[dropcap]I[/dropcap]n an apparent reflection of the new mood of the government on accountability and probity, Nigeria has the smallest entourage at this year’s World Water Week (WWW) in Stockholm, Sweden. Officials from the Federal Ministry of Water Resources numbered only five. Last year, there were more than 30 officials who attended the event.
But this also means Nigeria is missing in action at the WWW. The annual conference which celebrates its 25th anniversary is being sponsored by the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI).
The conference which attracted more than 3,000 participants from over 120 countries is the world largest gathering of water and development experts with countries around the world eager to showcase their commitment to water and sanitation issues.
This year, Nigeria has no formal presence. Usually, the Federal Ministry of Water Resources would operate a booth for Nigeria to showcase the achievements of the country in Water Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) issues and try to attract more global participation in that sector. Nigeria however operated no booth and in the absence of Nigeria, South Africa and Kenya have maintained dominance at the conference.
But the leader of the team from the Federal Ministry of Water Resources, Mr. Ikpeawajo Reginald, who is the Director, Dams and Reservoir Operations said the reason is to cut costs.
“The government is trying to streamline activities and cut costs. We are also trying to guard against irrelevances and frivolities of the past to ensure that only those who are really relevant to what is happening here are allowed to come here,” he said.
Ikpeawajo said only the five officials with specific duties and relevance to the conference travelled to Sweden. “Those of us here have specific role and bearing on what is happening here. Even though we are not many, but we will learn from the other participants how they have been able to solve their WASH issues and also take ideas and recommendations home to Nigeria,” he said.
Also in a departure from the “jamboree” which for many years have characterized Nigeria’s participation at international conferences, Nigerian officials appeared very prudent and business like and it was difficult tracking them down together at the same time.
“We are all here to learn, we have our different duties so there is no time for jamboree,” one of the officials said.
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World leaders, water experts, development professionals and over 3,000 participants are meeting in the Swedish capital, Stockholm to fashion out solutions to the world’s escalating water crisis.
The leaders also called for the inclusion of water in the discussions on climate change saying the larger impact of climate change would be felt through water.
The event, World Water Week (WWW), is the largest annual conference on water and sanitation issues that has been hosted by the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI) since 1991.
This year’s theme: Water for Development is central to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) six which is to ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all.
According to Torgny Holmgren, the Executive Director of SIWI, the role of water in development of countries cannot be underestimated as it is the foundation for all aspect of human and societal progress.
“From the Horn of Africa, over the Sahel, to São Paulo, California and China, people’s perseverance is being tested. We can no longer take a steady water supply for granted. The many local water crises today combine into a severe global water situation of great concern to all of us,” Holmgren said at the opening plenary.
In his opening address, the Prime Minister of Sweden, Stefan Löfven said “when the international community is shaping a new sustainable development agenda, water management and allocation must be at its heart. Not only as a separate goal but as an essential vehicle for development and health.”
The Prime Minister said in 10 years, one thirds of the world will live in water stress region while he emphasized that entrepreneurs and innovators must be encouraged by governments at all levels to create new technologies that would make water available to all.
Lofven said competition for water will increase in the coming years and this would lead to conflict with the women and children bearing the major cost of such conflict. He stressed that while countries are different from one another, all need water to survive.
Also present at the opening plenary was the President of Marshall Islands Mr. Christopher Loeak who described the horror of climate change on his country.
“ We are literately contemplating being wiped off the world map,” he said.
The Prime Minister of Jordan, Dr. Abdulla Ensour said his country losses one metre a year of the dead sea to climate change.
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[caption id="attachment_415411" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] Executives of the African Young Entrepreneur Organisation. L-R: Joy Williams, Regional Manager, West Africa; Summy Francis, A.Y.E. President and Ibada Ahmed, A.Y.E. Vice Presi[/caption]
[caption id="attachment_415408" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] Executives of the African Young Entrepreneur Organisation. L-R: Joy Williams, Regional Manager, West Africa; Summy Francis, A.Y.E. President and Ibada Ahmed, A.Y.E. Vice President. Photo by David Lawal[/caption]
[caption id="attachment_415414" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] Executives of the African Young Entrepreneur Organisation and representatives of The Nation Newspaper during the presentation of the award in Lagos. Photo by David Lawal[/caption]
Things were looking up for Okechukwu Ugochukwu until two years ago when he went to Ikorodu to conclude a business transaction. An accident involving a commuter bus and China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation (CCECC)’s vehicle left him paralysed for life. Assistant Editor, SEUN AKIOYE recounts his story.
There were many items on the schedule of Ugochukwu Okechukwu on February 20, 2013 as he boarded the Toyota Hiace commuter bus from Ikorodu en-route Ketu for an important business transaction. There was the burial of his mother in a few days and his thriving event and food business to attend to. The N123, 000 in his possession assured him that as the major bread winner of the family, preparations for the burial would go unhindered.
About 10 minutes into his journey, fate played a cruel joke on him, one that would change his life forever. It was an incident that confined him to a hospital bed for the next two years and destroying his hopes and dreams.
“You know the Chinese construction company was doing the Ikorodu Road. As we got to Majidun by the edge of the bridge, the crane fell on the bus. I was sitting between the driver and another passenger. One of the passengers died on the spot. I noticed that I couldn’t move my hands or body. Blood was oozing out from my body as a deep cut was on my forehead. Then people came and pulled us out. We were first taken to Ikorodu General Hospital but we were rejected and referred to Igbobi Hospital,” Ugochukwu said.
The crane driven by Makasuwa Haruna, a staff of CCECC was working on the expressway when the sheaf of the crane suddenly came off dropping on the commuter bus and causing horrific death to a passenger and life-changing injuries to others. The driver, Abdulkareem Gbadegbeshin and Ugochukwu lay prostrate in the mangled remains of the bus. The driver, like Ugochukwu, was paralysed from the waist down.
A changed life
In the male spinal cord injury ward at the National Orthopedic Hospital, Igbobi Lagos, Ugochukwu occupied the fourth bed adjacent to the exit door. Save for his head and torso, other parts of his body were immobile. Unable to pass out waste on his own, a large tube had been inserted into his side which helped him to pass both solid and liquid unwanted wastes.
His legs are bent permanently and he has to constantly lie on his side. It was a position he has maintained for over two years. His disability has extended to his hand and his fingers are closed up. For over one year, he has been unable to open them.
“I have been in pains for over two years and the fact that I am still alive is by the Grace of God. These people are just wicked, I think the plan was for me to die but I am alive. Imagine they just dumped me here at Igbobi and I am suffering,” Ugochukwu told The Nation on his hospital bed.
• Ugochukwu on hospital bed
Before the accident, Ugochukwu has been a successful entrepreneur, a specialist in event management, supplying ushers and security and other logistics. He also ran a chicken and chips buffet restaurant at the National Stadium, Surulere Lagos. Every weekend was a celebration as he made an average of N150, 000 on all his investments.
Under him were two brothers who came to Lagos through his industry and a wife who, at the time of the accident, was heavily pregnant with their second child. She was later delivered of her baby boy while her husband dangled between life and death.
His journey to Igbobi has been long and brutal. On the second day, he was taken to Bamby Specialist Hospital in Ibadan where he underwent an urgent spinal cord surgery and a wiring implant was inserted into his body.
His stay at Bamby Hospital did not last long as he was subsequently returned to Lagos and “dumped” at Amodu Adesola Memorial Hospital in Ikorodu.
“They dumped me at the hospital as if I was nobody,” he said.
His stay at Amodu Adesola Hospital lasted over one year during which his condition gradually got worse. Ugochukwu alleged that the doctor in charge of the hospital was merely interested in his fees which were still paid for by CCECC. He said the doctor, Muhammed Adesola, was not qualified to treat him and merely piled him up with pain relievers and blood tonics.
It was at this point that fate brought him in contact with Alaba Odunlami, Principal Partner at Alaba Odunlami & Co who decided to take up his case with the Chinese company.
Legal battle
Odunlami tackled the case with frenzied enthusiasm. “His condition was so bad by the time we got into the case that it was evident he would have died if nothing concrete was done immediately,” Odunlami told The Nation.
The lawyers wrote the first letter to CCECC on August 30, 2013 asking for a better specialised treatment for the victim. The letter was allegedly rebuffed, forcing the lawyers to write a reminder on September 10, 2013.
“The lawyers to the Chinese company were asking for what we want as compensation but this is not a matter of compensation until we are sure of the state of health of this guy; the level of his disability and what can be done to remedy it. The victim’s health and saving of his life was paramount. That was what we wanted them to do at that time because the victim himself believed that his situation may still be remedied at the time,” Odunlami said.
Odunlami said he bore the costs of the examination at the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH) Ikeja but the result was bad news: He is quadriplegic and wheel chair bound, he has had 100 percent disability and would never be able to walk, stand or make use of his limbs again.
Ugochukwu was brought to Igbobi Hospital on September 19, 2014 by the Insurance brokers to the Chinese company I & S, and he stayed until May this year, but the case of neglect was never completely out of the picture as Odunlami claimed that the victim was abandoned by the CCECC and its agents as they refused to give him adequate help, including a request for a caregiver.
Disdain for Nigerians
•The vehicle in which Ugochukwu was travelling
Ugochukwu is convinced that his case is especially bad because the Chinese company responsible for his predicament places little or no regards for his life as a Nigerian.
“These people did not behave as humans at all. They just dumped me and we wrote so many letters to which they replied none. When I call them too, they do not pick the calls, the insurance company won’t pick my call and when they do, they do not treat me kindly,” he said.
“During the doctors’strike at Igbobi, there was nobody to care for me; there was no food or money. My brother that was helping me lost his job. They have refused to see reason and it is like they are tired of me and would just wish am no longer here,” he added.
But more dramatic scenarios are still to play out on the case. On May 5, a medical report from Igbobi Orthopedic Hospital confirmed the earlier result from Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH) that the victim is 100 per cent disabled. A day earlier his lawyer alleged those representatives of CCECC and their insurance brokers had stormed the hospital in order to forcibly discharge Ugochukwu.
“They came here without informing my family. I asked them where they were taking me to and that I don’t have a house as I had been staying in the hospital for two years. They just refused to listen,” he said.
Luckily, the insurance brokers were prevented from taking him away. “You need to see the ramshackle ambulance they brought to take him away. We asked them which address they were taking him to and they said the one he gave. But they never verified if he was still living there, maybe the plan was just to dump him in the house to his fate,” the lawyer said.
The Chinese defence
Attempts to speak to the management of CCECC were futile as The Nation was told at the company’s head office in Oyingbo that there were no interpreters to help in translation.
But a broker to the company, Ibrahim Abdullahi, in a telephone conversation with The Nation absolved the company of blames.
Abdullahi said: “There are two of them, we gave the first one N18 million but this one we offered him N25million, and the lawyer refused, saying they want N100 million.
“So the matter is in court. I know that after the second sitting the lawyer will come around for dialogue. The house the guy is staying in, I am the one that paid for the rent. We want to settle this amicably but our lawyer too is ready to go with him anywhere he wants to go. We will go to the court, just do your work,” he said.
The Medical Director of Amodu Memorial Hospital that treated the victim, Dr. Muhammed Adesola, is also defending himself. Apparently angry that such claims of incompetence were made against his hospital, he seemed determined on exposing all the pent-up ‘dirty secrets’.
“Don’t mind him. Somebody who had an accident, spinal cord injury that is paralysed, such a person is prone to bed ulcer. So, when you have bed ulcer, the only thing you can do is to treat it,” he said.
Continuing, he said: “If we had not treated him, he would have died along the line. We know what we went through to be able to keep him alive; he also gave testimony to his people that we did our best. So, if he developed bed ulcer, did we cause the bed ulcer?”
Adesola said he continued to treat him even when the Chinese company owed him for several months; he also accused Ugochukwu of being an arrogant and selfish person who refused to take his drugs.
For now, Ugochukwu lives at the mercy of others. His once-flourishing business has collapsed and his self-esteem gone.
There were grim statistics for Nigeria from the recently released “State of School Feeding Worldwide Report”, compiled by the World Food Programme (WFP).
The report, launched at the United Nations headquarters in New York, indicated that only one out of five school children get a healthy school meal in developing countries. The report also presented a gloomy picture of Nigeria’s school feeding programme highlighting that less than 500,000 school children get a decent meal in school. In that report, Nigeria and Cameroon shared the ignoble position of coming last.
In 2004, Nigeria began a pilot project of Home Grown School Feeding and Health Programme (HGSFHP) which was part of the Universal Basic Education Programme. It was designed to feed pupils in elementary public schools. But out of the 13 states that participated in the programme, only one state remained committed to the continued implementation and improvement of the project: The state is Osun.
The state governor, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola has been developing a simple theory with his re-organised school feeding programme in the state. For him, providing nutritious and healthy meals in schools has a direct link to mental development and the eradication of poverty.
Therefore when in April 2012, he decided to review the school feeding programme with a bigger and better menu, he targeted not just the children but also the farmers in the state. The Osun Elementary School Feeding and Health Programme (O’Meals), which was the result of the new thinking in the state has since surpassed most of its main objectives.
One of the cardinal points of O’Meals is to increase enrollment and retention of school children in state primary schools. Within four weeks of the commencement of the programme however, school enrollment has jumped about 25 per cent in government primary schools. By June 30, 2012, enrollment increased from 155,318,000 to 194,253 from primaries 1-3.
Basking in the euphoria of this success, the state government promptly widened the scope and included primary 4 in the scheme. The state now feeds a total of 252,793,000 students daily at the annual cost of N3billion. From the report of the WFP, Osun State accounts for more than half of the total number of children getting healthy and nutritious school meals in Nigeria.
The operation officer of O’meal, Mrs. Bunmi Ayoola, said the programme has achieved and surpassed its objectives of increasing school enrollment in the state. She said the government also ensures that the food is prepared in a healthy and neat environment.
“Balanced diet helps in developing the brain’s capacity as well as cognitive response index of each child and it plays a major role in ensuring that children assimilate learning instructions fast and well,’’ she said.
Fighting poverty and increasing enterprise
But increased enrollment was not the only intention of the Osun State government; reduction of poverty and boosting small and medium scale enterprise were also key points in the school feeding programme. According to the Deputy Governor, Mrs. Grace Titilayo Laoye-Tomori, the rebirth of the school feeding programme has had a positive impact on farmers.
“As part of six points integral action plan of the state government to banish hunger, create employment and education for all; the school feeding programme has increased the enrollment of the pupils by 25 per cent within the two weeks of re-introduction, allowed farmers to engage in massive food production and encouraged learning in primary schools. Let me tell you that 80 per cent of food production by the farmers in the State will be used for feeding of our kids in the programme”.
The deputy governor revealed that over 900 cocoyam farmers have been empowered by the government.
“In order to ensure that the programme is sustained, we have encouraged our farmers to go into massive production of fish and chicken with which to feed the pupils. We have also directed our farmers to go into massive production of plantain, banana and very soon we are thinking on the possibility of going into massive production of rice and establish rice mills across the state to encourage our farmers,” she said.
More than 3,000 women in the state have also been empowered to serve as the food vendors. The vendors are well kitted with modern cooking utensils and bowls at the cost of N152 million to the state government. One of the vendors, Mrs. Esther Ogundipe said the programme has empowered her family. “Aregbesola has added value to my life; I am no more a housewife,’’ she said.
Today, according to the state government, 15,000 whole chickens are sourced weekly from local poultry farmers; 254,000 eggs sourced weekly; 35 heads of cattle purchased weekly from local cattle farmers and 400 tonnes of catfish purchased weekly from local fish farmers.
Even though some have criticised the enormous cost of the programme, the WFP said even in developed country, the amount spent by government on school meals is a worthy investment for the future.
“This will help raise healthy adults for the future, it is a worthy investment by any government,” the world body said.
At mid-day on any school day, the bell rang; food vendors immaculately dressed began to make preparations for the feeding of their wards. All across the state, the same process is repeated at every primary school. Meals like Yam Porridge, bread soaked in a steaming red stew with chicken to garnish, beans porridge and vegetables, all complemented with fruits were handed over to 250,000 children. In Osun schools, time for break means time for “Ounje Aregbe.”
