‘Global Health Security Threat: Repositioning to End the Pandemic and Rebuild Better’. During his speech at the summit, the virologist claimed that in contrast to the blacklisted countries’ charges of racism, Nigeria was just paying for ‘overlooking errors.’ He asserted that the present generation is more brilliant than his own, and if the situation favours and right opportunities are provided, they are capable of doing wonders in science and other relevant fields.
Oyewale Tomori’s speech is as follows: “Mr President, the generation of Nigerians we have today is much smarter than my generation. Give them one-tenth of the enabling environment opportunity which good governance gave my generation, and Nigeria will be donating vaccines to poor Europe as India is doing; Nigeria will be providing loans to China, and not the other way round”.
Oyewale Tomori also spoke of the present travel ban on the country by Canada and the UK. Tomori said, “I woke up today to hear that Canada no longer recognises my genuine vaccination card. And Britain has clamped a travel ban on us. A few days ago, I came to know there was Omicron in Nigeria from outside. The same Canada was telling me that Nigerians who travelled out with negative COVID lab results were omicronised, before my own CDC finally told me that we had the variant, detected in samples collected from people who recently travelled from South Africa”.
Oyewale Tomori added, “Were they people in the entourage of President Ramaphosa? They did not tell. We painfully call the reactions of the UK and Canada racism, inequity. But I say we are paying for condoning our errors of commission and overlooking our errors of omission.” Tomori painfully asserted that COVID-19 and other illnesses were not Nigeria’s primary adversaries, instead the real threats to the country are concerns such as a lack of patriotism, self-interest, corruption, and shamelessness.
