On Monday, in Abuja, Health Minister Professor Onyebuchi Chukwu cut a miserable picture. He sounded frustrated, not just with himself but also with the entire country and the way things seem to be going. He called for a revolution.
Chukwu was speaking at the inauguration of councils and boards of health regulatory bodies, but as he seemed to contemplate what lay ahead of the new council and board members in the sector, he could not help but ponder the fact that the ministry of which he is chief is almost in tatters. Less than two months ago, doctors called off an industrial action which lasted over two months. As the new boards and councils were being inaugurated, three fresh threats of strike were issued by professionals in the sector and in fact lay on the minister’s table. Chukwu sounded overwhelmed and unhappy.
The health sector is losing respect, he growled, before declaring that the sector has indeed lost respect. Only a revolution would salvage the situation, he concluded, managing, for effects, to throw in the ongoing university teachers’ strike.
The ‘r’ word is not new in these parts. Lots of people mouth it, saying it is what the country needs to find its feet again in almost all aspects of its existence, not least integrity.
So why does Chukwu’s revolution call matter? It is because leaders like him rarely call for a revolution, which is why the idea of sovereign national conference, for instance, irritates Nigeria’s presidents. It is also because Chukwu is hired and paid very handsomely to fix the problems which now seem to choke him.
I believe that, bad as things may be in the country, there is nothing to suggest Nigeria’s challenges are insurmountable. I have made this point fairly frequently, convinced that the reason things seem to work in other places, and do not here, is largely because of leadership failure. My position has always been that we often fail to plan, and when we do, fail to enforce the rules. There are potential thieves everywhere, but they thrive where they are allowed to, where they are given a slap on the wrist or completely ignored.
Chukwu wondered why government employees always fought with their employers even though government pays “twice” what the private sector pays. When he graduated as a doctor, he said, “the private sector was paying two to four times what we earned in government.”
The minister conveniently glossed over the dwindling standards, choking existential challenges, unfriendly condition of service, incompetence of government officials, unflattering atmosphere in today’s workplace and unfulfilled promises, among other factors. Why are his colleagues leaving the country in droves? Chukwu has demonstrated that when leaders are bereft of ideas, they shift the blame. He has also joined government officials who believe that governing this country is tougher than rocket science.
Indeed, the Chukwu revolution call inspired a flashback to a piece I wrote previously. The article entitled “Is Nigeria too difficult to govern?” is now reprinted:
“Our leaders do not like to admit it, but it is clear all the same. They are finding the business of running this country too tough. You can tell from what they say, and how they say it. You can glean it from even what they fail to say. But above all, we can tell from the body of evidence that stares us in the face.
Let’s start from the most basic of things. The impossible roads have humbled everybody including the leaders; the roads have had the better of our cars and our motorcycles. The loss of life and property on them leaves everyone in torment. And so does the unremitting destruction brought on vehicles. Perhaps, the only ones smiling in this are the auto mechanics whose industry has since been elevated to a vibrant money-making enterprise, no longer a fringe job for school dropouts. The very fact that their workshops are crammed with broken-down or badly battered vehicles leaves them in good cash and better spirits. Things have been looking up for Nigerian mechanics.
We have also found it impossible to convert our plentiful water into usable household commodity. And this has thrown up all manner of water industrialists and merchants, wholesome and unscrupulous, all extracting handsome profits from the poor consumer.
In the same way, generating and distributing electric power has become a mystery no one can crack. And as in the case of water, a whole new alternative but very expensive power industry has emerged. Almost every home, no matter how small or economically challenged, has a power generator whose maintenance and running costs far outstrip the meager resources of the breadwinners.
Security of life is an eternal challenge. Increasing population and joblessness seem to be breeding more outlaws than the police can handle. But beyond that, even the high turnover of the police leadership and the circumstances surrounding their retirement do little to allay our worst security concerns. Almost every Inspector-General of Police leaves office in a cloud of one scandal or another. It is unclear yet how Mr Hafis Ringim, the incumbent, will ride the storm gathering over him since the terrorist attack on the police headquarters penultimate week.
Now consider the anguish of Nigerians over kerosene and petrol. In the days of President Olusegun Obasanjo, no effort was spared in trying to ram fuel subsidy removal down Nigerians’ throats. At every opportunity, the President’s foot soldiers reeled out statistics and charts to convince Nigerians that sustaining the subsidy was inimical to the country’s resources. They also went on to tempt us with the idea that the billions of naira that would be saved from the subsidy removal would be used to resuscitate our comatose infrastructure. Obasanjo’s men often fell into a chant. Hospitals would be built or rebuilt, they sang. Drugs would be available in the hospitals. The insufferable roads would be fixed.
Without shame they told us why ought to pay more for what God gives freely and in such awesome abundance. Even in the pre-Obasanjo era, the argument has been running. They used to ask in the late 80s why a bottle of soft drink should cost more than a litre of petrol. We have been paying more ever since, and still suffering.
The latest round of suffering is experienced right from the kitchen to the filling station. Cooking stoves empty, lamps dry, women and children, and sometimes men, have mounted a sustained search for kerosene. Failing to find it in the neighbourhood where it has gone for anything between N250 a litre and 600 for two and a half, the searchers have often ended up at filling stations. There, a waiting queue curls round the facility or even outside it, cutting a picture comparable only to fuel lines and traffic gridlocks. A man narrated how he went from one filling station to another, keg in hand, searching for precious kerosene. His search covered a few miles before he located the cooking fuel, he told me. Then he walked all the way back. When these terrible things happen, it is always the poor that suffer.
Why has it been impossible to build just one refinery in the country, or make the existing ones work? Perhaps, there is no end to the incongruities of Nigeria. Otherwise, why should a country be so blessed with such resources and yet remain so cursed and afflicted? Why should so much money be sunk into so many projects (electricity, roads, refineries, etc) and yet nothing works? What is the logic or wisdom of extracting crude with foreign expertise, only to export it for refinement and then import it into the country?
Perhaps, running the country is truly tougher than some of us imagine.”
•First published on June 26, 2011
