The Minister of State for Health and Social Welfare, Dr Tunji Alausa, has exhibited the traits of great scholars. This is outside of the fact that, considering the current state of things in Nigeria, he is also an outstanding logician. He is imbued with unassailable line of thought. He recently held Nigeria and Nigerians spellbound with his superb arguments and conclusions on the state of the country’s public health sector. He argued so beautifully in favour of what our health sector has been reduced to by years and piles of sheer neglect and poor funding. Dr Tunji Alausa held that the Nigerian public health sector isn’t as bad as many disgruntled Nigerians say it is. According to him, oyibos from Europe and many other peoples of the world, especially from the sub-Saharan Africa, now run to the hospitals in our towns and villages to access real and up-to-date healthcare. Oh yes! This, he said, is because healthcare delivery in Nigeria is easily accessible (of course you and I know that our boarders are porous); quite affordable (you see how useful it is to devalue the Naira?) and readily available (if only you knew where to go).
To our oga-at-the-top Alausa, we do not know what we have been enjoying and we also do not know what we have been missing. In addition, we also do not know what we are saying by all those regular complaints against and the loads of unappreciation we have been heaping on the enviable Nigerian healthcare system. By extension, we are not built with the mouth to say ‘Thank you, sir’ to the lot the government is doing to upscale the healthcare delivery system in our dear country. We are just a bunch of alaimoore ─ ingrates!
Are you surprised? Why are you shocked? Why is your mouth agape? Oh, you think he is a Don Quixote? Come on, come off it…! Dr Alausa didn’t just catch his logic in the air. He has a bully pulpit because he buttressed his elegant contentions with a supremely fine and, again, unassailable example. Wait let me come closer and whisper the example to your ears only ─ you know, just like a mosquito would do when he wants to deal with you personally: Dr Tunji Alausa said our healthcare delivery system is so good that no less a personality than our Number One, the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, also gets SOME of his care in Nigeria!
Ehen now! So, if President Tinubu gets some of his care in Nigeria, what more do you need to believe that we have arrived? So, please tell me, what more do you seek as a citizenry? What more do the ever-lamenting doctors and usually-ungrateful and disrespectful nurses really want?! Should our government kill itself for the health sector? Is health the only aspect of our life as a country? Na health we go chop? Why can’t Nigerians see all that the government is doing? For instance, Dr Tunji Alausa sometimes dresses in fine suits as a hardworking doctor and minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, but you wouldn’t know how much he is sweating for you and I under those suits. The fowl perspires too but the feathers conceal the sweat. The monkey sweats too but we cannot see his perspiration because of his hair. So, what really does our health sector need again since Europeans and Africans now come to Nigeria for care while President Tinubu also receives some care in Nigeria and some in Europe? What do you people really want? Besides, Alausa also hinted us that “We have a President that is well, that is healthy and leading the country in the right direction.” So, what else do you seek?
Interestingly, Honourable Minister, I also ask the same questions o! We are a people who don’t appreciate what we have, especially a welfarist public-servant doctor like you. We also fail to appreciate ─ either publicly or privately ─ the icing on the cake you have served us in a silver platter, which is your monumental service in this almighty administration of a selfless government. We have also failed to see that the cabinet formed by Asiwaju Tinubu, to which you eminently and competently belong, is a pool of imperial, humane, hardworking and selfless men and women, including Beta Edu. We don’t appreciate gems when we encounter them. Alaimoore indeed! If not that you granted interviews recently, not many people would have known you to now be disturbing and disrupting your steady march to effective healthcare delivery system. I think we should warn them as we used to: Caution: Slow, Men at Work!
However, I will say, Dr Alausa, don’t mind us, sir. We just rant and fret over nothing. We also rant, fret and protest and make trouble for nothing. Once you echo: E lo f’okàn ba’lè ‘go and be rest assured’ we would be done with our threats and protestations, and continue to bear our cross.
By the way, what do all these threats or protests or strikes or even the eventual japa of doctors, nurses and other health professionals amount to in the estimation of government? Endless complaining coupled with our everyday strike actions can be said to be us acting like angry Mr Goat. What can Mr Goat, who is showing displeasure and outright annoyance by scratching the ground with his foot, do? Will he bite his owner? So, Dr Alausa, we can complain about healthcare and many other things in Nigeria all we like, would we bite our owners? We cannot! We are that helpless and toothless. You and your people know this fact and you exploit it so very well.
My people in the ghetto, our minister has told us that we have 900 ‘synthetic hospitals’ across the 36 states of the country. Do you know the meaning of synthetic hospital? The ones you understand are not upgraded or modernised. Dr Alausa was in the University College Hospital (UCH) in Ibadan earlier this year. He came to check victims of the Ibadan blast brought to UCH and to also assess the damage done to the federal tertiary health institution by the huge blast. He must have learnt that UCH had been in a running battle with Ibadan Electricity Distribution Company (IBEDC). UCH was without public power supply for some time because the IBEDC disconnected electricity supply to UCH! It took a lot of efforts to get the hospital reconnected. Let’s leave the effects of that electricity brouhaha out of today’s discussion. But, he who feels it knows it.
The minister wants us to agree with him. We do, but by so doing we have turned “charity begins at home” on its head. While he didn’t give specific figures about the medical tourists to Nigeria, we also wallow in our own thoughts as to how many Nigerians have access to correct basic healthcare here. How are our hospitals in the big cities faring in terms of personnel and equipment? Forget about the ones in the smaller towns. It is also a thing to wonder about that people would buy flight tickets in a place like, say Denmark, to come to Nigeria to undergo a surgery procedure. Could the people Dr Alausa was talking about be Europeans or Indians that require emergency care? It rankles the brain really, but we don’t know what he knows.
We are not in doubt of the minister’s words, because he is a US-trained physician, but they also sound illogical and are countering reason. All the equipment and nearly all the drugs we use here or their components are imported. Nigeria’s health indicators don’t appear appealing enough to attract medical tourism, the type Dr Alausa and co love to embark on. Or, could it be that our minister is talking about Nigerians and others who take treatments when they visit home on vacation? Minister Alausa, we need you to tell us more, sir.
In the meantime, we want to say thank you very much for helping us to appreciate what we have and what we don’t have. You know we lack any form of ambulance service; you know we don’t have a working health insurance system. You know how it id in the United States of America where you trained after University of Lagos. It would be interesting to hear what you’d say in comparison of the two healthcare systems.
Well, thankfully, Nigerians are a very peaceful (or is it docile?) people. Otherwise, if, like China, Nigeria kills a chimpanzee and show its corpse to the other rampaging chimpanzees, we might have some level of sanctity among our political leaders. We would also experience verbal sanity among Nigerian leaders. The Yoruba say it is “Pa iji han iji…”
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and then