Nigeria courting trouble without an enabling environment for the youth —Adedayo

Dr Samuel Adedayo a chieftain of All Progressives Congress (APC) in Lagos State and former secretary general of the National Association of Resident Doctors (NARD) in Kwara State says Nigeria needs restructuring to make progress, in this interview by BOLA BADMUS.

Some people are saying that the crisis in Lagos APC blossomed because APC leader, Senator Bola Tinubu was outside the country for some months to receive medical attention? Could that be the reason?

Things would have been different if he was around, there is no doubt about that. Asiwaju Tinubu has the grace of finding a way of coming to an amicable solution; he would pacify them. Of course, he is the leader and a big coach, he can look at a particular player and say let’s get this on. Some of these people that are agitating now agitated in the past and he settled them. When they come back to him, you will be shocked. For instance, somebody who is very close to me was in the defunct All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP), and that was about the time Raji Fashola was about to be picked as our governorship candidate for Lagos State. This man approached me to say I should join his party. This same guy was also close to Tinubu and I said no. They offered me the slot of House of Representatives at Apapa but I refused and said I was not leaving Asiwaju’s camp. Two days to the election, I was at Marina to see Asiwaju and met this same man there. He came back and all those who were following him at that time lost out at the end of the day. I am sure some of those that are making noise when pacified, they will be okay; it is their followers who would be messed up.

There was a reception organised by your group to welcome Tinubu from his medical trip, are you among those trying to urge him to contest for president in 2023 and why at his age?

I am one of those who is ever rooting for him, I will tell you the reasons why I am rooting for him and also the issue of age. When two boxers are about to engage each other in the ring, their records would be analysed, telling us how many times each had fought, the knockouts, draws and wins each had recorded. That speaks for that boxer who has the highest record of victory and that sends shivers down the spines of the opponent. There are several ways of assessing a character; either by what he says or his action. By the action of Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu, he has the capacity to be president, though a controversial figure, anybody who wants to leave a legacy must be controversial. If we look at Tinubu’s record as governor on how he catapulted the internally generated revenue (IGR) of Lagos to the present situation when a former Emir could say if any state wants to go, the only one he wouldn’t like to miss is Lagos; that speaks volume. The economy of Lagos is bigger than the economy of several African countries. I remember former Governor Fashola said at a time that Lagos alone spent about N2 billion on social parties on every weekend that is not a mean economy.  Talking of his age, I am a medical doctor; sometimes, a doctor will tell somebody he has only 10 years to live. At times, that doctor would die before that patient. Death and age are not related, otherwise, a one-year-old child will not die. When talking about age, nobody knows tomorrow; don’t let us play god about somebody’s life. The time and age one is going to die is beyond us.  For instance, the former American president, Bush was in his seventies when he became the president. The present one, Joe Biden is also in his seventies. We are taking about capacity and character, he is somebody who will spread wealth all over. Buhari has tried his best, South-West are rooting, the South generally are rooting, it is time for presidency to come to the South. If we want the country to remain as a nation, whether it is an unwritten and gentleman agreement, it is in the interest of the country for the presidency to rotate in the meantime.  When former President Olusegun Obasanjo finished his own eight years, power shifted to the North but because of circumstances, it shifted to the South. The North will be completing its eight years after Buhari. I think if they want this country to move forward, any serious party will take its presidential candidate from the South.

It is not certain yet if the APC is going to zone the presidency to the South. If they don’t, what is likely to happen?

I will not like to preempt God but I know that even the leaders of the North know what the South can do. Taking you back memory lane, in 1998 when AD was formed, it didn’t meet the requirements to be registered as a party but they knew there will be no democracy if they sidelined the South-West which was represented by AD at that time. They were forced to recognise the Alliance for Democracy (AD), I have this confidence that they will micro zone the presidency to the South-West. Buhari also said when he became the president that there were some regions that didn’t vote for him but expected him to leave those who supported him, declaring there is nowhere that is done, when you leaves the people who has backed you up. When talking about a character, he put people who didn’t struggle for power into power, those who had given up and had decided to resign to fate, they became presidents. There were people who couldn’t win a councillorship election, they were given tickets to become governors, House of Representatives members and so on. We are now talking about this man, as far as I am concerned, it is payback time for Asiwaju Bola Tinubu.

Your transition from being a medical doctor to a politician, pastor and farmer, how is it like?

By the grace of God, many people don’t see doctors until they die, the majority of people are healthy for a large percentage of their lifetime. So when one is talking about a doctor, we are talking about the sickly, only a small percentage of people go to the hospital. The larger population are those that are in the community like traders, farmers, and if one must influence them, one has to move out of his/her comfort zone which is the medical practice. A lot can be done but more people can be reached as a politician. I read one of the books by a philosopher, the first and best profession is politics, because of the ability to address a larger number of people. What I can’t do as an individual, as a council chairman, it can reach a bigger population. And some of the reasons we have challenges is that doctors are not involved in politics, that is why we always have one crisis or the other. If doctors are involved, we will not be sacrificial lambs. If we are like lawyers, things would not be like this for the the profession. If one is not involved and keeps aloof, they will just be looking at you. One has to participate and let your voice be heard. Like I said, in the Bible, Samuel was a leader, prophet and a seer, he was managing all the positions. Back in the village, I was living with the Baale of the village.

Some of the people that are quiet are causing harm to the country. There are two people that can cause harm to a community. The first set of people are those who know and they are not talking; they just keep quiet. The other set are those who don’t know but they are talking; they also spoil things. If you allow those who don›t know anything to have their way, they will mess things up. I used to tell my younger followers at Apapa-Iganmu that if they keep quiet and allow them enthrone a nonentity, once a nonentity is enthroned, it is always difficult to remove such person. This is because he or she would have been very powerful. The only way such person can be stopped is by not allowing him get there in the first place. There are collateral damages that we must guide against if this country must move forward. So, we need to actually mobilise some people, diverse professions to come into politics and brainstorm on the way out of the crisis. Like I said, I am one of those that don’t want this country to disintegrate, but we need to restrategise and restructure. I am totally in support of restructuring, because where there is no equity, people will be disgruntled and a disgruntled fellow may not have power to fix things but can destroy things.

You are talking about the involvement of doctors in politics, now that they are absent in government, what do you think government can do differently to address doctors’ incessant strike?

I don’t want to address the doctors’ issue in isolation. I want us to look at the health professionals in totality. We need to sit down and look at a formula on how to accommodate our health professionals like nurses, doctors, lab scientists as a whole.

Look at when lecturers were running away from the universities, they came up with a formula to have a special scale for lecturers, something like that can be done for doctors and health professionals. If doctors are not paid well, they will leave and we will be the ones at the losing end. There is no doctor that has been self-educated. The system trained most of the doctors, and after graduation, few months down the line, it loses doctors to the United Kingdom and our people are suffering back home. It is not everybody that is not contented and want to leave, some just want a little push so that they can meet their needs. We don’t have good statistics in Nigeria, people are dying in large numbers because of absence of the needed health professionals. We must also go back to the drawing board, we need to enlarge our medical schools to produce more doctors. Indian doctors are in UK, and in America in large number but the country is still a good place to seek medical help.

Cuba has one of the largest educated population, virtually everybody in Cuba is literate and their health system is so strong. When there is a special problem, a special solution must be proffered. We are in serious dilemma, we must look for solution outside of the box to solve the health professionals’ issue. Don’t let us think that we are healthy now, when it is one’s turn that is when one will understand the importance of health professionals. I have tried to reach out to the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Honourable Femi Gbajabiamila, that there will be need to do a special scale, just like they are doing for teachers.  Again, the shortage of nurses to doctors is scandalous, if a doctor is employed into private practice, in the next three months, the doctor is likely to leave for UK, once they pass a professional course. There are a class of people called auxiliary nurses, the government is insisting they don’t want to recognize them. Get these people to your side, let them go back to school, do short courses for them, accommodate them into the system. They will be useful in one way of the other. Even in America and other developed countries, nurses prescribe medicine for patients, which was the sole prerogative of doctors in the past. The first set of doctors we had in Nigeria didn’t go to medical school, they attended Yaba College of Technology, they were trained to do minor surgeries and they were called doctors in those days. We are in that situation now where we need to accommodate other health professionals.

In Canada, if one wants to study medicine, one will be asked to do an immersion for one year and afterwards, one will be allowed to go to school of medicine and be absorbed into the system. If I were a Health Commissioner, I will allow them to accommodate them. We have been fighting for years over this issue, we have not won yet, why don’t we accommodate them and make sure we absorb them into the system? In Apapa-Iganmu community, there is hardly a family that doesn’t have an auxiliary nurse attending to them. When, the regulatory body in charge of Lagos private institutions are coming, they only go to those registered institutions. For every one registered institution, there are about nine that are unregistered and operating underground, they have a way of reaching out to people, they are easily accessible. Doctors are naturally arrogant people, I am one of them. We don’t usually speak the language of the patients, so people prefer to go to the traditional medical expert who will sit with them and see them as friends while doctors see their patients from a point of master mentality, and when there is a master morality relationship, there is no way one can get the best of the relationship. Whereas reverse is the case, patients are masters to doctors.

For instance, we wanted to operate a patient, the anesthetist, surgeon, nurses were there but no patient, at the end of the day, we all had a rethink that the most important person is the patient. It is because patients are available, that is why we are called doctors. We have to sit at a round table even with those that we think they are not part of the profession; they may also have some inputs.