As Kano indigene and a client of Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital for the better part of the last two decades, the asphyxia gripping the elite hospital as a result of poor, selfish and despotic mismanagement by the current CMD, Professor Abdulrahman Abba Sheshe, is choking as well as nostalgic for me and several other patients, workers and contractors in the hospital and beyond.
It forces one to reminiscence the good olden days during the tenures of the past CMD’s – Prof Sadiq Wali, Prof Abdulhamid Isa Dutse and Prof Aminu Zakari.
Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital was founded by the Babangida administration in 1988 to serve the medical needs of not only the most populous state in the country but several of the northern states and it has been doing that remarkably well, until recently. The Hospital made history in 2002 by becoming the first in Nigeria to have successfully undertakes a kidney transplant.
I was also a witness of the medical miracles performed at the hospital when my wife was rushed in an ambulance all the way from Barau Dikko hospital in Kaduna in a state of coma to the emergency ward of AKTH. I was in Abuja attending a screen-writing workshop at the United States Embassy when I was informed by my in-laws about the deteriorating condition of my wife and how doctors in Barau Dikko have lost confidence. I organized the transfer and she was driven to Kano as I started my journey from Abuja to Kano. Arriving late in the night I found my wife in a delirious-cum-coma state. When we collected blood and Urea result from the lab and meet the attending doctor, he looked at the result and inquire if she is still alive? The Doctor was amazed when we answered in the affirmative and he explained his surprise by showing us one item in the Urea result that should read 24 in a normal person but her own is reading a staggering 700+. Eventually, all of my wife’s vital organs; heart, liver, kidney and lungs were infected and failing rapidly. After three months in the hospital and God knows how many injections and drugs, my wife had to underwent nine sessions of dialysis, ECG, X-ray and the 60 days of Tuberculosis treatment regime.
The Doctors were able to find out that she had ingested a powerful poison at some point which corrupted her system. I had to spend weeks teaching her how to re-learn to walk, and several co-patients and staff, after being pessimistic of her recovery, later used to come and peep at the miracle patient that came back from “the dead”. I have visited almost all parts of the hospital during our three months sojourn and at one time or the other solicit services of most of the departments. The hospital works 24/7 and efficiently and save for some few drugs, all investigation and test we undertook was right there in the hospital and believe you me, we had more than I can remember. That was in 2012.
A decade later, I personally went to Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital with a pile problem and the Doctor recommends I do a colonoscopy test (I had an endoscopy test some years ago at the hospital) but learnt that the machine no longer works as well as the X-Ray machines. This information raised a flag and pique my journalistic curiosity and right there and then started investigating and questioning some staff I knew there. I learnt that a good Samaritan, a foreigner for that matter had procured a very expensive machine for one of the clinical departments and donated it to Aminu Kano, the only of its kind in the entire North. Two years later when the man returned and check the progress of the machine, to his sad amazement it had become faulty and no longer conducting the test it is supposed to be doing because the management couldn’t repair it. The man literally had to shed tears regretting the millions he had invested to help poor Africa. As I write this, the machine in question is still redundant in the hospital, the X-ray and colonoscopy/endoscopy machines are also not working.
The complaints and allegations I received were alarming and the decadence and greed exhibited is beyond classic capitalism. Join me as we examine the veracity or otherwise of the allegations. The hospital has, from my experience, four key areas that dealt directly with patronizers of the hospital; beside the point of contact in the GOPD and Emergency units, we have the Accounts, Laboratories and pharmacy. Most of the generated revenue of the Hospital came through these and from the multitude of in and out-patients trooping from all over the North, it should be significant. The three-revenue generating department are all on the brink and I have personal experience with the lab as I mentioned earlier the colonoscopy/X-ray machines not working. In other cases, I learnt lack of simple reagents in the laboratories is prevalent and patients had to go outside for their tests. In the past, it is an open secret, that hospital workers opened laboratories and private clinics outside and collude with doctors and other staff to drive traffic of patient to them.
Under the current CMD, one need not go outside the hospital premises for laboratory services, as private individuals were given a space of land in a government facility to provide and make profit the same services government office could and should provide, while at the same time making redundant departments within the hospital that could offer the same services and make revenue. I visited the pharmacy, which was a ghost of its former self. I remember in my sojourn during my wife’s illness, we got 90% of all the medicines prescribed for her there at any time of the day. In the morning hours, it used to be one of the busiest wings of the hospital, but not anymore as the pharmacy no longer supplies drugs as it used to, for the same reason to empower private business and impoverishes the hospital revenue. Such activities are treasonable to the mandate of establishing the hospital.
The NHIS, which most civil servants enjoyed, I learnt a while back many protested to its dwindling efficiency as sub-standard drugs had found their way into its pharmacy. A committee was raised to examine the issue and it submitted its report which appeared to have been dumped. Corruption and nepotism marred the procedures of accessing Doctors for out-patients and getting admitted into wards for in-patient, instead of first-come-first-serve.
The high-handedness of the CMD would be glaring considering his wife visited a ward after visiting hours and the lady in charge of the place refused to succumb to her wishes (she doesn’t know she is the CMD’s wife ) but when she called the CMD and complained, he arrived personally and rebuked the woman he should have promoted or rewarded for sticking to the hospital regulation and disgraced the woman as she groveled and pleaded with him for his threats of using her superiors to sack her. All the Staff at the Kumbotso out-post were at one time transferred back to the hospital and replaced by others, simply because the CMD visited and found some of them where on a shift and we all know the culture of hospitals the world over of “Shifts” besides those transferred back, would they not be operating on shifts again?
There are nepotic tendencies that contravenes the civil service procedure in the way the procurement officer is appointed, as some alleged that the former one disagreed with the CMD on a certain procedure, which earned him being removed and the newly appointed one wasn’t the most senior in the department as there are others that seniors him between 2-3 grade level.
Whoever enters AKTH today, would surely be amazed at the edifice and the flurry of constructions and reconstructions all around. Another allegation by some members of the staff is that the CMD doesn’t follow the procurement act but award contracts to cronies and friends.
Staff welfare is becoming something of the past as many alleged and sighted one of the reasons for the brain-drain across the hospital. A certain critical department recently lost 4 of its consultants due to disagreement with the CMD and it left a vacuum that is irreplaceable as not a single consultant is now in that department. Many nurses are pursuing jobs outside the country as their confidence is waning daily from the way the hospital is being run. Agencies in Abuja are now facilitating movement of nurses out of the country and a lot of nurses in AKTH, funded and trained here, are now trying to relocate elsewhere because their welfare is being threatened.
From what I gathered, the CMD is acting like a Principal in an all-boys boarding school, not minding the highly intellectual society he is dealing with and deep frustration is manifesting on patients, staff and contractors despite the apparent glamor that greeted you when you visit the hospital. The issue now is as the current CMD tenure is supposed to end in December, there are indications he is rooting for an extension, even though there is a new bill being considered by the House of Representatives for changing CMD’s tenure to a single 5-year term.
As Kano citizen, a journalist and client of the Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital, I am calling on all concerned citizens of Kano to look into these allegations against the current CMD, examine their veracity or otherwise, so that we can address the issues raised. AKTH is our pride and we must do all we can to ensure its position as the number one leading hospital in this region is maintained and upgraded. CMD’s come and go, and for generations to come AKTH will be here for them.
