Category: Jide Osuntokun

Jide Osuntokun

It is now generally known that old people are the most vulnerable group to this terrible viral pandemic.

We are daily told by the global media that anybody over 65 should isolate themselves and stay away even from their grandchildren who are said to be innocent carriers of the virus which however does nothing to them because of their strong immune system while affecting their grannies whose immune systems are compromised because of old age.

It is even being said that the hoped-for vaccines may prove to be too strong for the weakened immune system of the old people which means old people are in serious trouble if they will not benefit from the vaccines.

It was General Charles de Gaulle of France who in 1968, in retirement in his village, of Colombey-les Deux-Eglises, said old age was a plague which will eventually affect everyone.

Africans generally revere old age which is equated with wisdom. Both Christianity and Islam advice young people not to dispense with the advice of the old.

A wisecrack sent to my WhatsApp platform a statement that said the European Union has decreed that no one over 70 years shall participate in the government of any of its members.

This is of course fake news! He added that if this were to apply to Africa there would be no government since our presidents in Africa are mostly over 70.

In fact, most are in their 80s and 90s which made Mo. Ibrahim the Sudanese billionaire whose foundation awards $5 million prize to any voluntarily retiring African leader who has made serious impact on his country to deprecate the stay-put tendencies found among African rulers.

He jokingly said some African rulers in their 90s are still contesting elections and leading their countries. He asked where such elderly presidents are leading their countries to? To the grave? He asked.

I wrote in this column an article with caption of “This is not a time to hate” in reaction to what I saw on the internet when the late chief of staff to our president, Abba Kyari, was diagnosed as being infected by the Covid-19.

Some of his critics openly wished him the worst, which has now happened. Some even added that the old people in Nigeria have caused so much damage to the country that they will not be missed if they all died of the viral attack.

It is true that some of us old people may have wreaked havoc on the country by error of omission or commission but we are not all guilty and I believe  some old Nigerians, if called, can  still offer useful advice to those in government because of their accumulated wisdom garnered over the years and because of our education and life experience.

Wishing us dead is not the solution to the problem of Nigeria. I hope their wish will not come true because I am involved as an old man. I have always believed that many of our politicians have been around for too long. I mean there is a time to be born and a time to die.

Our leaders should harken to the demand of young people to be allowed to govern. It is better to do this than allow themselves to be pushed off their peacock thrones by youthful revolutionaries.

The USA with all its power has witnessed young people in their forties, people like John Fitzgerald Kennedy, William Jefferson Clinton and Barack Hussein Obama become presidents and provided excellent leadership in their country.

The decline of the USA under the 73-year old President Donald Trump may be due to his old age and the North Korean dictator Kim Jon Un may be right by calling him a “dotard “, that’s a confused old man! Unfortunately, the United States is doomed to endure for the next four years after January 2021, the presidency of either old man Trump or even older Joe Biden his Democratic Party opponent.

This is however not the best of times for elderly people. This is why when someone comes to me pleading that I take him or her to see a governor or minister for favours, I always refuse not out of arrogance, but because of possible humiliation by their assistants who would be discussing among themselves about the mission of the old man waiting in the lobby!

I turned 78 during my lockdown in April at the best place in Nigeria where one can be isolated at this time, the Redemption Camp of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG).

I came to the camp on Wednesday, March 17 with the hope of returning to Ibadan around Friday, March 20, and to travel to Dublin on the 25th of the same month. Man proposes but God disposes. I have been marooned here since that time, almost two months ago.

I am grateful to God and to the RCCG and my late wife, Pastor Abiodun Osuntokun of blessed and unforgettable memory who without knowing it, left me in the safe hands of this church 17 years ago by building a prayer house in this religious camp.

When people call me to find out how I was doing or if I was still alive, they are always sorry for me when I tell them about my location and being alone in my house with no wife or somebody to cook for me.  However, the wife of our General Overseer, Pastor (Mrs ) Folu Adeboye sometimes extends her well-known generosity by sending me food.

Of course, I always responded to my well-wishers making enquiry about my well-being, that I am doing well, taking long walks and eating twice daily by choice and that God is in control of my life and that there is no reason to be sorry for me. Life in isolation is of course intolerable.

Honestly speaking, I have gotten used to loneliness since my wife left me 17 years ago and because of the love we shared, the question of remarrying has never come to my mind, though it has been suggested many times by many good people.

This year of Covid-19 was perhaps very difficult because I celebrated my birthday on April 26 alone and I could not travel to Ibadan on May 3 to lay a wreath, as I normally do, at the grave of my wife because of the lockdown.

But I was touched by the kindness of my children and grandchildren, my extended family members and my former students who called on the anniversary of my wife’s demise and of course on my birthday, both days being uncomfortably close for me.

But I particularly want to say the reward of us teachers is not, and needs not be in heaven as we were made to believe before. Three of my former students made me happy in their own different ways. Biola Olusola, a Lagos lawyer, always takes me for luncheon at the Sheraton in Ikeja.

He also allows me to invite close friends, all expenses paid by him. On occasions when he couldn’t take me for lunch, he would send to my account some money for my celebration.

How nice of someone I taught almost four decades ago. I was born in Biola’s home town where my parents were “osomaalo” that’s traders. He has remained close to me forever. He did not forget to call me this time and to send some money for my birthday celebrations even from his own lockdown.

Tokesi, one of my young former students and a mother of two little ones credited my phone with two thousand naira. Opeyemi, an unemployed former student sent five hundred naira to my phone. I was really touched by this young ladies’ generosity.

I received calls from my former students scattered all over the world in Nigeria, the United States and Canada. By the end of the day, I was exhausted answering their phone calls.

I have been privileged to be supported generously by two of my former students before on different occasions, namely Pastor Tunde Bakare on two occasions, during my raising of funds for my Anglican diocese harvest in Ijero and marriage of my son some years ago.

Deji Adeyemi also once surprised me by his generosity. So, with these testimonies, who says the teachers’ reward is in heaven! Yes perhaps, they are there, but we can also get some rewards in the here and the now.

On the Coronavirus and old people, all I need to add is that we shall overcome. We are closely watched these days when we sneeze or cough in case we are manifesting signs of Covid-19. When I coughed recently, the way I was being asked if I was alright made me blurt out and ask if coughing was abnormal for old people.

I mean it comes with the territory. Sneezing too!  This is why I will advice all old people who plan to travel abroad to stay put here.

A friend of mine who traveled to New York during the time of Ebola and merely sneezed on the second day of his arrival in New York found himself locked down and isolated for 14 days with no chance of his calling his son to tell him his whereabouts.

These days I am always self-conscious if I cough or sneeze and rather than do this in the public I always swallow the sneeze or cough. This is what coronavirus has done to us, old folks!

By Jide Osuntokun

No one knows when we will be out of this Covid-19 crisis. Your guess is as good as mine. Scientists all over the world are working on possible medical solutions ranging from administering a cocktail of drugs that were meant for other conditions but which may well take care of those struck down by the novel coronavirus, to treatment with blood plasma of those who were infected but had recovered on those suffering from the virus and the ultimate solution of development of vaccines.  President Donald Trump carelessly sold the idea of an anti-malaria drug, hydroxychloroquine being effective in the treatment of Covid-19 without any clinical trial. Immediately he said this there was a run on the drug mainly now produced cheaply in India to the point that India started hoarding it. Trump had to threaten India before this immoral action was stopped.

Even here in Nigeria, there was a run on the pharmaceutical shops that had them. At the end of the hullabaloos, the drug was found to be useless against coronavirus and in fact it was found to do more harm on those affected by the viral disease. Recently, Dr. Anthony S.  Fauci, the United States federal government’s leading infectious diseases scientist,  announced that Remdesivir, which previously tested unsuccessfully as an antiviral against Ebola,  after clinical trial, showed that remdesivir may “ reduce the mortality rate of Covid-19 and can shorten the duration of the illness”. The Japanese in another trial had also found this drug somehow effective in the treatment of the coronavirus.

There are other trials of other drugs under the rubric of “drug repurposing” by which it is meant old drugs already approved for a range of disease from cancers, to H.I.V and others are being combined and tested for use against this new coronavirus. It is a case of necessity is the mother of invention. Development of vaccines are going on by over a hundred companies all over the world with prospects that one or more than one will be successfully tested and ready for use on humans by spring next year. That means we will be in this state of anxiety and animation for the next ten or so months. This is like waiting for eternity. Thankfully, the global efforts led by the European Union, organized a pledging conference to come up with $8 billion which will be made available to researchers working on vaccines for the coronavirus pandemic so as to ensure that when eventually developed, the vaccines will be sold at cost to all countries without profit so that no country will be excluded from benefiting from the solution on the grounds of poverty.  The European Union has pledged $1 billion, Great Britain, Germany, France, Norway and Saudi Arabia have already each pledged to contribute about half a billion dollars.

As I write, the United States of President Donald Trump has not shown any interest in the global efforts apparently believing the United States can go on to develop a vaccine on its own without being handicapped by any global coalition against profit.  China, where the virus broke on the world has also tactically refrained from joining the rest of the world to pledge any financial support. Most of the companies involved in the race to produce vaccines are private drugs and pharmaceutical companies sometimes aided by state grants. Ordinarily it takes more than 18 months to produce vaccines but in the case of this pandemic, the whole process is being shortened because the world cannot afford to be huddled down for almost two years while the economy remains prostrate and millions of people remain unemployed thus constituting social and security threat to national and international peace and security. The situation is so dire that rather than wait for the development of the vaccines to go through the normal animal testing, vaccines are already going through human testing. In fact people are already volunteering in Oxford, England to be used more like guinea pigs. My prayer is that these efforts will pay at the end so that we all can see some light at the end of this dark tunnel of the novel coronavirus.

Not much is known about what efforts are being made in China in terms of drugs or production of vaccines that may reduce the morbidity and mortality of the coronavirus. I will be most surprised if the Chinese do not have something up their sleeves. It stands to reason that a country where the problem first surfaced and which had overcome the problems and with very minimal mortality will surely have secrets about how to handle the problem. Unfortunately, the spat between China and the USA may be militating against full transparency and joint Sino-American partnership in finding solution to the coronavirus. The temporary stoppage of funding by the USA of the WHO on the grounds that the global organization is too pro-China is another stumbling block on multilateral approach to joint action. What is however clear is that whatever the case may be, the days of the coronavirus are numbered. One hopes that the world will be more prepared for whatever pandemic comes in future. This statement applies to all countries in the world, Africa and the United States inclusive. This is because the USA is the only major industrial global power which does not have universal health insurance cover and where most of the close to 78,000 dead have come from the ranks of the poor black and brown people. The post Covid-19 world would have to change for everyone. I hope it changes in Africa and in Nigeria in particular.

Here in Nigeria, it is quite clear that we as a country must change our approach to governance or events which we cannot control will change us. The coronavirus has exposed our medical unpreparedness for any medical emergency even of lesser severity than a viral pandemic. We muddled through Ebola and we are regularly having to cope with Lassa fever which is caused by our unhygienic way of life. Our filthy environment allows rats and other vermin to breed and affect our poorly kept food which we then consume with relish. I remember some years ago when China declared war on house rats and within a short time, the country unleashed its more than one billion people to wipe out rats from the country and it was done. When Jamaica was troubled by snakes, the British administration then in the country went to India to import mongoose which made mincemeat of all the snakes in the island. We can also do the same to the snakes and rats roaming around the northeast of Nigeria and the FCT in one burst of biological energy to solve a serious problem using simple natural environment-friendly solution. Now that the hydrocarbons-dependency of our country is proving to be near fatal, shouldn’t we begin to think out of the box about what to do? We cannot borrow our way out of the problem. No serious country would lend us money when they know we would not be able to pay. In any case, we should always try and cut our coat according to our cloth. The over-bloated bureaucracies of federal, state and local governments have to be trimmed. In this regard it is not just merging of parastatals and departments that we need to do; we must also rationalize the number of states and local governments. We do not need the hordes of people presently in our parliaments both at national and sub national levels.  In short. we need a new groundnorm to spell out all the changes that we desire.

There is just no money to have the bevy of universities and colleges politically established without planning about staff and money. Instead of the over 40 federal universities and still growing, we can admit all the students in them in half of the number with expansion of the old ones and stopping the jamboree of military, police, customs, navy, immigration, petroleum and transport universities. Territorially and culturally contiguous states can be encouraged to pull their resources together to integrate the present state universities. The great universities of Ife and Ahmadu Bello and University of Nigeria were built on solid grounds because they had the foundational backing of large and reasonably viable states unlike what we have now where states that do not generate revenue internally are rushing to establish two or more universities with inadequate staff and infrastructure.

If the present states must exist, they have to demonstrate their ability to be financially self-sufficient. In any case, in a reconfigured federation, ability to stand on their own will be the primary requirement for statehood. For Nigeria itself to be viable, it must be reconfigured along proper federal lines in which the states must create the federal government and not the other way round. This was what happened in the first republic. If Ahmadu Bello and Awolowo had known that they were signing up to unitary system masquerading as a federal system, they would not have signed up to the independence constitution. We must go back to the past to realize a viable constitutional future. It is as simple as that. Once the constitutional architecture is agreed upon, then the rest of how to become a modern state will fall in line. It is a disgrace that the whole of Kano State did not have oxygen in its hospitals to assist people choking to death as a result of coronavirus. If we have a functioning political and constitutional system, only people who can run things will be put in charge of government departments. Appointments will not be sinecures and will not be based on political jobbery.

Jide Osuntokun

The management of NNPC, the Nigeria-owned oil company issued a statement recently that it had decided to give to third parties the management of their refineries in port Harcourt, Warri and Kaduna after the completion of their turn around rehabilitation rather than run the refineries themselves.

I must confess that I see their decision a bit late and out of tune with best practice anywhere in the world. In 2007 and towards the end of his second administration, President Olusegun Obasanjo decided to sell the refineries to business men with demonstrated capacity to run businesses.

I believe Aliko Dangote was one of those who invited to buy two of the refineries then. The reasoning behind the decision to sell the refineries was that annual or periodic servicing of the refineries had become a drainpipe to national treasury and a source of corruption of unearned income for people connected to those in power.

Selling them was also in consonance with Obasanjo’s embrace of market economics championed by his friends in the West who justly felt state intervention in economic development in the Third World has not really paid off.

From our history, we ourselves came to realize that “government business was no one’s business”. Public corporations merely provided jobs for the boys and gave leaders the easiest way of avoiding deep thinking of how to solve unemployment problems in post-colonial Africa.

But after 60 years of independence, we should, if we are not mentally retarded, be able to think properly and do the right things to advance the development of our country .

Unfortunately the sale of the refineries was canceled by Obasanjo’s successor Umar Yar’Adua apparently under the influence of his radical group from Ahmadu Bello University who wanted the new president to cut his umbilical cord with the man who made him president.

One of the reasons for our underdevelopment in this country is the fact that we do not manage our resources well.

There is no reason why a country that has earned trillions of dollars from hydrocarbons and agricultural products since independence should be vegetating at this level of underdevelopment.

The way we manage our affairs is a magnet for corrupt nationals of other countries who come to our country to join our corrupt countrymen in the frequent feeding frenzy on our national resources which should have been judiciously invested in the development of our country.

We all see people from the Asian continent for example who come to our country with nothing but the shirts on their backs, use our banks to raise capital which they use to enter into so-called joint ventures with powerfully connected people to access preferred areas of our economy with privileged information to make cheap money without any hard labour.

When the late Professor Tam David-West was alive, he advised that these refineries should be sold because they had become bad investment.

I had written on this platform several times supporting those who advocated the sale of these refineries on the grounds that the money being wasted on their servicing could have been used to build new ones.

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I even wrote that the refineries be given gratis to the companies that built them on the proviso that they put them back to production. If done we would not have spent close to N10 trillion importing refined petroleum products  in the last 10 years and perhaps the new owners of the companies would have not only been paying taxes to the various governments of Nigeria, they would also have been earning hard currencies for the country from export of some of their products.

It is too late in the day to be spending billions of naira on so called turnaround of the refineries when they could easily be disposed off as they are. Setting up another outfit to supervise their management in joint operation with a third party is going to a dead end which does not make sense. I pray that our rulers will realize that they are not ruling over fools who can be fooled all the time.

It is a pity that our representatives in parliament do not carry out their oversight duties properly. If they do, they should have posed the right questions to the executive and try to stop this unwise and uneconomic venture of the NNPC.

We just do not have the time to be fooling around at the time when the usefulness of the oil industry is time bound in a world moving inexorably towards non carbon source of energy.

The concern for the abused environment and what that poses for the survival of the human race will, whether we like it or not, force the world to abandon the use of hydrocarbons in the foreseeable future.

Whatever money that can be made from our country’s hydrocarbons resources now should therefore be judiciously and wisely utilized. Gone should be the days when money from oil and gas is distributed as handouts to political hangers on.

The ongoing coronavirus has exposed our country’s political leadership to the growing anger of the youth who deprecate our absolute state of unpreparedness. There are no modern hospitals. Equipment necessary for modern hospitals are not present in the few hospitals that we have.

Electricity without which a modern health system can’t work is unavailable and most of our hospital staff are inadequately and poorly trained due no fault of theirs. The staff we have are poorly remunerated leading to mass migration of hospital staff abroad where they are not only well paid but better equipped to face the challenge of practicing medicine in the 21st century.

Good health system like the British National Health Service (NHS) requires adequate and proper funding and that is why the kind of wastes and unreasonable government practices in Nigeria will not be tolerated in other countries and we should henceforth not tolerate it in Nigeria.

This is why the so-called farming out the running of refineries to third parties in Nigeria must be stopped. The contracts for the turnaround of the refineries must be cancelled and replaced by outright sale or giving out the refineries free of charge to those who built them with the condition that they make them work.

The benefit immediately to Nigeria is the husbanding of our resources and saving the yearly one trillion naira that would have gone into refined petroleum importation which is in itself marred with corruption as well as the millions of dollars for turnaround servicing of the dollar guzzling refineries.

This present government cannot be talking about blocking the loopholes in government spending while tolerating the shenanigans going on in the NNPC.

Business cannot continue and must not continue as before if and when we survive the coronavirus which has exposed our soft underbelly of absolute unpreparedness. The work of government needs to be taken more seriously as from this time on.

Our people have become very sensitive to maladministration at every level of government. The present stimulus package as palliative for the hardship caused by the coronavirus is being mismanaged. Food and other materials including money that were promised our people are being poorly distributed to the discomfort and discomfiture of the people.

Even though some of the people know that government lockdown imposed on them is for their long-term interest, many are saying that they may be killed by hunger before coronavirus catches up with them. It just cannot be business as usual.

Nobody must be allowed to make money out of the misery of our people. Not even at a time when the coronavirus has become a leveller not knowing the rich from the poor. In any case what does the rich do with money nowadays when one cannot access the money in the shut banks or ride fancy and expensive cars on closed roads.

We are in a new world! Everybody should be better prepared to face this new world with new attitude and commitment to work both as individuals and as government.

It is in this light that I appeal for frugality, deployment of government resources to where they are most needed and cutting off unnecessary fat. Economics is not neuro-science, rather it is common sense science.

No individual would run his personal business the way we have been running the oil industry since Oloibiri in 1956. Is it any wonder that since 1956, the NNPC cannot on its own without joint venture partners explore and exploit for crude petroleum or gas?

It has remained a sleeper partner collecting rents and commissions and selling oil that it does not produce while paying humongous salaries and allowances to its over bloated staff opaquely recruited with no public oversight.

By Jide Osuntokun

This is the worst of times in the world with the tragedy of coronavirus bringing out the best and the worst in many people. Doctors are risking their lives to save many even when they have no protective gadgets to protect themselves.

It is not that they have conquered the fear of death but because of the Hippocratic oath they have taken and their individual consciences, they will rather risk their lives to save others than selfishly keep their own lives when they know they can make a difference.

It is this commitment that made my late brother, Professor Kayode Osuntokun to say in the 1970s that going on strike by doctors is a betrayal of their oath to save lives.  He was very unpopular for saying this but he could not be bothered.

While doctors are saving lives, there are others involved in price gouging by buying available stuffs including medicines, toiletries, ventilators, clinical masks and so on and charging huge prices in order to make unearned profits at the cost of human lives.

Recently when President Donald J. Trump of the United States said chloroquine may help in the management of coronavirus, the drug commonly used against malaria disappeared from the various pharmacies in Nigeria. I would not be surprised if our intrepid Nigerian traders have exported this drug to earn the much sought-after foreign exchange.

Thank God, we Nigerians do not generally eat foreign food. If we did, by now all the shelves in our supermarkets would be empty because those with money would have cleared them from the shelves whether they need them or not.

What really worries me is not the human propensity for looking after himself or seeking comfort for oneself but the hatred that has become noticeable since the outbreak of the coronavirus against people in authority and people of certain age.

It is common in the social media to read or hear vituperations against certain categories of people for alleged non-performance of duty while in government the consequence of which has brought us to this pass where nothing works in our country.

I agree that people have the right to be angry against the generations before them. But to wish them dead is ungodly. I have seen and heard of people celebrating the news of people in Aso Rock the seat of the federal government of Nigeria, being hit by the coronavirus. People do not only rejoice at this bad news but go further to wish that those afflicted should die!

There is never a time to hate. Those who hate others for whatever reasons are destroying themselves. Their reason is that those in power are responsible for the suffering of the masses. How will the death of a few people in positions of power solve our problems of underdevelopment?

Our Holy books say God does not want the death of sinners but rather that they should repent and live. Anybody wishing another person dead has committed a mortal sin because no one has the right to seek the death of another person except as a punishment for murder.

I heard and I read online, angry young Nigerians saying since the coronavirus is deadly for people over 70, Nigerians should welcome it because in Nigeria this is the category of people who have ruled and ruined the country. They assume that after that generation are wiped out Nigeria will suddenly become a great country run on perfect moral principles and the country will in fact become a utopia on earth.

This of course will not happen.

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I am one of those who believe Nigeria can do better taking into consideration our human and material resources. There were signs of this at independence. I was in secondary school in 1960 in the year of our independence. We had high aspirations and the sky was the limit of our aspirations.

We were also inspired by the kind of leaders we had. This was not only in politics but in the society as a whole among the teachers, bureaucrats, the clergy, the farmers and peasants, the traders, the military, police, paramilitary forces and businessmen.

There was little or no crime and most people did honest jobs to earn honest income. Crime was small and containable. It was not utopia and no country was perfect. We also had five-year development plans in which we matched planned development with resources.

We had good boarding schools and good hospitals and the University College Hospital, Ibadan was one of the best hospitals in the Commonwealth. The hospital was so famous that some members of the Saudi royal family used to come for treatment there.

We lost all this  with the advent of easy oil money and with the military incursion into politics and the introduction of federal character, ethnic balancing, bringing everything into the same pedestrian level and abandoning institutions of excellence in the name of if there is great university hospital in Ibadan, Kano, Maiduguri and Zaria must  have one not minding if there was money for this.

If there was no money for federal character hospitals, then no city would have one. This is how we brought everything down to the level in which the elite go abroad to treat headaches!

We can make a case against all the governments we have had since 1966. What I object to is to blame the present government for the accumulated faults and neglect of all the former governments. This is not to say the present government has not been shooting itself in the foot by its lopsided appointment based on preferred ethnic and religious considerations.

It is really sad that the Nigerian academic community which in 2015 said anybody but Goodluck Jonathan and passed the word round that Buhari was the man on the high horse to deliver our country now feels let down. We feel the pain as the ordinary man.

How come most of our governments including this one has not been able to change our country and our lives for the better? The answer lies in two things. The first is corruption which permeates everything in the country particularly in politics to the detriment of everything.

The late Right Honorable Nnamdi Azikiwe said in 1959 that Nigerians play the politics of poverty. He said politicians came from poor beginnings and that when they get into power and see the opportunity to make money, they determine to make as much of it that no one in their families up to the fourth generation will ever be poor again.

Side by side with this is the politics of “stomach infrastructure” where greedy plebes prefer eating and voting for those who stuff their stomachs with food than those who can lift them out of the underclass they find themselves. So, all our corrupt ways can be sociologically explained.

Politics has become a means of resource allocation even on a personal level. The second reason why nothing works is because we have replaced our previous competitive and cooperative federalism with unitary government in which the individuals who capture the centre can do whatever they want with our resources while those at the peripheries look sadly at them.

To change the situation, we have to tackle the two highlighted issues above. There is no need dancing around the issue of development when we know the key to unlocking our problems.

Yes, mistakes have been made. My generation and that before me are responsible for the problem. As individuals, only some few of our generation can be held responsible but whether we like it or not, all of my generation are vicariously responsible for our general underdevelopment.

We owe it to the up and coming generation to plead with the Buhari government to put in motion a way forward out of this morass in which we find ourselves. He can look for young people to draw up an actionable plan possibly extracted from the Vision 2020 gathering dust in Aso Rock archive.

This time around, it should be young people who should see vision while old people dream dreams. We cannot continue to do things as before and expect to see changes. That will be pure insanity.

But having said this, my generation should not be prayed away and handed over to coronavirus to deal with us for errors of commission or omission in not planning properly for the present. As Mo Ibrahim, the Sudanese billionaire said recently, the old guard of African leaders in their 70s, 80s and 90s should yield their positions to the youth.

He asserted that a 90-year old president leading a nation can only lead that nation to the grave! But let us pray for the young people who are destined to rule our country that they would not repeat the mistakes of the past. It will be a tragedy if they do that.

By Jide Osuntokun

It is not if the coronavirus will hit us hard like some of the European countries it is when. We are being told by our governments that they are prepared when it is obvious, we are not. The truth is that we do not have the medical infrastructure necessary to contain the coronavirus pandemic. The emphasis should be containment and not treatment because we don’t have enough doctors to go round and enough hospitals. I tried to guess the number of hospitals we have in Nigeria and one will be shocked that we do not have up to one thousand hospitals. I am not talking about consulting clinics masquerading as hospitals.

Many of our general hospitals are legacies of colonial rule. Some have remained puny institutions without expansion since the British left Nigeria.  Our neglect of the health sector for perhaps half a century has caught up with us. The city of Ibadan, where I live, does not have more than four hospitals including the old University College Hospital which too has been underfunded for years to the point that the lifts don’t work and water does not flow in most parts of the hospital. It will be a miracle if we have hospitals that have ventilators critical in the management of those struck down with coronavirus.

Paradoxically, we have qualified doctors who cannot be certified because they have not found hospitals to hire them for the one-year mandatory housemanship. The health sector is totally unorganized like one will find in other countries. There has been attempts by private people to organize a health insurance scheme and general practitioners (GP) system by which everybody is registered with his or her own doctor so that when they fall sick, their GP will be the first line of defence. But in the disorganized medical practice in Nigeria, the teaching hospitals appear to be the only hospitals people trust to treat them, thus overwhelming their facilities and thereby bringing the teaching hospitals to their knees and to the pedestrian levels of general hospitals.

If we make it through this coronavirus pandemic, Nigerians will have to force their government to institute a health insurance scheme for the whole country. If it cannot be done countrywide, we must begin at state levels with each state having its insurance scheme funded by contribution from all employed and those in self-employment. This is not rocket science. Each province in Canada has its own health insurance scheme which is transferable when one moves from one province to another. The simplest way to explain this to Nigerians is to look at vehicle insurance scheme where vehicles cannot go on the roads unless the vehicles carry insurance. In this way we will have an organized medical system if not for this present pandemic at least for the next one if we survive the present pandemic. With this GP based health scheme we will have data on the various maladies afflicting Nigerians and our underfunded teaching hospitals will be in the best positions to treat patients referred to them and to train future doctors.

The present situation where trained doctors cannot find jobs will be obviated. But perhaps at the end of the road we will need to discuss budgetary allocations of funds for the health and education sectors and how to fund them. We must commend the state governments like those of Lagos, Oyo, Kaduna, Ogun and Ekiti that have domesticated the preventive measures in their states by suggesting that some none essential workers should stay and work from homes. What in Nigeria constitutes “essential workers”? How does anybody work from home in Nigeria where there is no electricity?

Are the states wired for internet connection? Do civil servants have laptops or IPAD or IPHONES or phones that can connect to their bosses? These questions may simply be academic because cynics will dismiss most of the bureaucrats as not doing anything anyway, and that when they are in office, they are busy doing nothing because the capital budgets that should engage their attention are not there. Many civil servants are just there earning salaries for doing nothing. Whether this is true or not remains a moot question. Civil servants are engaged to keep the unemployment down. There are just too many duplications of jobs in the unwieldy 36-state structure and Abuja FCT that operates as a state and 774 local governments and the federal leviathan in Abuja, all consuming money that could well have been used for physical development.

These are not the best of times for the entire world. Our people should be told that we do not know the level of our exposure to the coronavirus instead of being told we only have a few people infected by the virus. Just say we don’t know. That will be the honest thing to say. Then our people can be asked to follow the medical regime established by the WHO. Whatever the hospitals we have can be expanded and refurbished to cope for any eventuality. Ventilators and such sophisticated equipment are not even available in the numbers needed in advanced countries in the world not to talk about us here. One can only say “Amen “to people who are saying substantial numbers of people globally will develop immunity to the coronavirus after infection. This is where lies our hope in Nigeria and Africa as a whole.

Looking at the global spread of the pandemic, it seems the tropical areas of the world are for the moment spared of the coronavirus infection. The number of people suffering in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean is relatively small. Perhaps the unseasonably high temperature in recent times and the unbearable and unbelievably hot weather make survival of the coronavirus impossible.  That probably accounts for the low level of infection in those hot areas of the world. This also gives some hope that by the time high temperatures in the summer kicks in, in the northern hemisphere, coronavirus pandemic will taper off. I must say this is the hope and not the science of virology. Curiously, Russia claims just a few hundreds of sufferers, that is if the claim of the Putin regime can be trusted. Japan for some time was apparently suppressing the figures of sufferers in order to persuade people that the Olympics games scheduled to begin in July in Japan can go on. But it is now crystal clear that the games will have to be postponed till next summer to give all athletes a chance of adequate preparation.

The good news however is that at least China has been able to contain the coronavirus. But our cheer is dampened by the phenomenal death rate in Italy and the rising mortality in Spain, France and Europe generally and the United States. If the prognosis of self-immunity pans out, the world may be able to breathe easier in a few months to come.

Then will come the main job of economic recovery after the pandemic. The services industries of aviation, hotels, tourism, housing, and insurance would have been severely affected. This is also going to be severe in Nigeria and particularly in a place like Lagos which in recent times depend on services than on direct taxation and allocation from Abuja. The national revenue itself will have to rebound so that money can be available for revamping the economy. The current global price of commodities particularly oil and gas will have to move up for the Nigerian economy to go back to a relatively stable and sustainable level. The economy was already suffering from spending too much of national resources on the war against Boko Haram and other security problems all over the country to the detriment of health and education sectors. If we make it through the coronavirus tragedy without much damage, we should take the opportunity to sit down and map out the way forward. We cannot in this modern world, behave as if we were in antediluvian times. We must march in tandem with the rest of the world. We must take a holistic perspective on our structure of governance and on our health and education sectors. We must find out why some people are so mad with the government and the society that they would take up arms against both society and government. If we do not do this, our insecurity problems will like cancer, metastasize beyond surgical treatment that it will be too late to save this unhappy country and the question of having an organized health sector will become irrelevant.

Jide Osuntokun

Sunday March 8 was international women’s day. The day is devoted to celebrating the role of women in national and international lives of the world as well as interrogating reasons for discrimination against women in politics,  religion ,the professions and the quest for equality across all the facets of our lives .

Women have made remarkable progress in their struggle for equality in modern times . But there are still mountains to climb .

Until 1918 women in England could not vote in elections . The suffrage was extended to them due to the agitation of the suffragettes led by  the Manchester born political activist Emmeline Pankhurst.

Apart from the activities of the ladies , the role of women as munitions makers and factory workers to relieve their men folks for  active service in the war fronts during the First World War convinced political leaders of the usefulness of women when  fully engaged in the domestic front during the war which required total mobilization of all people , men and women .

The example of Britain in conceding voting rights to women was followed all over the civilized world , even then,  they still had to fight for it in every country . Voting right  was not  a mean achievement because with voting right came representation in parliament.

With representation came the chance for women to ask difficult questions which broke down political and economic traditions and dogmas  established over thousands of years .

Men used to say the good Lord created Eve only to be a helpmate for Adam and a helpmate cannot be equal to her boss .The judeo – Christian traditions confined women to the role of second fiddle. God was not the God of Abraham and Sarah but of Abraham , Isaac and Jacob .

Saint Paul said specifically that women shouldn’t head a church and that whenever they had something to say they should tell their husbands who will apparently say it for them . Of course the position of Mary the mother of Jesus was highly venerated in the  Roman Catholic Church which elevated  her to a level of an intercessor  between man and God.

Muslims regard women almost as property of men . Men can have as many as four  of them at at any given time and to divorce them ,men just have to tell them  four times that they have been divorced and give them letters of divorce just like in  Judaism.Even in cases of rape the evidence of four women is equal to that of a man which makes convictions almost impossible .

Women had absolutely no political or property right. What was true of the Abrahamic religions of Judaism , Christianity and Islam was true of the Far East polytheistic religions of Hinduism ,Buddhism and Shintoism .

Religion was the greatest cultural obstacle women had to overcome to be recognized as equal to men . The men were of course not ready to give up their vested and privileged interests and advantages .

Here in Africa the position of women was precarious.Men could marry as many as their energy could cope with . They provided the children who were needed to help their fathers on the farms and they also  provided additional Labour if needed .

In rural agricultural communities the role of women was limited to production and procreation . They had no political rights whatsoever. Of course in sophisticated societies of organized kingdoms ,there were lines of female chiefs and there were aberrant instances where women became” kings “.

Where that happened the women ceased being women they became men in dressing and behavior .Modern women have therefore had to frontally tackle all the cultural prejudices against them .

The struggle for equal rights intensified in the 1960s and came under the rubric of what was called the feminist movement. This refers to series of political campaigns and agitations demanding reproductive rights , end to domestic violence against women, granting of maternity leave, voting rights , equal pay ,  end to sexual violence and harassment.

Betty Friedan first published a book called the “ Feminine Mystique “ in which he demolished the myths of the 1950s that a woman found happiness and contentment in being housewives.

She said the idea that woman’s role in life was to attend church , cook the man’s food and take care of the children was a man’s idea popularized without any input from women and that women like men want to have fulfilled lives In careers and to have independent source of wealth as well as own property .

She said that women want the same things as men and have the same desires and that these could be realized without derogation of what men already enjoy .

Read Also: Gender equality by 2030: dream or reality?

The feminist movement in the United States in the 1960s took a much more radical tone through the activities of their most well known leaders who through magazine articles and books enunciated the beliefs and ideologies of the movement.

Much more radical books particularly by Germaine Greer  their philosopher who wrote the book “ the female Eunuch “  and the article by the much more politically savvy Gloria Marie Steinem  who wrote an article titled “After black power ,female liberation “gave direction to the movement. Not all female supporters were feminists in the sense of wanting to be rid of men  .They only wanted equality .

Others challenged established traditions and even way of dress . Some went to the extent of dramatically burning their braziers  and letting their breasts all hang out as an act of liberation. Some even resorted to violence like the “ burn baby burn” of the urban black revolution of the contemporaneous black power movement of the 1960s when young black peoples forcefully demanded for equality or death .

The radicalization of the movement drove away many women who would have ordinarily supported it . There is however no doubt that the publicity and the direct action of many of their supporters forced men to have a rethink about the place of women in society.

Many of the demands of the women have been conceded by the male dominated society . But there are still areas where final victory still remains to be won particularly in the area of parity in emolument.

America’s example in all these things have been followed in most parts of the world with the exception of the Muslim world where the status of women still leaves much to be desired. In Nigeria there are no constitutional restrictions against how far a woman can go .

The restrictions against them are cultural . Politically,  women are relegated to the background by such practices such as holding  political caucuses in the night and no self respecting women would leave their husbands’ homes to go to political meetings at night .

In Nigeria ,women have  however been members of state and federal legislatures . We have had a female Chief Justice , head of service, vice chancellors and so on but not governors or presidents yet ,but the time for these will come.

I personally have always supported women’s rights . I remember with fondness the late professor Jadesola Akande second  Nigerian female vice chancellor  through my nomination when I was in Lagos State University Council . She chose me as one of the trustees of Nigeria’s women party sometimes in the 1980s .

I told her “ Jade I am not a woman “ in her characteristic way she said “ is your mother not a woman ?” I quickly agreed to her demand .I end this article with a poem by my 9 year old grand son Finn oluwasijibomi  Lyon celebrating gender equality in his innocent but deeply thought poem.

“The man of poetry couldn’t think of a poem

It was hard to think it would seem

But he could think of anything

But may be now nothing

So he called all the smartest men

Men entering his house every day

But going then , away

If only he could open his mind

Then he might find

Years had passed then eureka

The perfect poem he had found

So surely it would bound

It was written right away

A girl then came

This girl will get the fame

She read her poem , the opposite of fame