Thought Leadership

Pfizer settles…but what of their collaborators at home?

2 Mins read
Thought Leadership

Pfizer settles…but what of their collaborators at home?

2 Mins read

While we celebrate “justice” for Pfizer, as we did for Siemens and Halliburton…in their dealings with Nigeria…the real devil is among us, in the Nigerians among us that collaborated with these firms. As long as those Nigerians are free, we are all captive, captive to an ongoing systematic rape of a people by its “leaders”…

You would have read from the links on our last post that Nigeria’s Kano State and the US drugs firm Pfizer have agreed to settle a multi-million dollar lawsuit out of court. Pfizer has been accused of killing 11 children and injuring 181 others when an antibiotic was tested on them during a meningitis epidemic in 1996. Pfizer has always maintained that the tests were carried out with the approval of the Nigerian government and that the children’s parents were fully informed.

Now it is time for those Nigerians involved to declare their roles in this episode. Non of what happened could have been remotely possible without the active and deliberate connivance of Nigerians in high places. That is the truth we have to face.

  • Pls read our previous blog on this issue referring to to a book written by Dr Idris Mohamed – “Academics, Epidemics and Politics”….and eventful career in public health. He was the Chairman of the Taskforce of the Federal Republic of Nigeria sent to manage the outbreak.
  • Read a copy of the report of an investigative committee set up by the Nigerian Ministry of Health to investigate the incident here

While it is convenient to blame Pfizer and make them pay…we must ask ourselves the hard questions. Our society will never improve if we let our “leaders” get away with killing, robbing and disenfranchising their own people.

Who has taken responsibility in the Federal Ministry of Health? In the Kano State Ministry of Health…those are the questions that Nigerians need answers to.

Now that NEXT has published details of our leaders involved in the “Halliburton” scandal Nigerians…that accepted at least N27 billion in bribes from the oil services companies in exchange for billions of dollars in contracts to build our liquefied natural gas plant, as revealed by US investigators…

And the names of those invloved in the Siemens scandal are also in the public domain…Nigerians who were alleged to have received about 10 million euros as bribes from the German telecommunications company Siemens…

As long as all these
Nigerians are free, together with our colleagues that worked with Pfizer, and many still actively participating in “governance”….the message for the Nigerian people is that is okay to steal…as long as you are Nigerian, stealing from Nigerians…and for the foreign companies….justice will come to them through their own systems.

Aluta…

http://www.nigeriahealthwatch.com/

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed people can change the world; indeed it is the only thing that ever has…Margaret Mead

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