Football, Ebola, and the shaming of a president

This week, I will openly admit that I didn’t know what to write. Or maybe I did, but I was feeling too depressed to write about it. The recent kidnappings of children in Mussa, Borno State and Oriire LGA of Oyo State have left a familiar bitter taste in my mouth.  And yet, there is something else: Rage fatigue. I checked through my archives and realised that in more than ten years of writing, I have lamented about kidnapping more than ten times! Since the Chibok Girls in 2014 fa!

Haba Jama’a! You people have heard it all before.

And so, this week, we will dissect something different: Football, racism, and the nightmare that is Ebola.

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It happened last week in Budapest: A sitting African president was denied entry into a country and instead held up like a suspicious package at the airport.

President Félix Tshisekedi of the Democratic Republic of Congo arrived with his delegation to watch the Champions League final. PSG versus Arsenal. The kind of glamour match that makes powerful men re-arrange their calendars. But instead of champagne, handshakes and front row view, he got airport bureaucracy. Hungarian authorities said they had not been notified, and they were concerned about the ongoing Ebola outbreak in the DRC.

Come again?

An African leader, humiliated at an European gate, because his country has a virus. Never mind that the DRC has contained multiple Ebola outbreaks with a competence that would embarrass some wealthier nations. Never mind that Tshisekedi was not arriving with bleeding gums or a fever. The label was enough: Ebola country. Dangerous. Stop him.

When I first heard the news, I admit, I was a bit ambivalent. And so? Does DRC not have Ebola?

Then a question popped into my head: Would this happen to a European leader? Imagine the French president flying into Lagos with a fresh bird flu outbreak back home. Would Nigerian authorities detain Macron? Would they dare? Of course not. There would be phone calls. There would be diplomatic firestorms. But when it’s Congo, or an African man in a suit, the default setting is suspicion.

There’s also a second question: How did the president’s brother get in?

Christian Tshisekedi, we are told, landed in Hungary days earlier. Not on a state plane. Not with the official entourage. Via Brussels. On multiple private jets. Already on site. Already comfortable. So, the president is stuck at passport control, while his siblings sip wine in a VIP box. What the hell type of health protocol is that?

One brother, the president, is bound by diplomacy and visibility, forced to sit in a sterile transit lounge while Hungarian officials shuffle papers. The other brother, sliding through back channels, untouchable. It tells you everything about the two worlds that exist inside every African country. There are the rules for the powerful, and then there are the real rules for the well-connected.

But let us not lose sight of the main scandal.

Hungary used Ebola as an excuse. Openly and publicly. For years, Western nations have imposed travel bans on African countries during health crises. They call it precaution. But we Africans call it what it is: punishment for poverty. During the 2014 West African Ebola outbreak, entire nations were treated like leper colonies. Sierra Leoneans, Guineans, and Liberians are all guilty by geography. Now the DRC is getting the same medicine. Even their president cannot escape it.

What does that say about African sovereignty?

An African head of state still needs permission to enter Europe. Not a visa, which is already degrading enough, but permission to exist as a non-threat. And when a crisis hits, even that permission is revoked. We all know Tshisekedi was not bringing Ebola to Budapest. He was bringing a delegation, security, and protocol. But reason died at the airport door.

Christian Tshisekedi’s smooth arrival is the punchline. It proves the system isn’t about health at all. It is about control. About whom gets flagged and who gets waved through. About which African bodies are deemed safe and which are deemed dirty. The president, with his official convoy and his national burden, is dirty. The brother, with his private jets and Brussels stopover, is clean.

It’s like the way they make us queue at the airports and open our mouths like birds to receive antibiotic medication during Hajj. They don’t do that for other European pilgrims. It is always Africans who harbour diseases.

So, what is the lesson for us?

First, stop expecting fairness. Europe will protect its borders using any weapon available: disease, terrorism, economic fear and African leaders will be the first casualties. Second, notice the hypocrisy. The same countries that panic about Ebola are the ones that cut health funding to Africa. The same countries that detain presidents are the ones that lecture us about governance. Thirdly and most importantly, there are no rules for the super-rich, because if the president’s brother can find a way in, then the system is not ironclad. It is just selective. In this life, just have money.

President Tshisekedi finally made it through. We do not know how many hours he waited or what words (or money) were exchanged. But we know he eventually sat in that stadium. He watched the match and smiled for the cameras.

But even my outrage, I couldn’t help but feel a twinge of schadenfreude when I heard about the president being detained. Because, why the hell should the president of one of the poorest countries in the world be travelling to watch Arsenal and PSG when his country is in crisis??

Nigerians and Bad belle. 5&6!

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