Ike Obinna
5 October 2008
opinion
After many years of political struggle through the press for self-determination, October 1, 1960 finally saw Nigeria being granted independence by the British in a historic lowering of the Union Jack and the hoisting of the Nigerian green white green flag.
October 1 1960, represented a new beginning for a people who had been marginalised in their own country with their own God-given resources. A new government that promised hope to the people was sworn-in and the country started its march to recognition.
Politicians were at work, promising heaven on earth and we believed them, yet after many convolutions and turn arounds, 48 years later, how have we fared?
Oil came and the groundnut pyramids disappeared waiting for when the oil will finish. Cocoa became a rare commodity, cotton went into oblivion, onion is now produced on subsistence basis; the non-oil agricultural sector simply vanished out of sight. Our economy has become so dependent on oil, that, all that successive governments have done over the years continued to increase the cost of oil-based products to the detriment of the common person. They keep warning us of the dire consequences of continuing the subsidy on the products as if our lives will come to an end when they remove the subsidies. We have refineries that continue to undergo turn around maintenance without turning around production, most produce at figures far below the installed production capacity.
By 1960, primary education was at its best with the pupils always around for their school work and the teachers highly dedicated to their jobs of grooming the young ones. Though primary schools were few, quality was maintained. Nursery schools were quite few and offering the services for which they sought pupils.
Secondary education was also thriving, with many dedicated teachers and willing students. It used to be a pride to go to a college. The West African Examinations Council Certificate carried weight and was recognised world wide.
Universities were quite few and really answered to their pet name of "ivory tower", dedicated to teaching and research. Some of the best brains we have had in this country passed through Nigerian universities. It was the era cultism did not exist, sorting of lecturers was unheard of, junkies were not in school, and "professional studentship" was a tall story.
But these days, owing to the failure of the education sector and commercialisation of its assets, all manner of private schools now litter the nation's educational rails extorting money from parents who are looking for the best for their children, but offering the children less than half of what their parents are paying for. Cultism has taken over the educational sector from the primary to the tertiary. No student passes a lecturer's course if he had not bought the lecturer's handouts or his book if he had published one.
Time was when a sick man got into a government hospital and within an appreciable time frame was attended to. Then, drugs were available in the hospital pharmacies and reagents for laboratory tests, equipment were there. Most government hospitals were one stop shops for health care services.
Patients whose ailment necessitated admission, were well catered for, their feeding was also regulated from the dietetics department whose staff usually managed the hospital kitchen. And then the big bang occurred - our economy had gone bad again - suddenly out of stock syndrome (OS) became the sing song in our nation's hospitals, infrastructural decay set in, non-functioning equipment littered the laboratories. At a point our hospitals became "mere consulting clinics" where patients would go to, consult the underpaid and highly demoralised and de-motivated health care giver and then seek the private place to carry out his laboratory tests and purchase the prescribed drugs.
Majority of the secondary healthcare facilities owned by state governments have collapsed, workers in the states healthcare services are leaving their services in droves; even those in the federal service are also leaving the shores of the nation for other nations where the pastures are greener in every way and on all sides. Every health care giver wants to work with GHAIN or PEPFAR or IPAS or IPAC etc. Nobody wants to stay in the hospital again.
For medical doctors, the in-thing now is to go get an MPH and then head for a public health job. It is being reasoned that by the year 2015 only about 25 per cent of those practising clinical medicine now would still be in the clinics and that is a potential danger for our healthcare indices which have refused to improve since 1960.
The inter professional rivalry in the healthcare sector is also not helping matters. It does appear like every other healthcare professional wants to benefit from the practice of medicine without possessing a medical degree. Pharmacists want to become clinicians without possessing MBBS. In fact, in most pharmacies, pharmacists sit down and consult, prescribe and dispense to patients who are in dire need of healthcare service, instead of referring such patients to qualified medical doctors. Nurses have also joined the fray by opening up nursing and maternity homes and actually carrying on the business of consulting, prescribing and dispensing medicines to those who patronise them.
Laboratory Scientists have cashed in on the situation of lack of reagents in the hospitals and now prescribe and sometimes even dispense medicines to those who are sent to them for laboratory tests. Since wearing of ward coat has become a norm in most hospitals, almost everyone can go by the appellation Doctor and the patient is the "poorer" for it.
If government hospitals have to survive, then something urgent needs to be done. One of the things that needs to be done urgently is to revert the medical doctors to the MSS/MSSS salary scale as was the case in the 1990's because the harmonization and consolidation that have taken place since then have done little to check the outflow of doctor manpower from the hospitals.
Nigerian railway service was at its best many many years ago. As a child, I relished travelling on trains particularly to enjoy the scenic beauty of the country communities that dotted the rail lines; but that is a thing of the past now. Most Nigerian adults who have not had the opportunity of travelling outside the country see trains only on television or photographs. Yet every government that comes in talks of revamping the railways. Not only is the rail system dead, the roads have become death traps. So many man holes dot the road network in Nigeria particularly in the South-East. Erosion is steadily eating away the roads and very soon, some communities may have to build bridges across gulfs to access their ancestral homes.
Is the airspace any safer? Is it only when mass casualties occur that we remember that in the midst of life we are in death? Did it not take us more than six months to discover the carcass of a chopper that took off from Lagos for Obudu Cattle Ranch and never reached its destination?
Can we actually count the cost of damages done to the nation's economy by the epileptic power sector? Despite the huge sum of money sunk into that sector, results are far from the expected. A number of industries are shut down, millions of Nigerians are out of jobs because of this, persons have been electrocuted, electronic gadgets have been damaged, houses have been burnt due to current surge and property worth billions of naira lost.
The housing sector is the most chaotic. Today, the federal government will build houses, the next day it is putting them up for sale. In fact, a minister did nothing in office but sold off government houses he inherited and demolished many more in order to reclaim the master plan of his constituency. Ought this to be so? Has the presence of FMBN and PMIs made any difference in the housing sector? Are people not still being subjected to improper accommodation?
The civil service has been reformed out of understanding. The average civil servant no longer knows the civil service rules and regulations because they keep changing with each government in power. In the last dispensation, the emphasis was on a trim and manageable civil service; this led the right sizing of more than 33,000 jobs. Today, emphasis is on secrecy, loyalty and obedience. Where has patriotism gone to?
Even though we have always had turbulence with political activities especially during elections, the politically motivated killings and assassinations that preceded the last elections are yet to be equalled. Political parties are still very intolerant of one another, the party in government shows no regard for any other. Opposition parties are in disarray because there really is no difference in their ideologies (if they have any).
The FOI bill cannot be passed because some persons somewhere are afraid that equipping the 4th estate of the realm with such a "weapon" would mean the loss of their freedom to do as they please at the nation's expense. That is why the issue of the president's state of health can be mystified. They court the press when they are campaigning and as soon as they are elected into office, the press becomes the enemy number one. If only members of the press can put their feet down with one accord for once and say no to exploitation. We have drilled, explored and exploited oil in the costal regions but failed to manage the twin issues of environmental degradation and depletion. We disposed a people of their farm lands, converting them to waste lands, turning their rivers into dead seas, and yet made no efforts to find them alternative means of survival. We pandered to a few of the elite in the Niger Delta region including their self-elected and politically appointed Paramount rulers (who did not have followers) leaving the masses impoverished.
Our nation shall continue to grope in the dark, run around in circles until we come to the full realisation that for a nation to be great, it has nothing to do with her landmass, size, or population. What is important are important are: equity, fairness and justice. These are the only guarantees for peace, growth and development.
All the same, Happy Independence to Nigeria. Forty-eight years are gone, shall you be better in your 49th year?
Obinna writes from Abuja
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