When I was growing up in Ibadan, the University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan, was a leading hospital in West Africa; it was the number eight best hospital in the entire world and here we are in the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH) with no facilities and this small doctor running all over the place. The nurses were outrageous; they were slow and indifferent. They couldn’t be bothered if somebody was alive or sick.
It was 1am, and this girl was writhing in pain, moaning in pain all over the place. We were doing everything possible to make her comfortable. Then suddenly, the doctor announced we needed blood. So we began looking for blood; found two pints, gave it to the girl. She consumed it. We went to this other place, got another two pints, and she consumed everything.
Then there was no more blood from the blood bank. So they said: “Who will donate blood?” We got those who will donate, but there was no blood bag. Now it was 2am; we went looking for blood bags. Then one girl said she knew where we can get blood bags.
I then drove that night, crossing from one barrier to another in Mushin, because all the gates were locked; we have become prisoners in our own homes. You had to be jumping fences because every single gate was locked.
Finally, we found the blood bags under a nurse’s bed in her home. We asked her: “What are you doing with the blood bags underneath your bed?” She said that is how she makes her own money. We got the blood bags, and then at 4.30am, they said the girl had died. It was one of the most painful experiences of my life. Then I looked at myself, looked at Nigeria and asked: how can a nation be so blessed, yet be so poor?
What is the problem with the Blackman? It is the limits of his thinking. Hear what somebody called Captain Fredrick Lugard said about the Blackman just before he became governor-general of Nigeria in 1907 or thereabout:
“In character and temperament, the typical African of all his race types is a happy, shiftless excitable person lacking in self-control, lacking in discipline, lacking in foresight, full of personal vanity, with a little sense of veracity, fond of music, his thoughts are concentrated on the events of the moment and he suffers from little of the apprehension of the future or grief of the past.”
A hundred years later and the African is still dwelling in the same way, and everybody is wondering what is happening to us? What is happening to the average African? A man that limits his thoughts to himself might be rich in resources like the prodigal son, but poor in intellect. And if a man is poor in intellect, it would eventually reflect in his wellbeing, and that’s why a lot of formerly rich people die extremely poor or die extremely poorly, especially in this part of the world.
The world is always predictable, as there will always be good times and bad times. There would always be times of plenty and times of famine. But if you are in the right place at the right time, you discover that, famine or not, you will prosper; because the Bible also tells me that right in that famine, “pigs” were prospering but the rich were suffering.