Sam Adeyemi, the senior pastor of the Daystar Christian
Centre, says churches, mosques, schools and markets were shut in Nigeria during
the influenza pandemic which hit the world in 1918.
Via a live Instagram chat with Poju Oyemade, the senior
pastor of The Covenant Nation, Adeyemi said he studied how the 1918 pandemic
affected Nigeria, so he could give perspective to his followers on the novel
coronavirus disease.
Taking a question from Oyemade on how a leader can handle a
crisis like the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19), Adeyemi said people were
giving extreme interpretations of the crisis.
He added that the leader’s role in a crisis is to give
perspectives, stating that he studied the last global pandemic before COVID-19
to give the right perspective.
“I went online, there was a pandemic 100 years ago, let me
go and study it and check it out, because the interpretation that people are
giving to this pandemic, they range from one extreme to the other,” Adeyemi
said.
“I don’t even want to go into the details now, but there’s
quarrel on social media now; from 5G to 10G and other things. I decided to
check, how did it affect Nigeria?”
In 1918, there was a global pandemic caused by the Spanish
flu, which spanned January 1918 to December 1920.
It was estimated to have infected 500 million people – about
a quarter of the world’s population at the time and killed 50 million people
worldwide.
Relating the 1918 pandemic to the 2020 coronavirus pandemic,
Adeyemi said: “I found a research article by a history lecturer at the
University at Birnin Kebbi. Beautiful research!”
“I had to buy it. But I was happy buying it, because when I
read it, it was amazing, it dug into the British archives, all the records that
the colonial officers kept.
“[In] 1918 September, when the thing hit, the way air travel
now is the main thing for global transportation and it was air travel that
moved the coronavirus around, it was sea travel that spread the influenza
around then.
“The ships that brought sick people into the Lagos port; I
got the names, the dates they arrived, how it spread in Nigeria.
“I’d tell you the one that I saw and almost screamed, they
closed churches, they closed mosques, they shut down schools, they shut down
markets. 1918. So, some of us now think it is the anti-christ that is at work,
he does not want us to gather together and fellowship.
“We should just be thanking God that we have internet now
and we can be relating without meeting together. They shut churches in 1918. So
when the leader takes perspective like that, then you can calm people down and
tell them there will be life after this thing.”
Adeyemi said there are opportunities in every crisis, and it
is the leader’s duty to see the opportunities and not to project fear on
his/her followers.
There are big debates and conspiracy theories about 5G, the
anti-Christ and coronavirus on social media, but findings has shown
there is no link between 5G and COVID-19.
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