‘Everyman inherits unfinished tasks from his predecessors and leaves unfinished tasks to his successors. Enough for us, if we lay a stone, though it be one stone in one of the courses of the great building’
-Alexander Maclaren, Scottish minister and philosopher
Sometime in the early 1990s, at the presentation of his seminal book on Prebendal Politics in Nigeria, Distinguished Political Science Professor and our compatriot, Richard Joseph, came to tears while remarking upon the paradox of famous world-class economists of Nigerian extraction, side by side with the shambles and straits which the Nigerian economy was by then being defined. As we know, matters have gone from bad to worse since then, punctuated by short-lived seasons of commodity booms, which were terribly mismanaged. The result is that Nigeria has today earned the notorious title of the world’s poverty capital. As this columnist reflected on the recent deserved celebration of Emeritus Professor of Medicine, Oladipupo Akinkugbe, who was dropping his stethoscope so that, in his words, “I do not become a patient in my own clinic”, the paradox of star academics and world-class physicians coexisting with a health sector that is, to say the least, in the doldrums became pungently apparent. In order to understand the quality and depth of scholarship of Akinkugbe’s generation, we may refresh our minds with the commendation paid to Akinkugbe’s successor, as Dean of the Faculty at Medicine, Prof. Benjamin Osuntokun, of the blessed memory, by Sir Eldryd Parry, who interestingly was very visible at the recent events. Wrote Parry, in the Independent of London regarding Osuntokun, his former student; “In the early years, he (Osuntokun) came to Britain to learn; later, it was our turn (the British) to learn from him”.
That apart, even the pedigree of many of Akinkugbe’s former students who graced the hanging the stethoscope occasion, several of them star academics and former Vice Chancellors, indicate that we are dealing with a generation that will be hard to equal, even if the standard of education had not slipped so sharply. Consider the likes of Professors, Ayodele Falase, Isaac Adewole, Idris Mohammed, L.A. Salako, Kayode Oyediran among others, who had been mentored by Akinkugbe and the point will become clearer. As Professor Niyi Akinnaso pointed out in a lucid intervention, ‘As Akinkugbe hangs his stethoscope’, (The PUNCH, Tuesday October 23, 2018) Akinkugbe, who studied at Oxford, remains iconic, as far as medical excellence is concerned as well as in the area of university administration. The lacuna mentioned at the outset, therefore, is not about Akinkugbe’s achievements, but about how so much excellence symbolised by his generation, and even later ones, can co-exist with a dishevelled health sector.
Today, medical tourism remains a distinct habit and pastime of the political elite, symbolised by President Muhammadu Buhari’s several visits to London for treatment, not to mention the desolation of the Aso Rock Clinic. On one of Buhari’s medical vacations abroad, a British journalist bantered that it would be interesting to learn how Buhari would feel if he were to be treated in London by one of the rising number of Nigerian doctors, who work in British hospitals. That is not all. Roughly, a year ago, the Chief Medical Director of the University of Calabar Teaching Hospital, Prof. Thomas Agan, lamented that over 90% of deaths from our hospitals could be attributed to the lackadaisical attitude and impliedly, declining competence of health workers including doctors (see Ayo Olukotun ‘Hospitals as undertakers? Saving a dying health sector. The PUNCH, Friday September 22, 2017)
As previously mentioned, it will be unfair to hold Akinkugbe, now in his 85th year, and his teeming mentees responsible for the decay in our health sector. Indeed, connecting with the opening quote, Akinkugbe has laid not just one stone but several stones in the quest to salvaging the health crisis, not least by thinking through the problem, proffering solutions and instigating reforms when he had the wherewithal. Yet, the problems remain stark. At this point, however, this writer craves the reader’s indulgence to digress by bringing in a short take.
One of the blessings of the current election season is the visibility of newly formed parties, contributing to election discourse in ways that enrich national conversation. It was a delight, the other day, listening to my former colleague, Dr Obadiah Mailafia, bringing fresh perspectives to the debate on restructuring and state police. We also had Mrs Oby Ezekwesilli, a former minister of education, waxing lyrical about the “aggressive mediocrity” of the major contenders. In the same vein, a former Governor of Ondo State and presidential candidate of the Zenith Labour Party, Olusegun Mimiko, last week held a town hall meeting at Ibadan. Raising a red alert, Mimiko said that Nigeria is on the verge of becoming a failed nation, considering the level of insecurity, leading to, in some cases, mass slaughter of citizens, escalating unemployment, deepening poverty, and unabated corruption. He went on to say that, as someone who had been privileged to be in leadership positions, he could not stand still and watch the country rot away.
The interesting thing about the emerging parties is that they are not bound to respect the principles of zoning and ethnic arithmetic, imposed by the mainstream parties. It is important to point out however, that the challenging rhetoric of the emergent parties should go beyond diagnoses of what ails Nigeria, to redemptive agenda-building, capable of rescuing Nigeria from its current morass. Mimiko, Mailafia and Ezekwesilli obviously possess the intellectual capacity to take the conversation further by giving us more of solutions than critiques.
To return to the initial discourse on the health sector vis-à-vis the luminous careers of the giants, there is no doubt that, as Akinkugbe himself adumbrated, the lack of planning for the health sector is one of our key problems. In his words, “planning for the development of health services has been visited with the levity brush”. For example, while the country kept multiplying health institutions, according to the logic of federal character, allocation to that sector hurtled downhill. In the last four years, health and education had been severely afflicted by under-budgeting in a season when, as Parry reminded us at last week’s lecture, the challenge of Epidemics to Africa and the developing world is great indeed.
Obviously, had the country been gifted with innovative and visionary leaders, the head start of world-class scholarship, associated with Akinkugbe and others would by now have translated into Nigeria becoming a medical hub, and a tourist haven rather than a scavenging nation, whose leaders jet out at every turn for medical rescue. One other source of worry is the disconnect between Nigeria and the rest of the globe in the area of medical scholarship. These days, very little is going on in research, with the unhappy prospect that we will continue to be hewers of wood and drawers of water as far as medical scholarship runs.
It is alright to ponder on the excellence and legendary achievements of scholars like Akinkugbe, it is more responsible however to turn their accomplishments into inspiration for revitalising our comatose health institutions. To do less will amount to failure to appreciate the true significance of the labours of our heroes.
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