Why are Nigeria’s heroes ‘dying’?

In other parts of the world, you cannot gain the heroic status unless you did something really noble and outstanding, and mostly in the service of humanity. But not Nigeria. Here, one could be a nonentity yesterday, attain public office by some crookery, feed fat on the bill of the public, become an emergency philanthropist amongst the people and thereafter become a hero.

Sometimes, people attain public office through honest means, go on to live up to the expectations of the electorate, those expectations usually not being substantial, and they are crowned the new hero in town.
But what happens to the real people who have served the country with all their might? Nigeria abandons them, sometimes even until death!

There is a video currently circulating on social media. Even though one is unable to confirm its veracity, it is nonetheless pathetic and representative of the unfortunate experience of many people who have served Nigeria with all their power and might.

The video is that of a young man who claims to be a Lance Corporal in the Nigerian Army. Now soliciting for help from Nigerians under the auspices of Help this Life in Need, some foundation, which has reportedly taken care of him since September 2018 or thereabouts when Emmanuel claimed he was diagnosed of kidney failure.

The young man from Imo State said he was recruited into the Army in 2013 and deployed as one of the soldiers to confront the Boko Haram insurgents. He claimed that when he fell ill a couple of months back, his case was reported to the medical board with a request for financial assistance to get a kidney transplant but the only thing the Army Headquarters could do was to “give me sick leave to go and look for better treatment at home”.

The soldier claimed he currently undergoes dialysis twice every week on the bill of the foundation and appealed to Nigerians to contribute to the efforts to raise the sum of N8.4m for a transplant in India, which doctors say he needs urgently. His video ends on a heartrending way as he coveted the help of the people to see that he does not die prematurely as he sees himself dying daily.

There is Chief Eddie Ugbomah, a veteran filmmaker and former Chairman of the Nigerian Film Corporation.
Ugbomah, now 78, was known to have produced and directed films which were social commentaries on contemporary issues of the period. After his return from the United Kingdom where he had studied and worked, Ugbomah produced and directed The Rise and Fall of Oyenusi, a movie about a notorious armed robber that terrorised Lagos shortly before then. Some of the other films to his credit include The Mask, Death of the Black President and Oil Doom amongst others. He was appointed chairman of the NFC in 1988!

Unfortunately, the first-generation filmmaker currently lies prostrate in a Lagos hospital ailing. His family and friends have, in the past couple of weeks, launched a N5m appeal fund meant to pay for a very urgent surgery that would save the Delta State-born veteran. Arts administrator and film journalist, Shaibu Husseini, who is leading the fundraising hinted in his daily report on Tuesday that things may get out of hand if the old man does not go into surgery in five days, yet less than N400, 000 of the N5m target has been raised!

There is also the case of the 72-year-old Peter “Apu” Fregene, who is reportedly incapacitated after suffering a stroke. He was the Green Eagles’ first choice goalkeeper between 1968 and 1971. He was said to have represented Nigeria at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico, but his family is currently begging for donations to offset his medical bills!
News about Fregene broke only two weeks after businessman Femi Otedola offered to foot the medical bills of former Super Eagles Coach and one-time skipper of the national team, Christian Chukwu. The former coach, who could not use his legs before he got the $50,000 lifeline from Otedola, has since been flown to the United Kingdom where he is undergoing treatment.

It is not likely that there would be an end to this list of people who have served Nigeria with their all at one point or the other but have unfortunately been failed by the nation in their time of need.

And the above illustrations expose two very disheartening realities about Nigeria. One is the fact that the welfare of the people is not a priority to their leaders. Whether young or old, serving or retired, the foregoing examples indicate that anyone who gets ill has no state cover. There are no evident community-based health insurance schemes that take care of the common man even as service to fatherland does not guarantee any special national commitment. And the constitution by the non-justiciable nature of Chapter II of the 1999 Constitutions makes it impossible for citizens to challenge this major leadership failure.

The second point, which is a corollary of the first, is the unacceptable collapse and failure of the public health system in the country as well as the resort to medical tourism.

Note that of the four instances cited earlier, two have already been marked for India and the UK, while there are no certainties as to where the other two may end. The reality is that the primary and secondary levels of healthcare delivery in the country are nothing to write home about. And the result of this is that unthinkable pressure has been brought on the tertiary healthcare institutions such that they have become a collective shame.

But how this is so is not really far-fetched. Since he got into office in 2015, President Muhamadu Buhari himself has made the UK his first choice of medical tourism destination. And when he was criticised, his health minister, Prof Isaac Adewole, did not just take sides with his principal, he backed up his defence of the President’s choice by passing a vote of no confidence in the sector he superintends when he indicated that Buhari’s record may not be safe in Nigeria. Not too long ago, the Minister of Labour and Employment, Chris Ngige, himself a medical doctor, indicated that Nigerian doctors were free to leave the country in search of better opportunities. This is in a country where one doctor is said to attend to about 6,000 patients as against the one doctor to 600 patients standard of the World Health Organisation.

Yet, Nigerian leaders who are currently sold to the idea of fighting corruption fail to see the nexus between citizens’ disloyalty to the nation and the failure of the country to take care of its citizens, old and young.
When a country fails to provide basic healthcare and education for its citizens, when soldiers are left to deal with the misfortunes that befall them in the cause of their service of fatherland, when senior citizens are unable to access basic welfare programmes that make life bearable for them after retirement or access liveable pensions, such a country breeds a citizenry which would in line with the basic human instinct, first seek its own survival before sparing a thought for the nation. No one wants to serve Nigeria with one’s all and start to beg to attend to one’s medical needs at the age of 70. So, the root of the insane question for inordinate acquisition in this land now is the failure of the country to care for its people. Those who see how true heroes of the country end up as in the preceding cases, will do anything to feather their own nests even if the nation goes to rot.
Adedokun tweets @niranadedokun