By Emeka Alex Duru
(08054103327)
We shall make some quick clarifications before delving into this conversation, properly. Firstly, the headline is a mere working title. It does not capture the entire rot in the system. The health sector is a just a fraction of the whole. The entire system is neglected. The only thriving sector is that of corruption. Each component however stares at us at one time or another. We are now being humbled by the inadequacies of the health sector.
Perhaps, nothing, in recent time, has exposed the hopelessness of our healthcare system as the Coronavirus that is currently ravaging the World. In its blistering speed, the disease has left even the most sophisticated of the world’s health systems grappling with many experiments to save their citizens, without corresponding success. We have read frightening stories of Italy losing over 900, Spain, 700 and America, 500 citizens within 24 hours in some instances. Britain, Germany and other countries of the West, have their own sordid tales. For these systems with reliable data base and adequate health arrangement to post such disturbing figures of loss, the reality of the devastating sweep of the Coronavirus, can no longer be a matter of casual explanation.
This will then, explain our predicament in the face of the unnerving situation. Over time, the demand to fix the country has been treated with a wave of hand by successive leadership in the land. For the leaders, their understanding of the social contract as propounded by the 18th century French philosopher, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, does not include the aspect that requires them to attend to the needs of the people in the maintenance of the social order. They are only concerned with that which guarantees them loyalty from the people. Consequently, the leadership in our system, considers it a matter of right that the led owes it a duty of service, even when it lacks the moral authority to make such appropriation. It is this entitlement mentality that explains the Nigeria Big Man Syndrome. The first sign of this arrival tendency, is the ‘us-and-them’ divide that defines social relations in the country.
This imaginary division manifests in the glee with which an average Nigerian leader, even an ordinary Councilor, announces the frequency of his tours or residency abroad. That, makes him sound big. And great, by his calculation! In the process, such outlandish expression as medical tourism abroad, finds itself in our vocabulary as a way of separating the Big Man from the Ordinary Nigerian. This bug has also, sadly, caught our President, who, while seeking the votes in 2015, had vowed not to spend the scarce resources of the country visiting hospitals abroad. But five years of his election, the story is different. He had on occasions, spent a large chunk of the year in London hospitals.
Not even Aso Rock Clinic in his backyard, can boast of basic drugs for treatment of malaria. Local health infrastructure has been regarded as a matter of the poor and totally neglected or abandoned. In the alternative, trips for medical attention abroad, have assumed status symbol for officials of the administration and other wealthy Nigerians.
You can now understand why we are completely caught napping and thoroughly exposed by the Coronavirus. The irony of the situation is that there are no more places to run to. The countries that had hitherto offered safe havens for our leaders have closed their borders as a way of curtailing the spread of the disease. Statistics also indicate that they equally have their own challenges to contend with. The pandemic is also not one that afflicts on account of casual or irresponsible lifestyle. Even the most careful can be a victim. Thus, we are in it, we are in it! The situation, has therefore turned to, as it is expressed in the street parlance, ‘East or West, home is the best’.
But the question for the Nigerian leaders, is where their home is. Closely related to this is the preparedness of the country in tackling the pandemic that is clearly overwhelming even the advanced societies.
One good thing that perhaps, some celebrate, for now, is the relative low figure of identified cases in the country. By Thursday, April 2, 2020, the figure was still put at below 200.
But considering that this is just a fraction of merely 2000 tests so far carried out, the percentage is high. Again, in a system where submission to tests or seeking attention from the hospital, is not the norm, it may really be difficult to estimate the actual number of Nigerians that may have been knocked down by the disease, truth be told.
When therefore, donations are made by public spirited individuals and organisations for the fight against and management of the pandemic, the money should not be seen as bazaar or another opportunity for the boys. It is a donation for the victims of the virus, the vulnerable and even management of the dead. We have had cases of donations for victims of certain disasters in the past that did not get to them. It would be sad if the current flow of funds by Nigerians for the management of the pandemic ends up in private accounts.
But the most important lesson to learn from Coronavirus experience, is that no system survives in abdication of its responsibilities. For long, Nigeria as a country has lived in denial, with the leaders hankering for succor in foreign lands in the vain conviction that they were safe there. Coronavirus has altered this template of thought. This is the time for the country to look inwards and fix its health sector and other aspects of national life.
