigued in job search.Some of them "played it recklessly" severally to no avail. Indeed some were certified as graduates not for the refinement they have undergone in intellect and character, but because the "co-operated" with their anatomical endowments. Shortly afterward, two of them, speaking in Hausa, casually asked a question between themselves that was a statement of their wish: "Is it not better to get work or spouse even if HIV is entailed along, than continuing in this hopeless (jobless) condition?

*In one NGO- operated clinic, nearly all who entered for a test come out positive. That was the case until three of their clients courageously doubted that positive status. They re-tested in another clinic and were declared negative. Six months after, they were still negative. One of them, a man had malaria. One was pregnant and was delivered of a healthy baby in the six-month period.
It was discovered that, apart from deliberate fraud, some reagents in use in the NGO's clinic do react "positively" in malaria patients.

*A teacher in Ibadan sexually violated some of his female students. He got two of them pregnant. Interviewed, he stated that they wanted it and enjoyed. This was a school where posters, stressing the intimate connexion of sexual rascality with the acquisition of HIV, where posted everywhere.

One of the man's active defenders was a woman, a quasi-lawyer. And she too was an AIDS campaigner! The man has not been "disturbed by law enforcement since.

Again recently, in one of the sub-federal units (Ogun state) of Nigeria, some government officials were holding ceremonies, graced by their First Lady. They were distributing cash gifts to HIV-positive people. They were fighting against AIDS, a syndrome that results mainly by sexual unaccountability.

Whether they really cared about HIV-infected people or were playing NGO game to attract more donation funds into their private purses, the message was soundlessly thunderous: Citizens, you're not important to your government until you acquire immunity-deficiency virus, plus the consequent syndrome.
That state (Ogun) is among the most slummy (and swampy), pregnant with mosquitoes and roaches in Niegria. Its rural areas (90% constituency) are road-less, and under-schooled...Their young women do sneak into the near-by city of Lagos in droves to trade in sex. There is no "other projects" for them to profitably engage in. Farmers are neglected.

The youths are so di-enfranchised or mis-skilled economically.Yet the government's priority in fighting AIDS was the distribution of cash to relatives of its cronies tagged HIV positive

You can forever throw water at the flames. As long as the embers and the fuel are present, the fire'll continue; and burn disastrously.


Hordes of young women often brazenly besiege the 'hallowed' quarters of the male lawmakers in Abuja with all sorts of seduction tacts. The men, they say, are overmoneyed.
One of them in a conversation told how she got into the sex-hawking enterprise. "dem no dey gif you any-tin if you no sreep wi' dem. ( They will never do anything for you unless you sleep with them)," she said. She had worked as a barwoman in a tavern owned by a male lawmaker. Her monthly salary had been 4000 naira (about 33 dollars; not even enough for a dose of retro' drugs). then, one day she "agreed and visited" her employer... and was payed 30000 naira!

The man and likes of him know the needs of their workers very well.But they would pay more than 4000 naira per month to a good worker. For a night of sex, the moneyman would pay 30000 naira! And the acts included what they cal unprotected (naked) sex, accor'ng to one sick sex-trader.
Can you imagine what some of Their Excellencies, the exec governors do? Some women allow themselves to used as nightly companions or "hotel gifts" to the governors' IG's (important guests) and VIG's(very...).
What a generous welcome by fighters, including those who make laws on how to fight, against AIDS!
And the sexual assaults on detainees (in police cells; prisons) by detention wardens are unspeakably horrible.

A pharmaceutical storekeeper I knew once had to withdraw his wife from a College of Education. Why? She was "under pressure to co-operate" in order to get her graduation certificate. Other ladies in her set of graduands had "co-operated", some several times.
These lecturers (sex-turers)who mess with their female graduands before certifying them are undisturbed by law enforcement, even when the corruptness has come open.

The sister-in-law of my friend, Demas, was sacked from the bank where she worked, without reason. Demas nearly got himself jailed challenging the sacking. They accused him of "threatening" the bank manager's life when he requested for a vis-a-vis talk with the manager on his sister-in-law's sacking. In the course of time, the woman opened up and let us in on what happened in the couple of weeks prior to her job termination. The branch had wanted to recruit her in the hunt for big-moneyed politicians (public kleptomaniacs), "to get the men deposit their money here by all means womanly possible. No room for failure". When she complained that she is a wife and mother, the manager would not take it. "You cannot say that you're still a virgin," he kept telling her. Nor did he fail to attempt to take "the prize" himself if it won't be give to hefty depositors.
That sex-manager in the bank is not only undisturbed by law enforcement (laws against these kinds of corrupt practices are rarely enforced in Nigeria), but is also waxing stronger with his bevies of "co-operative" girls.

This is a bank whose Community Social Responsibilities includes AIDS awareness campaign for a change in sexual lifestyle!

Your god help you if you dare, like Dr. Jeremiah Abraka and the ex-president of the Gambia, say you have alternative way to deal with the AIDS-virus. You'd be demonised and vilified, although secretly you'll still have some of your clients.
AIDS is a fasionable disease; a glamorous syndrome! Congratulations!! AIDS and AIDS-people.

AIDS cannot be halted by commercial exploitation, NGO-ism and other ways that tend to enjoy themselves at people's calamities. If AIDS is such an emergency, then emergency (drastic) measures should be adopted and applied against it.
Moral and legal forces must be up and active, at least, to protect the "unco-operative people" such as the Ibadan students and the woman bank worker. Otherwise all the talk against AIDS et al malicious syndromes will be "church talk"; something done with great stage zeal but which fades into nothing outside the stage. War against AIDS should not be a career to be defended and maintained indefinitely without positive results. The results are even worsening. Some exploiters would want to keep a problem intact forever if that keeps them prestigious.

*Make and enforce laws that will entail arresting and punishing mis-users of sex and blood.
*One great irony, especially in Africa, is the pointlessness of 'saving' someone from AIDS, a gentle syndrome, only to butcher the one in the violence (wars)...



There is another factor that should not be ignored. People will always seek for what they want whether it is good or bad.
In some towns in Nigeria, almost everyone will be able to pass an examination in how to avoid AIDS. Yet anyone hardly practices that known 'avoid-AIDS' lifestyle. Some even pray to God to preserve and protect us from AIDS. I know that if it's the biblic God... they may never get a positive answer to such prayers...
If people want AIDS, no amount of AIDS drugs or campaign in the universe will prevent them from "seeking for and getting it", by all means. In this case, for the sake of freedom, I will say: after informing people, they should be allowed to choose their living: the benefits of principled liberty or the disasters of irresponsibility, provided that no one forces another unjustly.

Can we humans achieve everything including faithfulness to condoms, and not achieve just one: faithfulness to ourselves?