The military’s medical outreach

THE ongoing military free medical outreach has suffered a major setback as many potential beneficiaries erroneously saw the humanitarian gesture as a Greek gift. The outreach has generated confusion and panic in the South-East, Rivers State and lately in Ondo State. Ironically, the  medical outreach is a vital component of the Armed Forces’ constitutional responsibility of securing the lives and property of Nigerians and it had carried out similar exercises in different geopolitical zones of the country in the past and without any fuss from any quarter.

The military, even in the advanced democracies, is known to have the best medical facilities and personnel. By reason of the disciplined nature of its vocation and the need to constantly have its personnel in a state of combat-readiness, the military must necessarily have top-of-the-range medical facilities and brilliant personnel that can handle emergencies expeditiously.  This has been the experience in Nigeria where civilian patients who are in positions to choose where to be treated often show preference for military medical outfits.  However, this year’s outreach has elicited negative reactions, imputation of motives and outrageous insinuations that have literally taken the wind out of the sail of the humanitarian gesture.  The noble intention that gave rise to the laudable exercise has been relegated to the background.

The insinuation was a grave one: the military was falsely accused of hiding under the cloak of a medical outreach to deliberately inject people with the monkeypox virus with the goal of depopulating the South-East. The pernicious rumour spread like wildfire and no one was ready to ascertain its veracity. Parents and guardians reacted by withdrawing  their children and wards from public schools to prevent them from being immunised by soldiers. There is no doubt that every discerning and dispassionate observer knows that this weighty allegation against the military is silly, hollow and mischievous. But for the sake of the tension in the country, the military should stop the medical outreach for now. It could resume the exercise after frayed nerves have been calmed, all doubts have been cleared and the altruistic motive behind the free medical services has become unequivocal.

It is obvious that there is so much mistrust in the land and the wicked rumour has fed on this to cause confusion and division. Sometimes, it sounds rather petty and fastidious when equity and fairness are urged in the distribution of key governmental positions among the diverse ethnic and religious groups in the country. But this rumour is one of the backlashes of ignoring admonitions on fairness. The bitter truth is that if that region had been adequately represented in the highest decision making body of the military, the allegation that the military was carrying out a phoney medical outreach  with a view to depopulating  the South-East would not have gained much traction. But in a situation where virtually all the strategic security positions in the country are being manned by Nigerians of the same ethnic extraction and religion, heightened mistrust  is understandably not far-fetched. Nigeria  is a plural  society both in terms of ethnicity and religion. Added to this is the issue of wrong timing of the outreach which aroused suspicion.

The humanitarian gesture was being extended while the people were still smarting from the military exercise tagged Operation Python Dance 2 which many in the region saw as a subterfuge to disorganise and disorient members of the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB).  Though largely among the uninformed, IPOB has a sizeable number of followers in the South-East who were ready to discredit the military by imputing ulterior motives to the execution of its corporate social responsibility initiatives and that, perhaps, was what happened. The operatives of IPOB were labelled to be the purveyors of the incendiary rumour, which was their own way of getting back at the military for the blow it dealt on IPOB and its leader.  Also, if the level of sensitisation and media awareness embarked upon by the military after the rejection of its free medical outreach had preceded it, the mischief-makers would not have had a field day.

It was after the damage had been done that the military was running from pillar to post to launch awareness campaigns and  do damage control. This would have been needless if the proper thing had been done initially.  Prior public awareness would have reduced suspicion among Nigerians, especially since previous outreaches did not involve immunisation which was at the centre of the currently beleaguered exercise.Yes, some mischief-makers have cashed in on the tension in the land to spread fake news about the outreach but the army ought  to have reckoned with the level of mistrust and confusion in the country in the timing and execution of its free medical outreach. We urge the military to always consider all factors, including seemingly extraneous ones, in the planning and execution of its operations.