1.0. Introductions
The Nigeria COVID Response Alliance is a coalition of over 70 CSOs and faith-based NGOs formed to monitor the official response to the COVID-19 pandemic in Nigeria; and ensure that the response remains within the ambit of fundamental human and religious rights. The Alliance arose spontaneously last year in the heat of efforts to introduce legislations which were clearly overreaching the purported purpose of addressing the COVID-19 pandemic in Nigeria. That led to our submitting a Memorandum to the June 10-11 2020 Public Hearing at the House of Representatives, as well as a Press Statement (May 15, 2020) on the subject. For the avoidance of any doubt, our Alliance is an entirely Nigerian initiative, and we are not under the patronage of any political, religious, or foreign entity. Similarly, our position is not to condemn or question any decision freely taken by private individuals, but rather to ensure that the fundamental right to do so is not lightly infringed upon by overzealous and ill-informed agents of government.
First, we would like to draw attention to the huge distinction between three often mixed-up concepts: Vaccination, Mass Vaccination, and Mandatory Mass Vaccination. We recognize and hold that vaccines, just like any other medical product, can be beneficial to some vulnerable group of individuals. [Even drugs that are recognized and duly labelled as pure poison - for example, in chemotherapy - could still be life-savers in certain conditions!]. We certainly do not have a beef with vaccines. Mass Vaccination, however, requires large population groups with different physiological constitutions and widely varying health status to receive the same medical product, generally under the same conditions. Not only will this considerably affect the efficacy of the product, the practice will be rife with serious safety issues, especially where there are no adequate medical infrastructure and system in place to respond to the inevitable emergencies. While our Alliance frowns severely at Mass Vaccination, it is the concept of Mandatory Mass Vaccination that we find absolutely intolerable. We consider it pure evil, to compel everybody to irreversibly receive a particular medical product at the penalty of literally being declared persona non-grata in their own native community! We believe that such a move should be resisted, using all available peaceful means.
2.0. Unprecedented Moves towards Mandatory Mass Vaccination in Nigeria
This Statement is released specifically in response to the pronouncements by the governments of Edo and Ondo States, that from mid-September, people might not be allowed to public places, including hospitals and banks as well as worship centres, without showing proof of vaccination. Similarly, the Federal Government, through the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) and Chairman of the Presidential Steering Committee on COVID-19, Boss Mustapha, has declared that “the Federal Government shall, very shortly,” be requiring “every employee in its service” to be compulsorily jabbed with the COVID-19 experimental vaccines.
We consider these statements as exceedingly outrageous, insensitive, and excessive response to the COVID-19 situation. The statements have no basis in law, logic, ethics, or science; and we hereby call for their immediate retraction. This call is based on the following fundamental and incontrovertible premises:
1) ethics of mandating a no-liability experimental medical product,
2) issue of effectiveness and duration of efficacy,
3) the critical issue of safety, and
4) the nagging question of motives and ultimate long-term consequences, even beyond health.
2.1. Ethics of Mandating a No-liability Experimental Medical Product
The vaccines which are being mandated for all by Edo and Ondo State governments (Moderna, Astra Zeneca, and Janssen) are, up to the present moment, all known to be experimental in nature, having been authorized only for Emergency or Experimental use. Also well known is the fact that virtually every party involved in administering the shots (from the manufacturers to the donors and the medics, including State and Federal governments in Nigeria) are all indemnified from all liabilities in case of any adverse effects from the vaccine. It is therefore not only unconscionable to make the jab mandatory for free citizens, it is particularly obnoxious and vexatious to link it with their fundamental right to assemble and worship in the presence of the Almighty God.
2.2. Issue of Effectiveness and Duration of Efficacy
Contrary to the oft-parroted phrase that the “vaccines are safe and effective”, publicly-available records clearly indicate otherwise. For instance, it is no secret that Gibraltar, with literally 100% vaccination status, has become the world’s COVID-19 capital and is rated at the highest Level 4. A recent advisory from the US CDC warns US citizens to stay off Gibraltar, adding that “Because of the current situation in Gibraltar, even fully vaccinated travellers may be at risk for getting and spreading COVID-19 variants.” The same situation of extremely high infection rates in highly vaccinated societies and communities is infamously repeated in Seychelles and Israel. In theory, these territories should have hit herd immunity with their impressive high vaccination statuses. Even amidst a tough political climate which compels him to extol the virtues of vaccines, Israeli’s PM, Naftali Bennett, still had to concede that: “We don’t know exactly to what extent the vaccine helps, but it is significantly less….. We all hope to see a slowdown, but the facts at the moment are that there isn’t a slowdown — not here and not around the world.”
Results from actual scientific studies have however been less equivocal than the words of a politician. A new CDC study shows very clearly that 74% of people infected with COVID, and 80% of those hospitalized in Massachusetts, in the United States were fully vaccinated. A similar report from Israel showed that 60% of hospitalized patients were fully vaccinated. However, an enraged Medical Director of the Herzog Hospital in Jerusalem insisted that the recent figures were even much worse. According to Dr Kobi Haviv, “95% of the severe patients are vaccinated” and “85 - 90% of the hospitalizations are in fully vaccinated people”. While all these depressing figures convincingly corroborate predictions made by several experts on the possibility of the vaccine making vaccinated people more vulnerable to the disease (via mechanisms such as Pathogenic Priming and Antibody Dependent Enhancement), vaccine proponents have kept dreaming up new and frequently contradictory theories to explain the embarrassing situation.
In a similar vein, several well-respected experts, including Robert Malone (acclaimed inventor of the mRNA vaccine technology), Luc Montagnier (Nobel Prize winner for Medicine), and Geert V. Bossche (top executive in the vaccine industry) have passionately warned of the possibility of the virus progressively mutating to more deadly variants under “selection pressure” of mass vaccination in what is known as “immune escape.” Even though this prediction is now plainly playing out before us with the emergence of new virus “variants of concern”, vaccine pushers have continued to operate in denial, desperately concocting some exotic alternative narratives to obfuscate the data!
In any case, such incontrovertible data, of the vaccines not having any discernible benefit to either individuals or the general public, have formed the basis for emerging exasperating guidelines requiring fully vaccinated people and communities to continue a religious observation of COVID protocols such as masking and social distancing.
Based on this very apparent lack of (sustained) effectiveness of the vaccines, several first-world nations are already talking of “booster” third and even fourth doses. The government of the United Kingdom however has admitted that there might be no end to the number of “booster” doses that will be required. That government has consequently announced a new policy requiring the country to “move away from legal restrictions and allow people to make their own informed decisions about how to manage the virus”. Still in that country, the Director of the Oxford Vaccine Group frankly warned, at a Parliamentary Panel on August 10, that “herd immunity” for COVID-19 is a mirage that can never be attained!
With all these publicly-available uncontroverted data, it is a big wonder that Governors Obaseki and Akeredolu would think that it is this same clearly unprofitable path that their people must thread. Moreso, when it is well-acknowledged, (and officially backed up by statistics from the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control) that the COVID-19 threat is by far benign in Nigeria, relative to the above-cited countries. That minimal threat is even further considerably downgraded by the finding by an eminent team of Nigerian scientists, of the effectiveness of the cheaply available and extremely safe drug, Ivermectin, especially when administered early.
2.3. The Critical Issue of Safety
Beyond the issue of efficacy, however, the safety profile of the vaccines being mandated by the state governments of Edo and Ondo is even more frightening! With no publicly accessible database on adverse effects associated with the vaccine in Nigeria, it is very easy for government officials to continue mouthing their mantra of a “safe” vaccine. It is on record, shamefully, that at a time when the administration of Astra Zeneca jabs, for example, was being paused in many nations over safety concerns, officials here in Nigeria had insisted (and still insist) that there is nothing to worry about with the product. Indeed, there are indications (despite official secrecy on the matter) that the one million doses of Astra Zeneca vaccine rejected by South Africa were transferred mainly to Nigeria!
It is simply bewildering to note that up till the present time, no independent testing of safety has been conducted by the Nigerian authority on these vaccines that governments in Nigeria are insisting must be taken by everybody as a condition to be allowed to gather and worship the Almighty God and live normal lives in their own communities. The National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) freely admits that all it did was adopt a new protocol developed with funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (a key advocate and promoter of the vaccines!) Termed “Reliance”, the new ad hoc protocol excuses the NAFDAC from carrying out any independent tests on the vaccines, and encourages her to rather make pronouncements on safety, simply based on tests and pronouncements made by more “matured [sic] regulatory authorities” elsewhere! This, of course, is in contravention of the laws establishing the NAFDAC, yet nobody has challenged the situation, and officials continue to give clean safety bills to products they have not tested!
Meanwhile, records of adverse reactions to the vaccines are kept in other climes. And the official figures are truly frightening. In the US, records from the publicly-accessible Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) show that between December 14 2020 and August 27 2021, there have been 13,911 deaths, and over half a million serious injuries and other adverse events associated with the use of COVID vaccines in the United States. A whistleblower at the CDC further averred under oath that the System is under-reporting deaths occurring within 3 days of vaccination by a factor of at least 5! Similar frightening reports are available from the UK, Israel, Canada, Europe, etc. However, in Nigeria, the Med Safety App available for reportage of adverse effects associated with vaccination only compiles Adverse Drug Reaction data submitted to the WHO’s Uppsala Monitoring Centre and lumps up data for 15 countries. As for adverse reactions occurring specifically in Nigeria, government officials continue to insist that, essentially, there are none!
It should be noted that the discussion so far has been limited only to acute effects. No one knows for sure at this early stage what the mid- and long-term effects will look like!
2.4. The biggest issue of all: What is all this really about?
This brings us to the real bewildering question in this utterly bizarre matter: Given that all the above facts are incontrovertible and well-known even to the proponents of the “vaccine”; why are they nevertheless pushing it so hard and playing blind?
It is at this juncture that the Church in particular (and all liberty-loving Nigerians in general) must discern the apocalyptic dimension of the issue at hand. In our Memorandum to the House of Representatives last year, we showed with full references cited from publicly-available scientific materials, how emerging nanotechnology could provide unrestricted access to the minds, emotions, and physiological processes of recipients of products such as have been packaged into these entirely novel “vaccines”. We also observed in that memorandum that a “spirit… of mandatory vaccination” permeated the entire Bill under consideration. Even though many felt that the suggestion was far-fetched at that time, current developments have proved us right.
Fellow Nigerians, we might indeed be at the brink of a neo-enslavement of such intricacy and dimension hitherto inconceivable and for which, if carelessly allowed, posterity and our future generations will never forgive us! We would like all Nigerians to realize that there is a HUGE GAP between mandating external measures (such as donning of masks and social distancing) and an internal one mandating the irreversible injection of a medical product still undergoing trials, into people’s bodies, en masse.
3.0. Conclusions
COVID-19 is real and it can be fatal. However, compared to the myriads of several of other health challenges confronting us in Nigeria (with many of them peculiar to us), the current response to COVID is absolutely excessive and mind-bogging. Not only are there credible therapeutic options, data from the Nigeria CDC itself document that 185,159 out of 196,487 people (as at 8th Sept, 2021) have recovered from the disease, without recourse to vaccination. These (and certainly hundreds of thousands more cases undocumented) have therefore acquired natural immunity. Impeccable results from several parts of the world are now confirming what has always been known in conventional epidemiology, that natural immunity can be a lot more robust and effective than any vaccine-induced immunity. In any case, it is well established that the vaccines now on the verge of being mandated in Nigeria do not provide sterilizing immunity, by which is meant that they neither prevent transmission nor infection of the virus responsible for COVID-19.
It is therefore of utmost importance that Nigerians across all ethnic, political, and religious divides arise to oppose this illegal, reckless, and extremely dangerous moves being test-run in Edo and Ondo States, with the Federal Government waiting in the wings. It is public knowledge that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, with deep involvement in vaccine manufacturing and marketing, is a primary funder of our NAFDAC. It is therefore not surprising that the Piper should seek to dictate the tune with respect to Nigeria’s response to COVID-19, even if such is not in the best interest of the nation. It is also abundantly evident that the current unprecedented push for mandatory vaccinations in Nigeria, through coercive executive orders, is merely an effort to achieve what the globalists failed to achieve in their previous efforts through the legislature. We call on Nigerians from all sectors to stoutly resist these dastardly moves, even as we resisted and checkmated the previous one at the legislature.
God bless Nigeria.
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Rev Tony Akinyemi (Chairperson) |
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Prof Joshua Ojo (1st Vice Chairperson)
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Rev Linda Tokuta (2nd Vice Chairperson)
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Mr Osazee Isonarae (General Secretary)
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Dr Patrick Ijewere (Public Relations Officer)
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Lagos, 9th September, 2021
Note: This is an updated version of the Press Statement released by our Alliance in Lagos on Monday 30th August, 2021. To access the hyperlinks providing full references to the cited statements and figures, together with the list of 77 participating members of the National Covid-19 Response Alliance, please download an e-copy of this Statement from our website: https://covidvaccineunmasked.com. The hyperlinks are underlined in this document.
