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Tag: Specialists

  • Madmen and specialists

    Madmen and specialists

    America’s “mad men”, that shun the mental rigour to analyze, and loathe the humble intellect to appreciate Nigeria’s grim security challenges, are now “specialists” on that grave matter! 

    They are in such a fizz; so tizzy with empty pride that goes before a fall. They christen themselves rogue crusaders — galloping into town (guns a-blazing, crowed US President Donald Trump!) — to save Nigerian Christians from “genocide”!

    Yet, President Trump and his simplistic band don’t know jack — to use that American idiom — about the problem.  If that wasn’t so tragic, it would have been so comic!

    But then, thank God for Prof. Wole Soyinka, our Nobel laureate, for his prescience.  He had it all figured out in 1971.  That year, he had published Madmen and Specialists, an absurdist play that beamed the strains of the Nigerian Civil War (1967-1970), reflecting the mental health collapse of the Beros, army medic father and son. 

    The medic father was crazy.  The medic son too was unhinged.  Enter, the “mad” father, and his “specialist” son — a tale of a lunatic son, “treating” a lunatic father!

    That was eons before the United States fell under the unthinking spell of Trump and his MAGA plebs.  But that Soyinka play, among the darkest in his rich repertoire, could well symbolize, on the globe, America’s crazy electoral choice of November 2024. 

    The latest manifestation of that is Trump’s vile threat against Nigeria.  Indeed, the grim humour in Madmen and Specialists, linked to America’s present global tomfoolery — hare-brained tariffs and wanton war threats against others — is grim life imitating art! 

    Imagine Ted Cruz and co! In fashionable ignorance, they work up a storm over a fictive “Christian genocide in Nigeria” on X, worked themselves into an evil lather, confusing and confounding other global simpletons, and feeling hip about it all!

    And the ludicrous climax?  Trump himself threatening a US invasion of Nigeria, to bomb off genocidal Islamists — classic, unreflective Trump!  Just like that?  Ha!

    Still, if this band had been a tad humbler, they would have known the data, with which they huff and puff, are cooked-up duds by IPOB and its neo-Biafra secessionist lobbies, home and abroad; aside save our soul wailings from some Middle Belt priests.

    But just as “Fulani herdsmen” — as gloriously parroted by the Nigerian southern media during the Muhammadu Buhari years, with IPOB itself the triumphant hate cheerleader — IPOB doesn’t automatically equate the entire Igbo, any more than criminal herdsmen equate the entire Fulani.

    Indeed, the Igbo are self-endangered: with the “Christian” IPOB, brutally culling fellow “Christian” Igbo in the name of Biafra, but now calling in the “Christian” Trump and co — from words and deeds, the frenetic anti-Christ! — to come bomb out “Islamist” killers that hardly exist in the IPOB native South East!

    Funny?  No, gloomy! It’s of course a mighty scandal that the global crux of scholarship, with its Harvard’s, Stamford’s and MITs, would fall for such simplistic thinking!

    But it’s also true: the dominant western media, often in a huff, savour a simplistic — and lazy — classification of Nigeria as “the Muslim North and the Christian South”: as empty as Nigeria’s southern media, that claims the North’s majority is “Hausa-Fulani!” 

    Well, breaking news!  The Fulani vs Hausa banditry crisis has shown the Hausa are Hausa, and the Fulani are Fulani!  That same simplistic grouping — plastic, shallow, supercilious and condescending — would make a foreign power, like Trump’s war-mongering America, to rein in victims of banditry (overwhelmingly Muslim) as “proof” of Islamists massacring “Christians” in the “Muslim North”!

    To think that this fella just hankered after the Nobel Peace Prize!

    Still, to be clear: only in the Middle Belt (Benue, Plateau and Nasarawa); and in southern Kaduna (North West) can any claim of majority Christian victims, from mainly ancestral violence — less Islamist terror — be sustained. 

    The perishing Christians in that cruel and unfortunate theatre — gone on for too long! — crave our collective empathy and decisive action. In the hot grief of instant massacre, you could even excuse the wailing that the violence has religious undertones.

    That would explain the “Christian” reprisal attacks too: among the most recent ones,  the killings of northern Muslim pilgrims returning to Ikare, their Ondo State base, passing through Plateau State.  Though under-reported in comparison to Fulani attacks, reprisals from both sides are near-routine.

    The Trump call, as uninformed as it is, should therefore be a wake-up call for the Nigerian government to work harder to stop this menace.  Even then, the crisis is more ethnic, even more economic, than religious.  But it won’t be solved by some foreign army — “guns a-blazing” — invading the area, causing more catastrophe. 

    Rather, it would be by further federalizing the Nigerian security architecture. More effective “boots on the ground” — no, not of the Army but of state police and the new Forest Guards — would occupy vast un-policed spaces; and keep armed felons at bay.

    Only the North East has Islamist qua Islamist violence. But again, that is a Muslim majority belt.  Still, from the Buhari years, Boko Haram (which hitherto had turned entire local government areas into rogue caliphates) has been utterly degraded into hit-and-run opportunist terrorists. President Bola Tinubu has admirably built on the Buhari record these last two years.

    Read Also: Religion not Nigeria’s crisis, says Soyinka

    In this season of menacing over-simplification, conflating Shariah law with Islamist terror, could stoke fresh faith tension.  Let’s be clear: the problem with Shariah law is its misapplication on Christians; and its rogue “blasphemy” calls on practicing Muslims. 

    Now, these are abuses the Federal Government must curb, working closely with states that have Shariah law.  Judicial appeals already deal with “blasphemy”.  But that procedure, to protect the Shariah oppressed, must be made more robust.

    Nigeria is a federal state.  Though constitutionally secular, it’s in reality a multi-religious country.  Shariah is Islamic, not Islamist.  But the Trump noisy band mix up the two.

    The West clearly decries the so-called “African Big Man”, and just as well: corrupt, vain, evil, crooked, arrogant, unscrupulous, entitled, megalomaniac.  The Economist endlessly returns to that concept in its condescending African reports.  That harsh anti-African arrogance looms large in Trump’s “Christian genocide” in Nigeria.

    But if by his own power temper, the US President ticks all of these unflattering boxes, might we then welcome the American — read Western — Big Man?  Instructive!

    For the sake of whatever is left of America’s global prestige — beyond projecting blind, naked power that earns nothing but global scorn — the US president had better get accurate facts before blundering into other people’s problems.  For his reflex to bully others, our WS already dubs Trump the “White Idi Amin” — not unfairly!

    Nigeria should continue doing the needful: go on a global charm offensive to dispel these wilful and evil lies; and share the correct picture with the US government.  But more importantly: go on — and hard — with the war on terror!

    Still, the neo-Biafra mischief, behind it all, is another life imitating art.  Nnamdi Kanu, now awaiting judgment, once bragged he’d hang himself if he did not get Biafra within 18 months!  That appears a throwback to the tragic Okonkwo in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart!

  • ‘Employ more specialists to address epilepsy’

    A neurologist from the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH) Mr. Bankole Murtala has called on the Federal Government to employ specialists that will attend to chronic ailments, such as epilepsy, in the primary healthcare centres (PHCs).

    Murtala stated this in an interview during the Warriors Unite, a programme organised by the Epilepsy Foundation of Nigeria in Yaba, Lagos.

    According to him, epilepsy is one of incurable illnesses that deserves better attention at the PHCs, adding that the country is witnessing a growth in the number of those affected by it, especially in rural areas.

    As a major brain disorder, epilepsy should be considered a public health priority, he said.

    The expert lamented that many patients often wait a long time before they could access medical care in tertiary hospitals, adding that it is difficult to secure appointments to see doctors because there is limited space, which makes it hard for new patients to get bed space.

    He noted that a neurological patient, referred to any tertiary hospital,  had to travel long distances for a doctor’s consultation or investigation in the main city

    Murtala said things would be better, if a larger percentage of epilepsy is diagnosed and managed at primary and secondary healthcare levels, adding that this requires employing specialists and other competent public health personnel.

    He stressed that strengthening the capacity of healthcare workers would help to identify and initiate treatment in patients before such cases deteriorate.

    Although the neurologist admitted that the government is spending much money on cancer and other deadly diseases, he said epilepsy should also be pririotised as more patients are recorded in the hospitals while resources to support and help them are poor and limited.

    “Every day in every clinic and teaching hospitals, we get people reappointed because the doctors’ hands are full with people living with the condition,” he said.

    Founder and executive director of the foundation, Seyi Aragbada, said the programme will provide support for people living with epilepsy and their caregivers to express themselves and the challenges they face, adding that a lot of ‘warriors’ feel better after opening up about their epilepsy.

    She called for support for persons living with epilepsy because there are 45 kinds of seizures, which are the symptoms of person living with epilepsy.

    She said: “We have  three million people living with epilepsy in Nigeria and that is the size of a country and, unfortunately, it kills more than breast cancer. The more seizure epilepsy patients have, the more the brain gets damaged.”

    She, therefore, appealed to the Federal Government to do more to support people living with the condition so that they could lead a better life.

    “We are creating awareness, treatment and care to those suffering from the neurological condition, support families and individuals impacted with epilepsy, seizures and convulsion,” she said.

    Aragbada lamented that due to the stigma attached to epilepsy, a lot of people living with the disease avoid talking about it.

    She urged caregivers or families with epilepsy to endure and be patient because it is hard to accept diagnosis.

  • ‘Madmen and specialists’

    ‘Madmen and specialists’

    The ding-dong, between the Kaduna State government and the hubris-stricken Kaduna branch of the Nigerian Union of Teachers (NUT), clearly reminds Hardball of the Wole Soyinka play, Madmen and Specialists.

    Just as in the play, in the ongoing Kaduna bathos, you don’t know the mad man.  Neither do you know the specialist, supposed to take care of his malady.

    Or even Fela’s popular musical quip, Teacher, don’t teach me nonsense.  But in this bathetic drama, the teacher is not only unfazed to have taught nonsense — his pupils’ future be damned! — he is even swank enough, that his NUT openly brags, with a view to intimidating a government clearly trying to right the situation.

    Or how else would you classify teachers who reportedly failed Primary four examination topics and an NUT grandstanding over procedures for testing teachers, rather than hanging its head in shame over the disgraceful performance of its treasured members?

    O, there is the additional scandal: the Kaduna government’ s allegation that ghost teachers leapt up from the grave to “pass” the tests while the living ones failed.  Is that a sad tale of the Kaduna teaching living dead and the dead but living?

    Has Nigeria now sunk into the nadir of the value-neuter, such that not even the teachers’ organised body is ruffled that teachers promptly dispense ignorance, instead of knowledge, not unlike many of the electricity distribution companies (DISCOs) billing for darkness instead of light?

    Inasmuch as Hardball insists on justice, equity and fairness for all, and that no one should be pronounced guilty except after trial and conviction, the Kaduna NUT would appear to have a manifestly bad case.  That parlous case would not vanish because of empty posturing.

    Yes, NUT must protest the interest of its members.  But not at the expense of the quality of the service they are expected to render.

    In this case, that product is not adulterated drugs.  Neither is it expired canned food.  It is rather expired knowledge (which, by the way, would appear deadlier than pristine ignorance), of which the future Nigerian generation is the victim.

    So, if the charge of their scandalous failure is true, what NUT should do is to climb down from its illusory high horse, and parley with the government on the best and swiftest way to correct the problem.

    Could it be the state government had itself stopped on-the-job capacity building, through periodic training and seminars over the years, such that the teachers had not been enriching their knowledge stock since they left school?  If so, how fast can such be reintroduced?

    What best can be done to the failed teachers?  Introduce remedial courses to make them at par with current realities, recruit better ones to augment the manpower, or explore voluntary retirements, instead of outright sack, just on compassionate basis?

     

    These are the solutions NUT should seek, not question the bona fide of the Kaduna government to ensure quality in the schools it runs.  That is neither fair to the government nor equitable to those kids, whose future depends on sound background teaching and learning.

    If Fela were to jerk awake now, how would he have commented on the Kaduna rumpus, despite his healthy suspicion of governments?  No prize for guessing right: tisha, no teach me nonsense!

  • Kongi, herdsmen and specialists

    You may be excused if you haven’t read or have not even heard about the book or play, Madmen and Specialists. But if you didn’t know who is fondly called Kongi in Nigeria, then you may have no business reading this column. This 47-year old play is one of Wole Soyinka’s arcane works which does not yield easily to simple minds. But we have taken liberty on the title in this moment of Fulani herdsmen torment and indeed ferment.

    Herdsmen who had been with us since creation (of Nigeria) seem to have earned more impetus recently after the ascendancy of President Muhammadu Buhari two years ago; gaining in impunity and derring-do. And their latest victim is Professor Soyinka, who lamented over the weekend that he returned from a trip abroad to find his sanctuary in Abeokuta, Ogun State violated – again.

    “… this time, the herders not only went through my abode, but took their cows to my door step.” He noted that the herdsmen in the country were going about with conqueror mentality, suggesting there is a movement to enslave the entire nation.

    The situation may well be an uncanny replay of the Nobel laureate’s Madmen and Specialists. In a fresh rush of blood-thirstiness, no fewer than 3,000 Nigerians may have been killed by these itinerant cattle-rearers in the two years of PMB’s government. Many of the people killed in their abode or farmlands; many of them accompanied by the maniacal fury of night raids and conflagrations that sometimes razed entire communities.

    They started with poor farmers and decrepit communities, then they got brazen and broke all bounds, picking on anything in sight. Chief Olu Falae, monarchs and community heads were all trampled.

    Kongi in his play wrote about the abusers, the abused and a wacky Doctor Bero deeply engrossed in his sinister experimentations. Has art embraced life in the ongoing Kongi and the herdsmen saga? If our comatose presidency and gamboling governors are the abusers, then Kongi and thousands of Nigerians caught up in the herdsmen deathly impunity must be the abused?

    Before our eyes; including kongi’s eyes: We all have watched this gory drama play out in the last two years; just a few scenes would suffice here: according to report, on March 15, 2015, about 100 worshippers were murdered in cold blood in St. Joseph’s Catholic Church, Egba, Agatu LGA of Benue State. The victims were mainly women and children. After the well planned gruesome bloodfest, the church was set ablaze apparently to incinerate the evidence.

    Eleven months later, on February 26, 2016, Fulani herdsmen struck again in Agatu, to commit what is to date, the mother of all murders in Nigeria’s peace time history. In a dawn raid, herdsmen ransacked about seven villages killing no fewer than 400 people. The community was razed and about 7,000 people displaced.

    A few weeks after Agatu, (April 25, 2016) the herdsmen struck in Ukpabi-Nimbo in Uzo-Uwani LGA of Enugu State. They left about 48 dead and 56 injured. Sixty houses were razed in a dawn raid that displaced most of the community. It didn’t help that security agencies had prior intelligence of the attack. In fact, the attackers were said to have out-gunned a combined force of soldiers and policemen drafted to quell the mayhem.

    On January 5, 2016, a Delta State monarch, HRM Akaeze Edward Ofulue 111 of Ubulu-Uku, was abducted by Fulani herdsmen. His decomposing remains were found under a tree in a bush in Umunede about three weeks later.

    Three more monarchs have fallen to the herdsmen after Ofulue. In May 2016, Bala Madaki, the traditional ruler of Fadan Karshi district in Sanga LGA of Kaduna, was killed in cold blood with his nephew, Emmanuel Tanko. Ironically, it was Madaki who received former Governor Mukthar Yero when he visited Fadan Karshi in 2014 and the women of the community bared their bodies in protest over the scale of herdsmen killings at the time.

    Two months later (July), a first-class traditional ruler in Plateau State, the Sat Ron Kulere, Sir Lazarus Agai, who was chairman of Bokkos Council of Traditional Rulers, was murdered in his home village, Sha, by suspected Fulani herdsmen.

    He was reportedly killed with his driver and police orderly as he returned from his farm in Sha.

    And last March, yet another traditional ruler was killed in Buruku LGA of Benue State  with about a dozen of his subjects in yet another night raid by suspected herdsmen. According to reports, about 12 villages were attacked and destroyed as the marauders were said to have left nothing in sight.

    These are just a few cases in a harrowing litany of madness by the so-called Fulani herdsmen. Apart from the case involving Chief Falae, hardly in any other situation were culprits apprehended nor were investigations carried out. The specialists in the form of the police and other security agencies were only adept at downplaying the extent of casualties and making vague promises about getting to the bottom of the matter. But most of the incidents have gone unquestioned.

    Specialists in the guise of  governors have watched over this insanity with characteristic idiocy and confounding ineptitude. Now they say the herdsmen are foreigners, and at another time, they rationalise why they have to kill fellow compatriots because they value their cows more than humans.

    Governor Nasir el Rufai has presented himself as the most supporter and encourager of this beastliness.

    The presidency, the chief specialists has carried on in benumbing lethargy if not tacit support. Where you would expect a declaration of emergency and a shoring up of the rule of law, you get a tepid condemnation and a lecture on the psychology of the Fulani herdsman.

    If the governments at all levels do not suffer mental block, they would have long realised that this is simply a case of a business model that has become out-moded and now inimical even to the very survival of the country unless it is urgently changed. The state simply needs to encourage cattle owners to build ranches and grazing grounds. As farms and built up areas expand, the itinerant pastoralists must learn to be more in situ in doing their business.

    And since the herdsmen’s commodities are in demand all across the country, state governments must encourage business people to invest in ranches and grazing grounds which the herdsmen can hire or lease. Instead of the stupidity of taking grazing grounds by fiat, business owners can be encouraged to see the benefits of developing ranches.

    There is no running away from restructuring our archaic mode of animal husbandry. Well, now that Kongi’s sanctuary has been breached, perhaps we may want to call for a national conference to rethink this huge business of beef, milk and leather.

     

    Much ado about Obi’s watch

    Just as they say with the now wretched cliché about corruption fighting back, this column would want to tweak that a little to say that: bad governance is fighting back! It has become common knowledge that Mr. Peter Obi, the former governor of Anambra State, was a model of prudence and fiscal responsibility during his time in governance.

    This must explain why twice in just about six months, he has been brought to the Platform series of the Covenant Christian Centre to speak on responsible management of public office. The first was on October 1, 2016 and the second this last May Day.

    Both lectures were huge for those who seek wisdom and who love rectitude in governance. But instead of his nuggets of advice trending, some detractors have found joy in trying to prove that Obi does not own only one wristwatch as he claimed. What pettiness and what a pity?

    For a man who was already a wealthy businessman before he got to office; a man who never borrowed a kobo all his eight years in office as governor and one who left about N75 billion in the kitty for his predecessor, wristwatches would be like toy stories to him, wouldn’t they?

    Let’s not miss the lesson; Nigeria needs men like Obi now more than ever.

     

  • Herdsmen and specialists

    If this headline echoes Wole Soyinka’s Madmen and Specialists, fulsome apologies to Africa’s first Nobel Laureate in Literature.

    Still, can you differentiate the “sane” and the “insane” between these two : the homicidal herdsmen, a band of criminals that must be condemned by all;  or the torrent of no less irrational reactions, to this national tragedy of monumental proportions?

    The grisly murders, on an impunity beyond scale, and the grim reactions, on an emotiveness beyond measure, speak of equal-opportunity insanity, in a vast, vast sanatorium.

    Yet, the answer to the problem is simple: crime and punishment, to borrow the title of Russian writer, Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s classic.  The state must punish every crime.  When it fails, it fosters the impunity to commit more.

    That is the long and short of the herdsmen madness.  The moment the Nigerian state cracks down, and brings to book the criminals, this crime, of wilful murder of innocent citizens, would vanish.

    The killer herdsmen are mad — and it wouldn’t matter whether they were Fulani, Hausa, Yoruba, Igbo, Itsekiri, Ijaw or Berom.  However, a clinical execution of the law will, posthaste, cure them of their madness.

    But so too are the specialists (again, apologies to Prof. Soyinka) — the Fulani of the cattle herding lobby, that tend to push odious cultural chauvinism, if not outright imperialism; and rationalize the wilful massacre of innocent citizens, simply because the killers are kith-and-kin.  Such obduracy hardly edifies their civilisation.

    No less so are the other specialists — Igbo, Yoruba, Ijaw, Edo, etc, with a shrill media: the southern cauldron seething with understandable rage and hurt, given the gruesome and soulless killings.

    But what is not understandable — nay, should be intolerable if the motive is to solve the problem — is the emotive criminalization of every Fulani, starting with the president of the Federal Republic; and the demonization of Fulani culture, on account of a few Fulani criminals.

    Trading mutual hurt and exchanging mutual insults would grab sensational headlines.  Pushing savage reprisals would milk explosive passion, guaranteed to end in mutual ruin.  But  to solve the problem, just go after and punish the criminals.

    Crime, after all, has no ethnic coloration!

    Indeed, it is commonsense to de-ethicize criminality: you don’t attack a person’s treasured essence, and yet expect that person to listen to you.

    Take President Muhammadu Buhari.  Criminals, allegedly of Fulani stock, have gone on a binge of killings — utterly condemnable and despicable.

    But then, the mass anger in the land illogically suggests the killings are a Fulani project, to which the first citizen may well be complicit!  If a man is unfairly tried and practically found guilty, how would he be primed to do his duty by law?  And that job he must do, if the menace must vanish!

    Besides, would any Nigerian leader, past or present, merrily hug an unfair slur on the essence he holds dear?

    Obafemi Awolowo?  Awo declared he was Yoruba first before he was Nigerian.  So, if you attack his Yoruba essence, you can predict how far you would go with him.

    Ahmadu Bello and Tafawa Balewa?  The duo were, not unfairly, accused of being champions of northern interests — hardly illegitimate — to stave off southern domination at independence.  Therefore,  their northern core was manifest. Attack that, and you are almost always sure of a negative reaction.

    Nnamdi Azikiwe?  Zik was born in the North, of Igbo parentage, was a smooth and lovable “Lagos boy” for much of his adult life and was an unfazed champion of the “Nigerian”.  Yet, when broke out in 1967, and until Zik made a dramatic appearance in Lagos in 1969, he could not pull himself off the trauma of his Igbo people.

    Sure, Olusegun Obasanjo, in his Not My Will, mocked Zik’s alleged “descent”, in old age, from the Zik of Africa to the Owelle of Onitsha.  But with all due respect to the former president, that attack was offensive, immature and baseless. Zik followed a natural progression from cradle to grave, which neither diminished his “Nigerian-ness”, nor compromised his Igbo-ness.

    In other words, his Igbo nativity only complemented his Nigerian nationality.  That is how it should be.  The two need not be mutually exclusive.

    Obasanjo?  Perhaps only Chief Obasanjo would entertain that grand delusion: that his Nigerian-ness is everything; but his Yoruba-ness is nothing.  Yet, even Obasanjo, the ultra-nationalist, would appear to enjoy his bitter-sweet moniker of Ebora Owu!

    As Awo would say, you need to be first a good Yoruba man before you are a good Nigerian!

    But the point in all of these is simple: Nigerians, even in times of extreme national crisis, must learn to be cautious, polite and clear-headed.  The ethnic profiling of tarring everyone with the criminal brush of a few, only compounds the problem.  That is manifest in the herdsmen killings.

    The result is silly and over-generalized accusations — from the enraged; but equally asinine and bland rationalization of criminality, by victims of such ethnic profiling.  It is a shame.

    How much simpler would it have been, had crime been isolated and condemned by all!  How much simpler, had the ethnic bogey, by accusers and defenders, not cropped up, to create a needless but costly distraction!

    Still, it must be declared that this extreme reaction has resulted from a Nigerian state that has, for too long, abandoned its sacred duty of citizen security and protection.  That must stop.

    Besides, the notoriety and hostility that have greeted Fulani herdsmen come from perceived unevenness, over the years, in the government’s handling of inter-ethnic matters; so much so that some feel so privileged they could virtually do and undo; while others feel so brow-beaten they can only gawk at injustice.

    If the so-called Fulani herdsmen have been so unconscionable in their killings, it is because they have permitted themselves the delusion that they could always get away with crime because of their ethnic connections with the powers-that-be.

    Too bad — and just as well the president has told the security agencies to swoop on the killers, even if that order appears rather superfluous.  The Police and others should need no especial orders to crack down on criminals.

    But then, so skewed is contemporary Nigeria that, without that presidential order, not a few would swear, if not at presidential inactivity, then at presidential complicity!

    Still, it is high time the Nigerian state exploded that costly illusion, bring these criminals to book and be clearly seen to have done so! The state’s primary function is citizen security.  That is the basis of the Social Contract, which itself is the basis of government and the modern state.

    Let the Nigerian state, therefore, use the killer herdsmen to reassert itself, and give anyone or group that threatens Nigerian life a bloody nose.

    That is the only way to show these criminals that crime attracts serious consequences.

  • Madmen and specialists

    Madmen and specialists

    This is the season of Wole Soyinka, Nigeria’s master artist, whose works, whether as a playwright, a novelist, a poet or an essayist, have dramatised the Nigerian harried existence. He has poeticised Nigeria either in the mocking tones of comedy or in the depressing ether of tragedy. As we celebrate his 80th birthday, we also mourn the Nigerian season of anomie, as we have morphed into a nation on the edge of a precipice. His oeuvre broods over his country.

    Nothing demonstrates this atrophy of hope as the harmattan dust unleashed by the President Goodluck Jonathan administration in the name of democracy. It is the hobgoblin of impeachment. Ordinarily, we can say impeachment is a legitimate weapon of politics to oust any elected officer, whether governor or president, who has breached the moral code of office and drawn the cathedral aura of the people’s mandate into the cesspit. So, to impeach legitimately is to affirm the people’s will, but also to retrieve the high ideal of the vote. It is the re-legitimation of the people’s will and the sublimity of democracy as a popular revenge. It is a reminder to the incumbent that he is flesh and blood, human like all of us, and he cannot soar into tyranny or fall into contempt at will. It is a milder form of the Roman tradition where a slave lurked behind an emperor during a triumphal parade and whispered: “Remember, you are only human.”

    Yet, I can say that in this inchoate republic, we have had quite a few impeachments, and I can say we have never had any, no matter the political party, that actually carried the inviolate encasement of the people’s hurrah. It has always been politics as revenge, sometimes with the hue of atavistic butchery.

    But never before in our history has this weapon become so savage in its intent as the gale that the Jonathan administration is flinging open from his house of storms. The Acting Governor of Adamawa State, Ahmadu Fintiri, exemplified the low moral standard with his celebration when he arrived the national headquarters of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Abuja. “I have delivered,” he crooned with self-satisfaction. What did that mean? “As a loyal and obedient party member, I came on a courtesy call to my party and the National Working Committee as my first assignment after the battle to remove Governor Murtala Nyako, who had stolen the mandate of the PDP under which he was elected. I came here to bring back the mandate and I have handed over to them (party leaders) the mandate.”

    Clearly, the ouster had nothing to do with higher ideal of integrity in public office. It was just an act of partisan malice. For Governor Nyako had many sins before he defected from the PDP to the All Progressives Congress (APC), and they were legion. Yet, I cannot say all were unconstitutional sins. I found them very nauseating. How do you turn your office into a nepotistic fiefdom advertising your husbandry of wives by making them special advisers, or how do you turn fecund with about 1,000 special advisers in the name of stomach infrastructure? How do you turn your son into a political gladiator just because you have one, and you can flex any paternal muscle? Those were some of the things that the public detested about the man, and all of these permeated the Adamawa body politic as a PDP man. He was not impeachable then. Suddenly his sins as a PDP man were saintly until he became an APC man. He did not have body odour until he found another lover. The trial, like the trial in Soyinka’s best work, A Dance of the Forests, created optical illusion. Is Nyako being tried as the PDP sinner or as the APC defector? Who was innocent here, who was the madman? Was it the man who was tried, or the accuser? Or who was the specialist? Was it the person who claimed he had control of the judicial process and turned it upside down, or the man who fled because he knew justice had tumbled over? In Soyinka’s Madmen and Specialists, the border is nebulous. Was it not the same house that gave Nyako a vote of confidence in the halcyon, back-slapping days when he had committed the same offences over which he recently fell at the guillotine? By impeaching him, were they not carrying out the absurd theatre of self-impeachment, an act of legislative self-execution?

    So, what we are seeing, however, is a play of giants. Jonathan is the giant here, but not a giant of moral grandeur. He is a parody of the giant of the television advertisement standing him with Mandela, Obama, etc. But he is a giant, who Soyinka mocked in a play of that title. So, it was clear Fintiri was not acting for the Adamawa State people, but his party leaders in Abuja, and who is the helmsman of Abuja? Unless we lie to ourselves, it is President Jonathan. Was that not why Nyako scurried there, cap in hand, to see if he could save him? He forgot that nobody ever begs Jonathan in this matter. He, a snake with sly venom, never forgives and never takes responsibility. Fat with prey, he snorts quietly in his nest. Nyako just learned that lesson after wasting his pride in a servile visit to Aso Rock. If you knew brother Chume well, in Soyinka’s Jero Plays, you won’t have a doubt. He watches from the stealth of his abode his opera of Nigeria. He does not have to have wonyosi.

    So, why not Nasarawa, why not Edo, or Rivers, etc? But we forget that his first target has been Rivers State, but he has consistently failed. He is still hopeful. But what is at stake is not the party victory now, but the Nigerian democracy or our survival as a nation. Jonathan does not have a conscience for consequences or an acute sense of history. That would have subdued him to sobriety. If you succeed now, does democracy succeed? Politics is a contest for power, but malice and contempt for the dignity of the constitution are dangerous. They uphold the cynical high point of technicality over substance. You don’t win a people from above, but from below. Jonathan wants to conquer rather than win the hearts of Nigeria. You don’t know when a soup is over-burned by staring at the surface bubbling appetisingly. Any such strategy is superficial. It is flirtation with death for this democracy like the King’s horseman in Soyinka’s play of that title. It’s not the road for us.

  • Specialists canvass support for VVF

    For Helen Manjok, a 16-year-old pupil in Junior Secondary School 3 (JSS 3), who had lived without an anus from birth, it is no longer a miserable life. She is from Ogoja Local Government Area of Cross River State.

    She was born with the condition and has been going to school with it. Her anus has been repaired. She has been given an indispensable gift, an anus, courtesy of the cooperative relationship between Ogoja General Hospital, Calabar, and fistula surgeons from other hospitals in the country.

    Under the pool repair activity, doctors from fistula centres came together for one week at a centre and carried out fistula repairs.

    The operation was carried out by Prof Oladosu Ojengbede of the University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan.

    According to the Medical Director, Ogoja General Hospital, Calabar, Dr Michael Okongor, the girl is doing well and is very happy. She is not the only joyful patient. Maria Fidelis-Omini is also in high spirits. She is a housewife from Yakurr Local Government Area of Cross River State.

    She developed VVF as a married woman and it was repaired during another lap of the exercise at the National Fistula Hospital, Abakaliki, Ebonyi State, last year. Unlike her colleagues, her husband did not abandon her. He stood by her before, during and after the exercise.

    She said: “Throughout the period I was at the hospital at Omini, my husband was by my bedside offering encouragement. I cannot thank him enough because without his support I would have found the experience more painful, God bless him for me.”

    These two are lucky among the 158,000 women with VVF in Nigeria. No fewer than 12,000 new cases occur annually. The data is obtained with “Environmental Scan” commissioned by USAID in 2010 with participation from UNFPA, Federal Ministry of Health (FMOH) and Federal Ministry of Women Affairs (FMOWA).

    Presenting a situation report on the treatment (medically described as repair) Dr Okongor was full of praise to the USAID Fistula Care Project for introducing the mechanism for the cooperative relationship at his hospital.

    “All that we have achieved in terms of fistula repair has been because of this relationship which has enabled experienced fistula surgeons across the country to come to our centre at no cost to the centre to do fistula repairs, this has happened because of the assistance that the USAID Fistula Care Project has offered to our hospital” Okongor said.

    “Our centre has received a lot of support from USAID Fistula Care Project, our theatre was fully renovated with a new operating table and air-conditioners, you know fistula repair is time consuming so doctors need a conducive environment to work. They also gave us a brand new generating set, our dedicated fistula ward was also renovated and most importantly our doctors and other medical staff have been trained and retrained on fistula repairs and post operation care”.

    Corroborating his story, Project Manager of USAID Fistula Care Project, Chief Iyeme Efem, said it was a very remarkable feat.

    “This goes to show one of the benefits that can come with doctors working together and sharing experiences and knowledge” he said.

    “We were supposed to have started implementing the framework in 2010, now we are in 2013 which means we are behind by two years already. So, all stakeholders must work real hard for us to catch up on lost grounds, especially in the face of the promise made by President Goodluck Jonathan to treat one third of women with fistula this year. The promise translates to about 66,000 women (one third of 200,000) being treated this year alone.”

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Specialists canvass support for VVF

    Specialists canvass support for VVF

    The repair of vesico vagina fistula, otherwise called VVF, is gaining ground in Nigeria. With aid from USAID Fistula Care Project, medics interested in the specialty gathered at Ogoja General Hospital, Calabar, where some were trained, others re-trained and cases repaired. OYEYEMI GBENGA-MUSTAPHA writes on their challenges.

     

    For Helen Manjok, a 16-year old pupil in Junior Secondary School 3 (JSS 3), who had lived without an anus from birth, it is no longer a miserable life. She is from Ogoja Local Government Area of Cross River State.

    She was born with the condition and has been going to school with it. Her anus has been repaired. She has been given an indispensable gift, an anus, courtesy of the cooperative relationship between Ogoja General Hospital, Calabar, and fistula surgeons from other hospitals in the country.

    Under the pool repair activity, doctors from fistula centres came together for one week at a centre and carried out fistula repairs.

    The operation was carried out by Prof Oladosu Ojengbede of the University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan.

    According to the Medical Director, Ogoja General Hospital, Calabar, Dr Michael Okongor, the girl is doing well and is very happy. She is not the only joyful patient. Maria Fidelis-Omini is also in high spirits. She is a housewife from Yakurr Local Government Area of Cross River State.

    She developed VVF as a married woman and it was repaired during another lap of the exercise at the National Fistula Hospital, Abakaliki, Ebonyi State, last year. Unlike her colleagues, her husband did not abandon her. He stood by her before, during and after the exercise.

    She said: “Throughout the period I was at the hospital at Omini, my husband was by my bedside offering encouragement. I cannot thank him enough because without his support I would have found the experience more painful, God bless him for me.”

    These two are lucky among the 158,000 women with VVF in Nigeria. No fewer than 12,000 new cases occur annually. The data is obtained with “Environmental Scan” commissioned by USAID in 2010 with participation from UNFPA, Federal Ministry of Health (FMOH) and Federal Ministry of Women Affairs (FMOWA).

    Presenting a situation report on the treatment (medically described as repair) Dr Okongor was full of praise to the USAID Fistula Care Project for introducing the mechanism for the cooperative relationship at his hospital.

    “All that we have achieved in terms of fistula repair has been because of this relationship which has enabled experienced fistula surgeons across the country to come to our centre at no cost to the centre to do fistula repairs, this has happened because of the assistance that the USAID Fistula Care Project has offered to our hospital” Okongor said.

    “Our centre has received a lot of support from USAID Fistula Care Project, our theatre was fully renovated with a new operating table and air-conditioners, you know fistula repair is time consuming so doctors need a conducive environment to work. They also gave us a brand new generating set, our dedicated fistula ward was also renovated and most importantly our doctors and other medical staff have been trained and retrained on fistula repairs and post operation care”.

    He said the centre has repaired about 200 women living with fistula since 2011. “We were able to achieve this feat through pool repairs funded by USAID Fistula Care Project.”

    Corroborating his story, Project Manager of USAID Fistula Care Project, Chief Iyeme Efem, said it was a very remarkable feat. “This goes to show one of the benefits that can come with doctors working together and sharing experiences and knowledge” he said

    “We were supposed to have started implementing the framework in 2010, now we are in 2013 which means we are behind by two years already. So, all stakeholders must work real hard for us to catch up on lost grounds, especially in the face of the promise made by President Goodluck Jonathan to treat one third of women with fistula this year. The promise translates to about 66,000 women (one third of 200,000) being treated this year alone.”

    “Realising this target will be herculean and it requires a lot of hard work from stakeholders. This is because the number of women being treated yearly is nowhere close to the target set by Mr. President for 2013. Figures from everybody doing repairs in all facilities, both private and public is between 5,000 to 6,000 annually so if we are to realise the president’s promise all stakeholders must increase whatever they are doing by many folds”.

    “Especially the men, they need to be educated that fistula is not a death sentence for women who suffer it, because once they are repaired they can go home and resume a productive life with their husbands and families” he said.

    In his own view, Dr. Henry Uro-Chukwu of the National Fistula Hospital, Abakaliki, said after some years of fistula service provision+, there arose, “a need to ensure a holistic approach to implementation of fistula interventions to cover prevention, treatment, rehabilitation and reintegration. This resulted in the development of the National Strategic Framework and plan for the eradication of Obstetric Fistula in Nigeria with the goal to contribute to the promotion of quality of life of women through the elimination of obstetric fistula in Nigeria”.

    Though funding for the production of the document was provided by USAID Fistula Care Project and UNFPA, he said the framework is a document of the Federal Government and needs the support and facilitation of all stakeholders to succeed.

    Dr. Uro-Chukwu said under the framework, expectations are at three levels. At the primary level, prevention of occurrence of new cases of fistula through increased access to health services by pregnant women; at the secondary level, availability of quality treatment services for women with fistula and at the tertiary level prevention, rehabilitation and reintegration of women who are down with fistula.”