Perhaps, the best prayer anyone could offer to some of our brothers and sisters in the Diaspora visiting Nigeria from their cozy abodes abroad, would be “May Nigeria never happen to you.”
Nigeria happened to famous literary icon, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and her husband, recently, when their 21-month-old baby boy died in a Nigerian hospital. The couple had flown into Nigeria to spend their Christmas holidays when one of their twin babies developed some health complications.
The plan was to take him to John Hopkins in the United States of America on January 7 where a team of doctors was waiting. But, they had asked for a lumbar puncture test and an MRI from the Nigerian hospital where the baby had been admitted. Just anesthesia before the tests, and the little baby slipped into the world beyond in 24 hours.
The hospital where this happened did a public relations work by issuing a statement commiserating with the parents of the baby and promising to investigate the case properly. It won’t be a surprise to learn later that information necessary to unravel the real situation had been hoarded or even missing from the records, in a typical Nigerian way. It is only journalists and writers that publish their mistakes and apologize thereafter. Doctors have the opportunity to clean off the tracks and bury theirs.
While we await their final statement, and the investigations launched also by the Lagos State government, where the incident took place, preliminary suspicions were that the anesthesiologist had administered an overdose of propofol and that the hospital staff had been negligent of necessary medical procedures.
Indeed, Nigeria happened to Chimamanda suddenly and in a way she did not expect. Have we not been shouting ourselves hoarse over the pervading incompetence in our institutions? Some hospitals in Nigeria, even with the best equipment and outrageous bills, are mere painted sepulchres where inept staff handle complex cases. It’s not the half-baked staff to blame but the system that baked them.
Chimamanda means “my God never fails.” Did Chimamanda’s God fail her on that day? I think it was Nigeria that failed so woefully and owes the world an explanation why it should not be labelled hell on earth.
The situation calls to question the method of admissions in our institutions of higher learning where the present manpower is produced. In more than 50 decades, the country had continued to lower the standards in its education, such that graduates in medicine, nursing and other paramedical professions come out not knowing what to do.
Besides, offer of appointment shifted from qualification and competence to man-know-man. Knowing those in positions of authority or being related to them became the determinants of what jobs you got and what positions you occupied. On the other hand, if you could raise a large chunk of funds and pass same on to the highly placed officials or their agents, you’d got the passport to your plum job.
The generalized inefficiency in the country is not limited to the medical field. We find it also getting a stranglehold on our judiciary that churn out laughable judgements from the bench and lose clear cases from the bar. Our engineers build roads that last just one season of rainfall. Banks staff are populated by workers who hardly spell customers’ names and so cause them so much pain with their irregular BVN or NIN records. Our classrooms are filled with teachers and lecturers who can hardly make sense to students, only focused on sorting and other malpractices that throw out poorly trained professionals that are preoccupied in their entire career with finding the easy way out of their series of blunder.
We feel the pain more that the medical sector which is critical to our existence is plagued with such an abysmal ineptitude. We might not know the number of cases that had gone without mention before it happened to Chimamanda who, of course, had access to media and is not given to discreetness. She just could not keep quiet and bear her heartrending loss all alone. Isn’t that better than being a “good Nigerian” and working away to let the rot go on?
What was more intriguing was that when Chimamanda took to the social media to narrate her experience and that of her husband, a social media user thought the great novelist was just doing another of her numerous fictions. Unfortunately, she was telling her true story, a chilling story that happened in her country of birth.
The National Agency for Food and Drugs Administration and Control (NAFDAC) is overwhelmed at the influx of fake drugs into the country as they are in constant battle with cartels behind the obnoxious trade. The late NAFDAC amazon Dora Akunyili made spirited efforts to control it in vain.
Regulatory discipline in all sectors has completely crumbled under influences, making Nigeria to look like a country made for crooks. Schools and departmental accreditations are arranged with monetary transfers into the accounts of the accreditation officials who look away from inadequacies of the institutions.
Nigeria had happened so negatively to its numerous citizens in the Diaspora who visit home. But recent cases are one too many. Boxing champion Anthony Joshua who was holidaying last December narrowly escaped death in a car crash that claimed the lives of his close friends. The Federal Road Safety Corps explained it away with over-speeding. On a free way such as that, should we be talking about over-speeding? Someone should have taken responsibility for the vehicles said to have obstructed vehicular movements on the road that ill-fated day.
Some got kidnapped and lost their lifetime savings in ransoms. Many undisclosed cases abound across the states of the federation. The Diaspora people are easy targets and are monitored for a catch because they have been associated with the megabucks because the naira keeps bourgeoning at the sight of their dollars.
Somehow, we must change this Nigeria that happens so negatively to its citizens without discrimination. The situation is a major factor that ignites the mass exodus of people in search of better societies where merit is rewarded and diamonds are not darkened while pebbles are polished. How do we change this narrative except by getting our politics right so that things can fall in their correct lines? Indeed, Nigeria has arrived at a make-or-break point.
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