Flashback: How another pandemic virus killed 500,000 Nigerians 102 years ago

In 1918, a pandemic virus, called the Spanish flu blew across the world like the current coronavirus and killed at least 50 million people. In Nigeria, then under colonial rule, an estimated 500,000 died.

There is a striking similarity between the two pandemics in the way they affected Nigeria: both were brought in by travellers.

A little over a century ago, the old killer virus was brought in by travellers arriving by ship from England. Fast forward to the present; travellers arriving by planes from Europe and United States are the chief vectors of the new virus |||READ MORE …