The nation has again lost a quintessential elder statesman, Dr Alex Ifeanyichukwu Ekwueme to the icy hands of death in a London hospital. Sad to see a consummate patriot die because the country he invested his life in has no capacity to grant him a peaceful passage from home. Fifty-seven years after flag independence we import everything from bamboo toothpicks to failed cars and now we have added dying to the tokunbo craze.
Ekwueme’s death at this time is a sad irony. In sacking the government he and Shehu Shagari headed in1984, Buhari and his henchmen described the hospitals they inherited from them as mere consulting clinics. Thirty-three years after, and two solid years after returning as ‘elected’ president, our hospitals, including the one dedicated to treat him and his acolytes do not qualify to be called undertakers. Buhari could argue that he did not get the opportunity to improve upon his 1984 inheritance before Babangida the adventurous militician swept him and his colleagues aside; if Buhari believed that consultancy clinics deserved improvement, he has not shown us the blueprint after four attempts at the presidency. Instead, he glibly announces that he has kept the same London doctor since he was petroleum minister.
Majority of the doctors and health professionals who were in service or graduated in 1984 have left the shores of our country with their expertise. Ten years after Buhari’s first adventure in governance, South Africa recruited over 300 Nigerian doctors to help it run its de-racialized health service. Very few citizens can afford medical tourism to South Africa.
The politicization of Ekwueme’s illness points to the shamelessness of Africa’s populous giant. His family kept his ailment away from the public, ostensibly conscious of the pride that the elder statesman exudes in his country and his unquestionable sense of patriotism. The Ekwueme we knew would have preferred to die at home in patriotic pride. Someone leaked his suffering to the public and the power that be offered what an ungrateful nation gives to a patriot as a last-ditch attempt to absolve itself of the guilt it owes him.
Ekwueme has left us. The privilege of an overseas treatment is something he earned, but apparently not a right he was eager to grab. The nation owes him state burial because he paid his due as a patriot and a statesman. We could have given him extended life, the luxury of a peaceful retirement and the privilege of a pacific death because he sacrificed so much for the nation. We lost yet another opportunity to say thank you to patriots while they are with us, knowing full well that they are not impacted by whatever we do after they’re gone.
Life and the right to accessible and affordable health care is the inalienable right a citizen expects of his nation. It is a right denied citizens of our country. How is a man expected to show patriotism to a nation that guarantees nothing?
Serious nations do not build five-star hospitals for its rulers; instead they invest in health facilities accessible to all and exclusive amenities for those who can afford it. In our country, even the exclusive anomaly called State House Clinic with more capital votes than five teaching hospitals put together cannot treat the president’s earache.
Whereas, the doctors who escaped the consulting clinics described by Buhari in 1984 found fame and fortune abroad, those trained thenceforth and currently hardly qualify to practice as paramedics anywhere in the world. The few teachers mentoring them speak of the cunning wisdom they are forced to employ in order to fit into the advances in health care management and delivery when they go on sabbaticals. In most cases, they feel like visitors from Stone Age. Ekwueme got national privilege albeit too late. National icons like Sadiq Daba, the Bitrus of the epic Cock Crow at Dawn lie wasting in Kaduna praying for the generosity of good Samaritans to treat leukaemia and prostate cancer. Conscientious citizens crowd-funded him in the hope of saving his life. We pray that he survives. Kashimu Yero, another national icon known as Uncle Gaga didn’t make it nor did Abdulkareem Albashir, a veteran journalist. Evidently, many other national icons are dying unsung abandoned by a country they gave their all.
A country that wastes its best citizens would have no conscience wasting thespians, pen pushers and its electorate. We can do better. We should do better. This regime whose head tried four times before making it to State House should give us a health care redemption blueprint to bring back the hospitals at least to the status of consultancy clinics. If they could diagnose, treatment should come easy. This regime and its henchmen should not be happy to flaunt their unquestioned privilege to go abroad for treatment rather than rebuild our collapsed health service. But with the current trend and its devil may care attitude, this won’t be the last national tokunbo death embarrassment because shame has lost its meaning.
