Category: Health

For how long we had been telephone acquaintances before he suddenly passed on February 7, 2023, I cannot recall. I can put it, though, at about 10 years. We never met. He lived in Aba, I in Lagos. He called me his in-law because some of my sisters are married to Ibos. I, too, call him my in-law because some of his sisters married Yorubas. There was hardly any day he was not the one to call to start the day’s conversation, which hovered around politics, his health as a colon cancer patients, his helpful friends, his business and  challenges with his extended family. 

 In politics , we were on two sides of a cross-fire. He was 100 per cent a  Peter Obi follower, and would be glad if I was. He was one of my many  Ibo  friends who disliked traits I did not like in some Ibos who were giving all Ibo bad testimonials. My in-laws are good Ibos. So was Dr. Obisike Erondu. The  traits of bad Ibos which may have consumed  Dr Erondu included territorial ambitions not only in Nigeria but everywhere they went such as South Africa, Benin Republic, Cot d’ Ivoire,Ghana, China, India, Dubai e.t.c. These bad ambassadors of their  people are aggressive,coveteous, domineering, clannish, unaccommodating and not given to peaceful co- existence even on “foreign land”. Every nationality has its fair share of such persons.They become rotten eggs which despoil a whole basket of eggs if they become the active flag bearers of  a people and the pure stock does not call them to order.

 Thus, whenever Dr Erondu cast his health challenges aside, sought my votes for Peter Obi, and requested that I give him the telephone numbers of Yoruba politicians, he could speak with. I told him that Obi’s followers, not Obi himself,  would be  Obi’s  problem not only  in the Southwest but in the North as well. And it happened!

Hospice

I played the role of a hospice worker in his life. The hospice worker eases a terminally ill person into the world beyond this one, making him or her know no fear of a transition and, as much as is possible, keeps the dreadful health challenge out of the thought. Many hospice workers are too committed to the rules of their profession, as I found in the first book on this subject I bought in the 1980s when my maternal grandmother developed cancer in the right breast. I couldn’t tell her a lie about it. Then, I knew little about how to help to prolong the life of a cancer challenged person, using diet, nutritional supplements, herbs and other therapies. I frankly told her the doctors wished to remove the breast. She was about 76, a passionate Christian of the Christ Apostolic sect, and said she would rather return to her Maker the way she was born,  not butchered  or multilated. Of course, her references were to the earthly mud body, not to her soul. The difference between both are not well understood by the Christian Church which, accordingly, does not inveigh its adherents with the appropriate knowledge.  She thanked me for  being frank,  and  I prepared her for the beyond, like a dutiful hospice that  I was trying to be.  

I guess I did the job better with my father. For when he passed at about 3.30a.m in a hospital in Obanikoro, Lagos, on August 26, 1998, a Wednesday,  he told  me in a dream about  20 minutes later he had gone. Then,   I lived in Awuse Estate, Opebi, Ikeja. He  reminded  me to not forget everything we discussed, including his funeral the first  Saturday after he passed. He  took my hand in one of his, placed my step mother’s on top of it, before he said those parting words.  I prepared to  head immediately for Obanikoro but my wife, for security reasons in those days, advised that I wait till about 6am. By 5.30am,my brother, Yinka, and the wife of one of my father’s tenants came to break the news to me. I did as he wished. And, by 6am on the day after the interment, I went to the village cemetery to wish him to not abide in  the grave till a Judgement Day but to seek help from the helpers in the beyond he would find always nearby, and continue his journey through Creation, always getting involved in joyful activities, never looking back to the earth, to  avoid becoming earth bound as is symbolically and pictorially expressed in the Bible story of Lot’s wife and the mound of salt.

Obisike

I was glad this man was surrounded  in Aba by persons equipped with this knowledge of the after-life. He had another insightful friend, Clement Agwu who lived in Port Harcourt and became a health discussant with me through him. Through Mr Agwu this week, I learned that the great “twist”dance hero of the 1960s and early 70s, ELvis Presley, who came to Ibadan for a performance, had 75kg of impacted( stone) fecal waste in his intestine during autopsy. This was the combined weight of about six or seven babies at birth!. The lesson in that is  that we all must look after the health of our intestines. I do not know how Dr  Erondu look after his. But he bravely fought colon cancer and offered himself as a case study to all his friends. Not only did he change his diet, he undertook various  detoxification programmes. He was a man endowed with a sharp intellect, the crown of which were three PhDs. He was a Veterinary doctor. He ran a poultry, bred guards dogs and snakes for their poison which he sold abroad. By that account, I always teased him , I would not attend his thanksgiving service in the church or visit him at home  whenever he got well because snakes and I were no friends. He also had a great deal of interest in snail farming.

Cancer

The cancer was brutal. It blocked the colon passage and constipated him unless he took  laxatives.  He liked a particular brand. Whenever he took it, the laxative “pushed” out the congestion and, also, opened up bleeding spots in the tract. He bled alot with each evacuation. From our conversations, he learned he would be losing electrolytes as well and that too much loss of them could make him faint or die.Thus, he began a routine intake of ORT salts from the pharmacy after every laxative therapy. He backed this up with fruits and vegetables juice intake, avoiding the sugary or sweet ones, since cancers use sugars to grow. Once in a while, he took a blood transfusion administered by a nurse who lived nearby in his housing estate.

Surgery

Dr  Erondu declined surgery that would divert evacuation from his lower abdomen to a bag which would hang outside his body for the rest of his life. He wished to become functional again as a parent and head of his family, professionally, in business and politic. He detested surgery  because, inevitably,  it would involve chemotherapy, which sometimes kills rather than save life. On top of these travails, he engaged in extended family inheritance battles which sapped his energy.

Family

His grand father was a land owner. When the grand old man passed, he left his eldest child in charge of his property. By Ibo tradition, the eldest child will share the property as he liked among other male siblings. Dr  Erondu’s father was the eldest child of his grand father. According to Ibo tradition, he shared the property among his male siblings. But one of his younger brothers did not leave their father’s house for his own. Dr Erondu’s father soon died, living his eldest child Obisike in charge of his property. That was where the problem began. Dr  Erondu  could not get  his uncle to vacate his father property. The old man saw the property  as his father’s. Dr  Erondu felt belittled that he could not protect his father inheritance. The extended family in imbroglio worsen when his uncle died and his cousins insisted on burying their father’s remains in the property.This, finally, would make the property an extended  family monument. Dr Erondu could not stand this. So, he hired a lawyer to obtained from a court an interlocutory injunction to stop the interment. 

In this scenario, an African man of science and of letters may begin to succumb to phobias of its roots in the  “village people” syndrome. Thus,  Dr Erondu fought not only a physical battle but a psychological war and phychic engagement all rolled together, congesting him with negative energy.

Try as I did to take Dr Erondu out of this case was not easy or successful. He was fighting a war on three fronts. One front was the tumour which blocked his colon. Another was the home front where he wished he could once again take direct and affective charge of his family as not only the bread winner, but, also, as the effective role model. Both aspirations are the goals of an Ibo husband and parent and pride when he achieves them. 

Finally, there was the feeling that he would betray not only  his father  but  Ibo tradition as well if he failed to protect or properly sort out the inheritance question.

Passage

These were the forces, which continually wore down this gentleman. On February 7, 2023, we lost touch. When I did not hear from him as usual, I began to telephone him. When I heard no reply, I though he could be in hospital, and called his daughter who was on holiday. Every where was mute. Then, one day this month, my phone rang. It was his number. Before I would listen to him, I charged:

 “Why have you not been replying my calls?” A woman’s voice answered. I expected the worst.

 “He has gone,” she announced. Wa-oh, wa-oh, wa-oh”, was all I could be saying!.

Dr Erondu’s passage is a transition I cannot help remembering. He was, to me already a brother. Any day he tried something new and his strength returned, I rejoiced.  My prayer is that, wherever he is, he would learn to put matters of this earth behind him and awaken to joyful life in the hopefully more beautiful sphere of existence in the Universe where he is privileged to experience Life. He may have been a victim of the traits I told him were prevalent in Peter Obi’s followers.

Good bye, Doc.

In the night of March 7, 2023, I woke up three times with nothing in particular to do in the small room. Later, I realised  I had gone to bed with  a heavy heart. It was the third rowdy night in two months.

The first time, I had been uneasy about a health-seeking gentleman in Aba, Dr Obisike Erondu (see article below). The second passage was that of the wife of my best man. The last transition, which kept getting me up from sleep concerned Hon. Samson Bamidele Baderinwa, whose real names many people did not know because, to almost every-one, he was …Mr White.

In the afternoon of March 7, someone who thought I heard of his departure called me and, before saying anything else, greeted me…E Ku Oro Enia. This Yoruba greeting acknowledges all the labour to tidy up the affairs a departed person left behind, including the funeral. How the intellect overwhelmed my intuition still surprises me. For, rather than ask the appropriate question, I asked him if he was coping well with  the cash squeeze. He thought my reply odd. I told him, O kari  aiye, which meant the money shortage was everywhere. I sat right only after he asked:

“Have you not  heard about Mr. White?”

“What happened”? I asked.

“He has gone,” he replied.

 The phone almost dropped from my  hand. I had seen him at home the week before. He had been struggling and coping with geriatric health challenges, until, lately, when he developed complications. He had become home bound for some months, save for his outing for the wedding on December 30, 2022, about 67 days before he passed, for the wedding of Esther Omolade, his foster daughter. Hon. Baderinwa danced with her and went round to greet and to thank the guests. I guess that, like me, many of the guests believed the worst was over. Little did many of us realise we were seeing him for the last time.

Hon. Baderinwa was a humble, quite, people-oriented, family loving man, a community worker and builder, attributes he acquired and developed from diversified upbringing. He lived with a household of about 15 persons in a bungalow he built in Oko-GRA Scheme1.They included his wife, Felicia, and four children, Boluwatife, Taiwo, Kehinde, (all young women) and Michael. He came from a similar household. He was one of six children of his mother and three others by his step-mother. They  grew up together and, in adult life, he gave them  his back and shoulders to climb on. Such family bonding is rare in the new Nigerian society in which several family have become atomised.

The life of every one of us  is like a fight of stairs in which each rung of the stairway is a stepping stone to the next, forming a rampart to the top. So was it for this gentleman. He struggled through “O” Level education and, from there, to a catering school, which prepared him for a job in the catering department of the Lagos State Government Secretariat at Alausa, Ikeja. Many people would think that was a menial job. But, as our forefather’s admonish us  Ko si eni  to  mo ibiti ori nba ese e re ( No one knows where the head is headed with the legs). For the young Baderinwa would later end up in the Governor’s Office, though not as Governor, but as the caterer trusted well enough to take full responsibility for whatever the governor eats and drinks. That meant the governor’s life, like those of his guests he invited to breakfast, lunch or dinner or cocktails, was in his hands. The job called for intelligence, dedication, loyalty, thoroughness, indefatigability and trustworthiness, among other noble human qualities. Had his life journey not prepared him, step by step, to be  responsible, humble and trustworthy, Hon. Baderinwa would have not ended up working with three military governors and three civilian governors. One of them recommended him for the award of the Member of  The  Order  oF The Niger ( M.O.N), one of Nigeria’s national honours.

Among Hon. Baderinwa Governors bosses were Navy Captain Mike Akhigbe (August 1986- July1988), Col. Raji Rasaki(July 1988-July 1992), Sir Michael Otedola(Jan.1992-Nov. 1993),Col. Olagunsoye Oyinlola( Nov. 1993-Aug.1996), Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu (May 1999-May 2007) and Mr Babatunde Fashola (May 2007-May 2011).

From his vantage position in the Governor’s Office, Hon. Baderinwa helped many politicians in Agege-Ifako Ijaya Local Government Area achieve their political ambitions. He also secured GRA Scheme 1 against armed robbery attacks of which he and his family were victims.

In the second  tenure of Governor Fashola, Bola Ahmed Tinubu recommended Hon. Baderinwa for M.O.N. honour, and encouraged him to retire from work and run, under the APC, to represent Ifedore Constituency of Ondo State in the House of Representatives. He won, and represented the constituency for four years (2015-2019).

For any one who does not know how Hon. Baderinwa came to be known as Mr White and not by his official name, the story  goes back to Sir Michael Otedola, one of the governors he served. At work, Hon. Baderinwa dress code was all-white. Any time the governor needed his services, he would ask the aides around ” call  me “Omo White yen” ( Call me that White man). The name stuck, till this day.

Survivors

Mr Baderinwa left a wife and four children in a large household. His wife is Felicia Oriyomi(nee Ogunpahin of Ikorodu).Their children are Boluwatife, who is studying for a higher degree in Anatomy.Twin girls,Taiwo and Kehinde.Taiwo studies  Nutrition and Dietetics. Kehinde studies Public Health. It seems like only yesterday that Boluwatife and I discussed the subject of her degree thesis and I encouraged Taiwo to study Nutrition and Dietetics.

She was under pressure from some of her uncles to study something else. Then, I told her of the famous statement of Dr  Thomas Edison that “the nutritionist of today will be the doctor of tomorrow. Dr Edison went on to say:  “Doctor of the future will give no medicine but will entrust his patients in the care of the human frame, in diet, and in the cause and prevention of disease.” I knew joy when Taiwo trod the path of Dr Edison.

On behalf of Hon. Baderinwa family, his eldest child, Boluwatife says: “Dear Daddy, on March 7, 2023, Taiwo, Kenny, Michael and I watched you take your last breath as the doctors did everything they could to save your life. God knows we would have given anything in the world to still have you here with us.These past few days have been the toughest period of our lives. I’m yet to believe that you aren’t here anymore to call me ‘Tife’.

“We’re grateful that we got to spend your last moments with you and we’ll cherish those memories forever.

“Taiwo, Kenny, Michael and I have been really strong for Mummy. She misses you a lot and won’t stop talking about you, We all miss you.

“I pray that the Lord accepts your soul. Till we meet to part no more, you’ll always be in my heart.

 I love you forever,

Boluwatife”.

Good bye, Honourable  Samson Badmidele Baderinwa a.k.a Mr White.