Mr. President, the optics are very bad

President Muhammadu Buhari finally declared he will be running for the office of the president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria in 2019. In my opinion, this was already common knowledge, but the president did more damage than good to his candidacy when the circumstances of the declaration are well considered.

Our culture and my education teach that what is said does not matter as much as how it is said. It is why someone will say “your mother” and you will laugh with them over the issue at hand, and why another person will say the same “your mother” and you will let out the fire and brimstone in you.

That president Buhari is running for office is actually not an issue, in fact, many Nigerians considered the new flash as stale, saying “we knew this already”. But the circumstances surrounding the expression of interest are worrisome.

UNIVERSITY OF IBADAN AND BILL GATE’S ‘SMELLING MOUTH’

In Yorubaland, when an adult tells you to do something, and you refuse, despising the years of experience, and the wisdom that comes with age, the act is considered as a statement. Your statement to that elder is that the elder has a smelling mouth. In the local parlance, you are simply saying enu agba n run. And when an adult has this metaphorical smelling mouth, you do not listen to them.

In this context, Bill Gates cannot be considered as the adult, at least not to Muhammadu Buhari who is at least a decade older than Gates. But his advice to the Nigerian government about health and education comes with years of experience, and the kind of wisdom that funding healthcare in Nigeria offers. Ultimately, his advice comes with a whole lot of research in the background.

Now to the optics: The president declared his interest to run for a second term on Monday, April 9, 2018 — at the same time hundreds of medical students at the country’s leading medical school, the University of Ibadan, were sleeping on the streets, after an indiscriminate hike in tuition and accommodation fees, from N40,000 to N180,000, followed by consequent eviction from their halls of residence.

It gets more awfully interesting when you consider these words below were offered as a strong piece of advice by one of the biggest funders of good healthcare in Nigeria.

“If you invest in their health, education, and opportunities—the ‘human capital’ we are talking about today—then they will lay the foundation for sustained prosperity,” Gates said on his last visit to Nigeria.

“In 1978, Dr. Olikoye Ransome-Kuti, who later became the Nigerian minister of health, helped establish primary health care as the global standard. We now know that a strong primary care system takes care of 90 percent of people’s health needs.

“Tragically, 40 years after Dr. Ransome-Kuti helped other countries set a course for the future, the Nigerian primary health care system is broken,” he added.

Nothing symbolises a broken health and education system more than the situation at the university of Ibadan, the same day the president decided to announce his candidacy. The university is the country’s leading educational and medical hub; that university has produced the finest minds in education and medicine in Nigeria. Ironically, the minister of health happens to be the immediate vice-chancellor of the same university. In fact, he obtained his first degree from the same school.

If potential doctors and “medical saviours” are protesting, and the president in his declaration of interest takes no cognisance of pressing national issues, like health and education, and just goes on to say he was presenting himself for a second term based on the clamour by Nigerians, then he is admitting that we as a people do not care about health and education.

Some may say it is an internal university issue, but based on releases from the University Senate and the vice chancellor Idowu Olayinka, it all boils down to inadequate funding of this federal university. And for the president’s re-election bid, these optics are bad.

MISSED OPPORTUNITIES

Declaration speech is often a golden opportunity for the candidates to sell hope to the electorate, but the president missed out on that. According to the presidential spokesman Garba Shehu, “The President said he was responding to the clamour by Nigerians to re-contest in 2019, adding that he wanted to give NEC the honour of notifying them first”.

Hours after this declaration, the president got on a jet to the United Kingdom for the Commonwealth Head of Government Meetings (CHOGM) 2018, and was welcomed to the UK by teeming protesters. For many Nigerians, Buhari in UK, without a set date of return, is a symbol of medical tourism, regardless of the meetings he came for. If medical education in Nigeria is under threat, and the president is declaring interest, and then leaving the country, without stating — even in passing — what can be done to better our lot, then the optics are even worse.

Today, the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) says Nigeria has one doctor for every 6,000 people — that has to be the worst in the developing world.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) recommends one doctor to every 600 people, but in Nigeria, it is one to 6,000. The doctors are doing 10 times more than they should do. Yet there is no incentive for students to get the education to enter into a field where you will definitely do more than you should, and probably pay the ultimate price.

The president seems to have a penchant for missing opportunities; he was given the opportunity of four years to convince Nigerians that change is possible, but that he has not been able to convincingly do, especially when employment, security and general development is considered. Another opportunity is the one he got to sell himself for a second term, which was done at a very miscalculated time, and on the eve of a perceived medical tour in the UK.

Many more opportunities will present themselves for the president to convince Nigerians that he is worth another four years. If he misses those opportunities too, then Nigerians will have to miss him come 2019. But for now, Mr. President, the optics are very bad.

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