As the whole world waited for possible backlash over the outrageous comments of Nigeria’s manager of death and diseases, a palpable anger was enveloping me. I come from a family of reputable tailors and Isaac Adewole’s advertisement for his doctor-turned-tailor is atrocious. The suit he was modeling looked like one slashed with a carpenter’s saw and gummed together by a cobbler. If in a senior moment you must lose professional and personal integrity and brilliant paper resume, at least leave room for redemption. Adewole is beyond redemption.
This man, one of the crew of embarrassments that Nigeria waited six months to unveil is ripping his own resume. In February, Dr Ugoji Egbujo advised Adewole to save what is left of his reputation and resign. The advice was based on the shameful handling of the so-called corruption case involving him and Usman Yusuf, head of the Nigerian Health Insurance Scheme. Adewole ignored the advice and its been downhill since then. His Wikipedia CV must have convinced Muhammadu Buhari who has confessed to being a slow reader to hire him. Buhari wouldn’t have made the link between his new hire and the man who escaped him in 1984.
Watching a country’s health minister confess to inability to help trainees become specialists is sad enough. Suggesting that they drop the scalpel and stethoscope for hoes and scissors is shocking. One would have loved to ask Adewole if his medical doctor-turned-tailor designed that cockroach suit he was modeling. It sure looked like something designed by a carpenter and sewn by a cobbler with painted plywood for bow tie. Venerable Baba Sala’s costumier would have done a better job. Adewole is a sad advert for his tailor. He is a worse advert of his own resume. His administrative experience is overhyped. It depicts a crafty opportunist who jumps at every available opportunity just to populate his curriculum vitae.
Anyone alive in 1984 when Buhari described hospitals as mere consulting clinics would look at the three years of Adewole’s mismanagement of the health sector to conclude that this man sees his job as the ultimate undertaker of the nation’s health. As an unconscionable undertaker, he is doing a great job.
Under his watch, what used to be public hospitals have become wretched physical and operational skeletons. Things are so bad that Adewole’s boss, Muhammadu Buhari has spent six months of his electoral mandate on treatment at a London hospital. Mrs. Buhari has told Nigerians that the State House Clinic meant to cater for the first family and other staff lacks over the counter analgesic to treat common pain. That is the clinic that Adewole allocated more resources than five teaching hospitals put together.
Madam Folasade Ogunsola, chairperson of the Association of Resident Doctors, says Nigeria would have to pray for the rest of the world to stand still for 100 years while it trains doctors at the current rate in other to meet the WHO standard for minimal health care. That threshold recommends one doctor to 600 citizens. Nigeria needs 237,000 medical doctors to get there. Presently it has only 35,000 or practically one doctor to every 5,500 people.
I used to think that I am numerically challenged, but Adewole is worse for his professorship. At this rate, the expertise of his teachers should be called to question as well as his qualification to train, examine and license professionals. In 2017, Nigeria ranked 140 among 195 countries surveyed on global health care.
From Adewole’s CV, he is said to be a gynaecologist. That’s even worse. For every 100,000 live births, 800 Nigerian women die. In a country that cares, it would be informative to know how many women have died under Adewole’s care. Even more interesting would be his reaction whenever he lost a patient either in his capacity as a doctor or as administrator.
Every day, we see the abysmal result of the ‘bow and go’ syndrome of screening by the legislative arm. If we had a robust screening process, Adewole’s ex-students would have had an opportunity to tell the nation what they thought about him as our health minister. His patients would have been called to testify. Here we are entrusting the health care of 200 million citizens to a man who has no milk of human kindness.
The Nigeria Center for Disease Control recorded 235 deaths to cholera in July this year. With the level of flooding across the country, this must be a conservative estimate. We all know that most of the afflicted would not make it to a registered clinic before dying. The only excuse medical staffs still report for duty at government hospitals is because they have a conscience. They were trained to save lives; government has failed to provide the enabling environment but they keep trying.
In 2015, the year Adewole became health minister; over 700 doctors left the country just like he did in 1984. About 500 applied to move to England, Canada and America to practice. They were not fleeing dictatorship although Buhari remains the same; they are fleeing official nonchalance. Rather than give hope, Adewole expresses happiness to be the man to put the nail on the coffin of medicare and medical practice in Nigeria.
If this is a doctor, God bless his patients.
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