Just a background to antivaxx in Nigeria. The strongest opposition to vaccines in Africa hasn't been political (black liberation finz) or cultural (aversion to western medicine or ethnic mistrust). It's been religious, at it's most fundamental. With a piggyback by other factors
In 2003, Ibrahim Shekarau ran for Governor in Kano. One of the platforms he ran on was an antivaxx one. He thoroughly distrusted polio vaccination efforts, and once he won, one of the first things he did in August 2003 was to stop the polio eradication efforts in Kano.
It is important to understand as further background that one of the effects of the spread of Wahhabist ideology (explained last week by @chxta) was to create a strong siege mentality among many Muslims within a Huntington-like clash of civilization narrative: distrust of the West
Now, add to that distrust the events of the Pfizer trial in 1996 (the Abacha years) and the deaths of children, as well as a poor understanding of the utility and biology of vaccines. It was easy to arrive at the conclusion that vaccinations brought no good and just end it.
After all, Kanawas had been living and flourishing for millennia without said vaccines. So, the counterfactual for vaccine use did not seem that bad. Anyways, Governor Shekarau stopped it. President Obasanjo could perhaps had overruled that decision, but it was sorta like Sharia
The political costs were forbidding. Also, above the layer of religious antagonism to vaccines, there was the widespread belief that the vaccines would cause infertility and were spreading HIV/AIDS among Muslims. The only solution was to listen to these baseless concerns
And a negotiated solution was arrived between President Obasanjo, Governor Shekarau, the Emir Bayero and the religious leaders in Kano: all vaccines to be used in Kano had to be made in another Muslim country, Indonesia, by Muslim scientists only with periodic local validation.
The new opposition to vaccines in the wake of CV-19 is not much different. But now, instead of being driven by Muslim anxieties, it is very Christian, no thanks to the emotional breakdown of American Pentecostals and their tin-foiled cousins in the conspiracy communities.
The end of the cold war left many US conspiracy theorists without a bad guy figure until the rise of the End of history narrative by the western political establishment (totemised by Francis Fukuyama). The conspiracists began talking about a united global elite unleashing:
A NEW WORLD ORDER underpinned by some serious anti-Semitism, too. From there, the movement expanded but really picked pace with the anti-black racism directed by President Obama's ascension into office. That was when US White Pentecostals lost their collective minds
They latched on to his Obamacare act to allege plans to chip all Americans, and imaginative global converts ran with something that did not concern them, to include us all in the coming of a very American type antichrist (I personally don't believe the antichrist will be black).
The internet accelerated the spread of that nonsense. But as it spread, like all viruses, it mutated & adapted to any new event and news. First, it came as corona vaccines will help bring antichrist + 5G. As that died out, it found Bill Gates campaign for vaccines as a new victim
The Bill Gates angle has been long coming. When Broda Bill successfully made Microsoft the biggest software in the world & cashed out to be the richest man in the world, that made him a target. His wealth status& brutal strategies to kill business competition made him an antihero
Rich people are easy to villianise (mesef, I no really like Dangote laidat). Microsoft fought endless antitrust suits and were convincingly disparaged by other Tech leaders like Steve Jobs (na this Baba sef go be illuminati if that thing dey). This hate translated well to lies
Lies about Bilderberg & illuminati and other elitist global control mechanism. But Bill Gates just moved on to begin work on philanthropy, starting a foundation and getting other rich people to donate via the Giving Pledge. Man has since then been transformative on human capital
At home, Bill #Gates has invested massively into education, including scholarships to black, Latino & low income students, funding for schools, investment in things like the Common Core (which failed, but note that Mark Zuckerberg did something similar in Newark that failed, too)
Abroad, he's done even more, particularly for public health: polio eradication, ending neglected tropical diseases, sanitation expansion, ending malnutrition & malaria, HIV/AIDS & TB control, RMNCAH improvement, agricultural development.
Beyond that, he's also supporting work on supporting innovative technology, being a tech man himself. And financial inclusion. So much work funded by his money & from other billionaires. But, no matter how rich he is, his resources are limited & his generosity must have a goal
Much of Bill #Gates work is laid on answering a core question: How do we end extreme poverty and reduce inequality? Answer: By leveraging on the fact that talent is equally distributed but opportunity is not. Question: How do you leverage on that fact?
Answer: By making sure anyone born anywhere in the world has an equal chance to life (health), has access to the basic things of life (food), the wherewithal (education) to be able to apply their God given talents to create their own opportunities (economic prosperity).
But there's no way you can achieve such equality of opportunity when women die in childbirth anyhow, those who survive lose their newborns, newborns who survive are not well fed and get infected with terrible ailments, those who survive that can't do well in school and life.
Those who somehow don't get infected go to crap schools robbing them the opportunity to maximize potentials. How does one stop that vicious cycle. This is where a combination of pushing people across the demographic transition, minimising population to maximize livelihood enters.
Point being: Bill Gates wants to reduce human population growth by keeping more humans alive and healthy so that we can better enjoy the finite resources God has provided us on earth. Essentially, he asks that we be better stewards of God's possession. Yes, I jumped. But e don do
