The longest twilight
The idea of the DSH is a signal example of why Awolowo stood among his generation of leaders and continues to stand out even almost three decades after his demise. He wanted to set up “a specialist hospital with the standard of care as high as to be compared with the best to be found anywhere in the world”. Unlike most other members of Nigerian ruinous ruling elite, Awolowo was always thinking of how to transform every privilege into a social policy that could be accessed by everyone in an egalitarian society. His contemporary would rather enjoy the privilege and hold on to it as constituting one of the elements that marked their distinction from the rest of society. In this, Awolowo was leveraging a certin conception of corporate agency that is distinctive in his culture, especially in its encounter with Western modernity.
Awo’s widow turned the sod of the specialist hospital on her 70th birthday in 1985. Unfortunately, the dream was not fully realized before Awo died in 1987. By the time of his death, Awolowo had committed two million naira (N2 million) to the project. Therefore, as HID said above, the full realization of the dream constituted for her one of the ways of immortalizing her husband.
Such was the admiration of HID and her husband for the unparalled excellence of the Mayo Clinic that they recommended it to anyone who had serious medical challenges. In fact, their knowledge of the Clinic and readiness to encourage others to benefit from the expertise of the medical staff of the hospital – which led them to start DSH – helped in saving the life of one of their relations, Chief (Mrs.) OyeyemiAyotundeOsibamowo.Osibamowo, who was eighty in 2015, reveals that when she became ill at fifty-three, she and her husband travelled to the UK for medical treatment. There, she was told that she had cancer and had only a little time to live. She was already losing weight and was unable to eat well. After they returned to Ikenne, they strolled from their house which was very close to the Awolowos on a visit.
“Ayo, what is wrong with you?” the highly observant HID asked when she saw her.
She revealed that she was dying. That attracted the attention of Awolowo too. They both asked for the details. Then they told her she must go to Mayo Clinic in the United States to seek a second opinion. That was the best hospital in the world, they assured her. If a solution could be found, it would be found there. After they took the advice, Mrs. AyotundeOsibamowo was touched by what happened next.Awolowo asked her husband, Tunji Osibamowo, for a confidential discussion. When they left the place, he revelead to his wife that Awolowo wanted to know if they needed financial assistance for the journey to the US so he and HID could help. But Tunji Osibamowo assured them that they could pay for the journey and the treatment.
When she eventually visited Mayo Clinic, the doctors there diagnosed her case and returned a heartening verdict. She didn’t have cancer! She was suffering from a different but also potentially fatal ailment, but one that could be treated. She was admitted to the hospital for surgery. She returned to Nigeria hale and hearty.
“But for Mama and Papa, we could have taken the advice of the hospital in Britain”, says the happy 80-year old whose parents had their honeymoon at the Awolowo’s home in Ibadan.
“Mama is the most important woman in Nigeria”, she adds. “She influencedAwolowo for the good of the country. We don’t want her to pass away for a long time…..”
On December 26, 1987, about seven months after her husband died, HID organized the foundation laying ceremony of the hospital that was planned to replicate Mayo Clinic, the DSH. The event coincided with the golden wedding anniversary of the Awolowos. She told the audience that she deeply regretted that her husband had passed. But she was happy that the military President, General Ibrahim Babangida, who had been especially kind to Awo in his life time, personally attended the foundation laying ceremony and gave a “moving speech”.
Even though he didn’t attend Awolowo’s burial the previous May, perhaps because of the high-wire politics that attended it, Babangida ensured that Awolowo was given a “national state burial” and sent his deputy, the Chief of General Staff, Augustus Aikhomu, to lead the federal government delegation. In what – as Chief OluFalae, who was then the Secretary to the Federal Military Government, revealed – Babangida described as a “love letter”, during Awolowo’s last birthday, the man named “Maradona” by Awo’s associate, Chief Bisi Onabanjo, for his endless capacity for dissembling, said Awolowo had been “the main issue in Nigerian politics”. Unlike every other Nigerian head of state before him, Babangida was very graceful towards Awolowo and recognized his unsurpassed administrative genius and good judgment.
While under Major General Muhammadu Buhari, Awo’s associates had been either detained or given ridiculous jail sentences, and his Apapa home was invaded and searched by soldiers, in a manner slightly reminiscent of the serial harassment that his family suffered with John Lynn in the First Republic, Babangida mobilized Awo’s warm relationship towards ensuring credibility for his regime in the most developed part of Nigeria.
The DSH was scheduled to become operational on Awo’s 80th post-humous birthday, March 6, 1989. But that was postponed till March 1990. The project did not attract the kind of support that HID had hoped for. It was a multimillion dollar project that would have been easier to pursue with the awesome influence of Awolowo, if he were alive. As the Corporate Affairs Manager of the DSH and late SegunAwolowo’s friend, Mr. Kunle Olasope, said in 1989, “If Papa had lived, nothing would have altered (the original) arrangement, for as
everyone knows, he would have employed his characteristic ingenuity to mobilize and harness all necessary human and material resources for success”.
TO BE CONTINUED
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