Pfizer Vs Kano: Maisekeli as the grim harvester

The news that Pfizer and the Kano State government have made progress in their out-of-court settlement talks is very gladdening. But before we start celebrating, it is good to nip in the bud the growing threat of a group of sharp-eyed carpetbaggers to hijack the funds to be provided by Pfizer for the verified patients, the hospital and the training of medical personnel.

There is a huge scam industry being set up to ensure that whatever funds Pfizer provides ends up in private pockets. Notable among those jostling for primacy is Alhaji Mustapha Maisekeli who describes himself as chairman of the “Trovan Victims’ Forum”. Maisekeli has tried to position himself as the spokesperson of the largely illiterate patients. But if the revelations coming from Kano are anything to go by, this is one man you want to watch closely.

There is the shocking revelation that Maisekeli collected N100, 000 (one hundred thousand naira) on behalf of each of the patients during the last Sallah (Eid-el-Fitri) celebrations. By some stroke of magical fraud, only N45, 000 (forty-five thousand Naira) got to the identified patients. The said ‘patients’ could however not complain too loudly because several of them were mere mercenaries hired to pose as patients to fool the government and eventually to fool Pfizer at the end of the day.

Some shocking revelations: Auwalu Magaji, the grandson of the village head of Dan Rimi who has been crippled from birth, was included in the list of beneficiaries. Maisekeli and his cohorts want us to believe Pfizer caused the young man’s deformity whereas he was born deformed.

If that sounds shocking, try this other revelation: Lantana Magaji, a young woman of about 20 years of age, was born with a hearing problem. In a society where girls are married off early, she is still single because prospective suitors would rather not marry a woman with hearing impairment. Her younger sisters are all married. This young woman is also on the list of “Trovan victims” drawn up by Maisekeli.

Also on the list is Yusuf Ibrahim who was born with a withered hand. According to the Pyramid, a local newspaper published in Kano, informants actually recalled how “efforts were made by Yusuf’s family to secure a cure for him from a local magician in 1994 from the Zaria based Shiite leader, Sheik Ibrahim El-Zakyzaky. The 17-year-old boy is on the list as one of those deformed by Trovan.

From the foregoing, it is clear that Maisekeli and his cohorts are only interested in the Pfizer case for what they can get for themselves. This is fraud at its highest level. What ordinarily should have been a humanitarian case has now been hijacked by desperate people to try to milk both Pfizer and the Kano State government. Officials of the government itself, together with operatives of the Ungogo Local Government, are interested only to the extent that they can position themselves as having helped cater for the patients over the years and therefore deserving of a slice of the compensation cake when it is finally baked and served.

The human rights community in Nigeria is determined to ensure that the Pfizer compensation does not end up in private pockets. We insist that Pfizer and the Kano and Federal governments must do the following:
v Pfizer must work with only the list of those who participated in the Trovan trials. According to documents available in the courts, there is an authentic list with Pfizer that is independently verifiable. There is therefore no need to accept any list coming from the Maisekelis of this world.
v The Kano State government and indeed the Federal Government must direct their negotiations towards ensuring that some of the funds are applied to rehabilitating the Infectious Diseases Hospital (IDH) in Kano to enable us cope with epidemics in future.
v Pfizer must also insist that a fixed percentage of the funds be applied to training medical personnel to enable them cope with the kind of epidemic that brought Pfizer into this saga in the first place.

Maisekeli and his group can look for another victim of their duplicity. Like Death, they are grim harvesters. It is criminally ungodly to use fellow human beings as pawns in a game of high level fraud. Those of us who have been monitoring the development in Kano are keeping our eyes wide open. We claim that it is nothing short of a religious duty to ensure that Maisekeli and his ilk are not allowed to swindle our people. In Islam, Wajib means a duty or an obligation. Obligation means you have to do it. If you don't do it there is a punishment. But what Maisekeli is doing is classified Islamically as Haram; that means ‘forbidden’ or ‘prohibited’; something you should not do and if you do it you will be punished for it. In some prohibitions the punishment is twofold: a punishment in this life and a punishment in the Hereafter. Allahu akbar!