Habitually, I call my mother at least once a week. It is always good talking with her and being fed with the latest stories back home. But last week’s matter with her was disturbing. The yarns were mostly about people I know who have died prematurely as a result of curable diseases. They did not die because they were diseased of an ailment for which there is no cure. They basically died because they had the misfortune of being citizens of a country that is cursed with bad leadership. They died precipitately because, despite being born in the midst of plenty, but due to the greed of a few, there was no accessible health care for them.
My mother also told me that the woman who was my babysitter when I was a child has been diagnosed of diabetes, on top of her high blood pressure. Normally, except when some well-to-do family members come to the aid of such a person, this kind of a diagnosis is simply a death sentence. Not because diabetes is not a manageable health condition, but because, due to clueless and wicked leadership, the poor in the society are not catered for.
They are left to live by chance and die a degrading death one day.
It is unbelievable that a country which has earned over $600M US dollars from oil alone since independence, its citizen still can’t access a decent health care scheme. In the biblical book of Genesis, God was grieved when he saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth has become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. He regretted that He created man on earth. But from what I have seen in Nigeria, God must have underestimated the badness of man.
Nigeria is blighted with cruel leadership, when the last thing on the mind of the leaders is the wellbeing of the people they are ostensibly leading to nowhere, except to their untimely death. Two things have to be distinguished here, corruption and callousness. The latter is visible in every known clime, though the magnitude varies. But it seems to me that, in the case of the former, Nigeria has distinguished itself as possibly the only country on earth, where leadership is so callous.
If our leaders were corrupt but did the least for the people so that they could be differentiated from their animal cousins, I would not be bothered. What troubles me is the fact that our rulers simply don’t care. A governor could sit on the salary of workers for months and he would never lose sleep as to how those workers, who have children to feed and send to school, would survive. It doesn’t matter to him.
I just left high school in 1983 when some coup plotters ousted the then Shagari government. I remember listening eagerly to the radio address of the spokesman of the khaki boys. One of the reasons they gave then was that our hospitals have become mere “consulting clinics”. We were even later promised health for all by the year 2000 by one of those coup plotters when he later seized power in a palace coup. This promise was never kept and by the time the military was done in 1999, there were even no more consulting clinics left.
The civilians are not better. Since the return to the so-called civil rule in 1999, successive governments have done little or nothing in providing health care for a teeming population. Would any one then be surprised why the people take all their health problems to money extorting pastors? If government did all it is supposed to do, Pastor Adeboye, for example, would have no money to buy a private jet.
How could this country be so cursed that since independence no leader has emerged, who would look at the poor man in his village and shout to high heavens that a Nigerian should never live like he is living? Those who have steered the affairs of this country have not been fair to their fellow country men and women. What happened to their human feelings? Does power make them mad? We have seen only self-serving leaders, who don’t even take time out to think what they can do to improve the lot of the common man.
This country has only seen leaders who think that the best way to take a country forward is to lie and deceive the populace. History has and will continue to expose such insincere leaders. When General Babangida and his crew bamboozled with health for all by the year 2000, did they think that 2000 will never come? Now it is Vision 2020. That year will come and Nigeria may even be worse off. To me the only significant progress Nigeria has made since 1960 is this GSM thing. This is why I am able to keep in touch with mum. But sadly, often she doesn’t have good news for me.
*first publsihed November 28, 2012