There is a blockbuster film making the rounds of the film houses of Europe, America and other parts of the movie-watching world.
The title of the film is ‘Concussion’.
It is, in reality the story of the life, travails and accomplishments of a Nigerian man from Nnokwa in the Idemili South of Enugu State.
BenethIfeakanduOmalu was born in September, 1968. His father was a mining engineer, and his mother a seamstress. He was the sixth of seven siblings. His family had fled from the village of Enugu-Ukwu during the Nigerian civil war and only returned to their homestead after two years of being ‘internally displaced persons’ within the enclave of Biafra.
He was a bright youth, and he attended the prestigious Federal Government College, Enugu for his secondary school education. His grades were good, and he was able to proceed from there to study Medicine at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka.
Following graduation in 1990, he worked for some years as a doctor in Jos, in the Middle Belt of the country.
He would leave Jos in 1993 following the June 12 crisis. His next stop was the United States of America, where he embarked on postgraduate studies.
In the course of time, he would ratchet up a bewildering array of degrees and fellowships including Masters in Public Health, Masters in Epidemiology, Masters in Business Administration, and Fellowships in Pathology and Neuropathology. He would get married to a lady from Kenya whom he would meet through his Church – the only way he could get to meet anyone since he was too busy with work to have a social life. They would have two children. And he would become a naturalized citizen of the United States of America in February 2015.
But the story is not just about a young man from Idemili South who is living the American dream. It is bigger – far bigger than that.
Brilliant, stuttering, self-effacing BenethIfeakandu kicked up a veritable storm in 2005 when he published a paper titled ‘Chronic Traumatic Brain Injury’ in an edition of the journal ‘Neuroscience’.
At the time he was a Forensic Pathologist, working at the County Coroner’s office in Allegheny County, Pittsburg. Unlike other storms kicked up from time to time by publications in the academic press, the eddies and draughts of which were generally confined to academic circles, the storm kicked up by BenethOmalu’s publication caused reverberations in financial and sporting circles, as well as among the general population. For it touched on the interests of ‘American Football’ – a sacred institution in America as a way of life, a national game, and also a great power in financial circles. Children grew up from their mothers’ arms wanting to be football stars. Attendance at childrens’ football games is de rigeur for the American mum. And a person who actually goes on to become a football star acquires a virtually divine status in his local community, apart from making a lot of money.
In 2002, Mike Webster – a retired star for the local team – the Pittsburg Steelers died. For several months before his death he had exhibited rather strange behavior.
It fell to Ben to do an autopsy on Webster.
His conclusions from the autopsy, and from his observations in similar situations over the months, were startling. The game of football – America’s national game, which expressed as nothing else could, the true American chutzpah, was not as safe as it was made out to be. The collisions involving the head that were a frequent part of the game did cumulative and often irreversible damage to the brain. Mike Webster’s brain, according to the man from Idemili South, bore clear evidence of repeateddamage which resulted in his failing cognition and erratic behavior in the twilight of his life. He gave a name to the condition – Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy.
American Football was not just a Sport. It was Big Business.
Predictably the Establishment – which stood to suffer incalculable loss if Football were somehow to be declared unsafe, drying up sponsorship and spectatorship, reacted by throwing the book – and every other weapon it had ready-to-hand, at him. Who was this upstart from the jungle in East of Nigeria to attack the American way of life and purport to speak for ‘Science’? The fellow couldn’t even speak English like an American – he spoke ‘Queens’ English with a Nigerian accent!
Indeed, nothing is more hilarious – in a deadly serious way – than listening to Will Smith – the quintessential ‘black’ American, trying to speak like a Nigerian from Enugu State in the film ‘Concussion’.
Ben Omalu would hunker down and ride the storm. In the fullness of time, the academic, and even the Sporting and Financial Establishments would come round to an acceptance that ‘Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy’ (CTE) is a reality, and that everything possible needs to be done to prevent American Football players from acquiring cumulative injuries to their brains with every one of those macho collisions that are a staple of the game, but which also lead to concussion.
The Idemili man is a something of a star these days. He is Chief Medical Examiner at San Joaquim County, California and a Professor of Forensic Pathology in the University of California. It is said that he turned down the offer of a job in Washington that would have made him the pre-eminent Anatomical Pathologist in the USA.
The importance of the Ben Omalu story is not just a patriotic basking in his celebrity, but an opportunity to highlight how much Nigeria needs Ben Omalu and what he does.
Pathology – (aka ‘Anatomical Pathology’ or its older, more morbid name! – Morbid Anatomy) generally, and specifically Forensic Pathology – represents a gaping and dangerous hiatus in the healthcare system of Nigeria.
A morbid humorist may wonder aloud why Nigerians should bother developing services for the dead, when we have our work cut out taking care of the living. That would be a sick, silly joke. The facts on the ground are scary indeed. The overwhelming majority of Nigerian citizens who die on a given day do not have clearly identified causes for their deaths. Even the actual numbers are not accurately documented, not to talk of the causes. In reality, every day, in every city and hamlet, people are getting away with murder, literally! A situation personally experienced by the writer may serve as illustration. An elderly Alhaji was brought in dead to the morgue of a Teaching Hospital by his wailing family, consisting of his wives and a number of adult male children. With one voice they were demanding that he be quickly ‘certified’ and his body released to them so they could bury immediately, according to the tenets of their religion.
There was only one small problem. A close inspection of Alhaji’s head showed a depressed fracture of his skull, along with some bruising. Somebody had smashed Alhaji’s head with a blunt object – probably one of the persons now wailing and demanding his release for burial.
There are very few pathologists in Nigeria, and there is nowhere in the country where the Coroner’s Law – which stipulates that any citizen who dies while not under the direct care of a doctor who can vouch for his ailment is required to have an autopsy to identify his cause of death – is faithfully applied. Not even the in the clear outlier in Health services – Lagos State.
The problem is not just the paucity of Pathologists but an inability so far to create a structure that is not set out to serve anybody’s ego but is actually customized to work in the Nigerian condition, maximally utilizing all available specialists on ground. There is also the need for a paradigm shift in the mind-set of the citizenry. It is interesting to note that the religious requirement for early burial does not stop the most advanced Muslim nations from practising a coroners system.
Perhaps in this era of Change, the Nigerian-American celebrity Pathologist from Idemili could be persuaded to take a one-year sabbatical from his job in California to lend his stature, his tough skin, and his organizational ability to drive the project of setting up an effective Coroner’s System for the nation of Nigeria, and selling it to the citizenry. AbikeDabiri – SSA to the President on the Diaspora – may well wish to make a bee-linefor California on her next foreign trip to talk to this man.
For if he agreed, and we gave him the space to set up an all-embracing structure that would encompass all Anatomical Pathologists in Nigeria in sealing this gaping wound in our Health System, this would be a high-impact contribution to Change, from a single member of the Diaspora.
Just a thought.
