Trump’s recent remarks that COVID-19 patients should be injected with sanitizers to sanitize their body is surreal. Trump was quoted as saying: “so, supposing we hit the body with a tremendous — whether it’s ultraviolet or just very powerful light. And I think you said that hasn’t been checked, but you’re going to test it. And then I said, supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do, either through the skin or in some other way. And I think you said you’re going to test that, too. Sounds interesting. And then I see the disinfectant where it knocks it out in a minute, one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning?”

After coming up with such a ridiculous suggestion., one that even a kindergarten kid can’t ponder about, let alone suggesting, the world was shocked. Little did the world know that Donald Trump, who supposedly knows much, knows little in reality.A spokesperson for Reckitt Benckiser, the UK-based owner of Lysol, had to deny this claim by saying that “as a global leader in health and hygiene products, we must be clear that under no circumstance should our disinfectant products be administered into the human body (through injection, ingestion or any other route).”        

Trump is not the first quack to have suggested the use of lethal stuff to cure ailments. In Africa, we are used to such quackery involving greedy and ignorant preachers¬¬––who swindle unsuspecting illiterate followers by administering many things into them in the name of performing miracles. We see many desperate earthlings doing all sorts of crazy things like kissing the feet of their clergy, ‘pictures’ of Jesus and his mother, drinking Jik as it once happened in Zambia where it was fatal.  It becomes sacrilegious when such unconventional methods are prescribed by a Head of State. 

Trump has proved his ignorance about medication and how medicines come to use. He doesn’t know that for any remedy to be prescribed to any human, it must have been vigorously tested and experimented upon to see if it is safe when administered. It is scientifically proscribed and criminal for any remedy to be used without going through such tests that meet international standards. 

Trump’s naivety reminds us of what transpired in Kenya in the 1990s when the then president Daniel Arap Moi surprised the world by announcing that Kenya had discovered the cure for HIV/AIDS by the name of Kemron. Before then, in 1987, Zirimwabagabo Lurhuma in conjunction with an Egyptian professor, Ahmed Shafiq, duped Zairean tinpot dictator, Joseph-Desire Mobutu and his Egyptian counterpart, Hosni Mubarak that they had discovered a cure for HIV/AIDS. To make their boss happy, they named their new invention MM1 or Mobutu-Mubarak. Thanks to the desperation of the world, it initially listened to these scientific charlatans. 

The last buffoon in power to try a hand on the ‘breakthrough’ of discovering HIV/AIDS miracle cure was the former dictator of a tiny country of Gambia, Yahya Jammeh whose education, up until now, has never been made public, not to mention his Trump-like naivety. Instead of allowing doctors to get away with the credit of folly, Jammeh administered his concoction of herbs hinged on spiritual healing techniques to poor HIV/AIDS patients in his country who later died because of this megalomaniac tendency.

When it comes to making a killing or a political mile, swindlers and politicians become one. Who would expect that a president worth his salt would tarnish his name easily and senselessly this way? Again, greed, ignorance and popularism are a good thicket for unreasonable creatures.

By Nkwazi Mhango 

Lifetime member of the Writers' Alliance of Newfoundland and Labrador (WANL) and author of over 20 books among which are Africa Reunite or Perish, 'Is It Global War on Terrorism' or Global War over Terra Africana? How Africa Developed Europe and contributed many chapters in scholarly works on many issues of importance on Africa.