Colo-mentality!

Years ago, a friend called and asked me to give her younger brother career advice. He was in his final year at secondary school and was thinking of studying Medicine. I spoke to him at length about the need to study hard and get good grades. I told him about the long years, constant reading and the lack of social life. I asked what university he was applying to.

‘I am not sure, but my father said he will send me to China.’

I advised him to still write JAMB and consider a Nigerian university. He nodded absentmindedly and gave me a condescending smile. Why was I trying to pour sand in his garri?  He eventually wrote the JAMB exams and when he failed to get the reach the cut off points for Medicine, his father found an agent who arranged for him to get admission in a certain university in China.

A couple of weeks ago, Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital (AKTH) was given the opportunity, yet again, to carry out the Medical licensing examination for foreign-trained medical students. All doctors who are trained outside Nigeria are required to write an exam which will demonstrate that they have the necessary skills and knowledge to practise medicine in this country. This is similar to the United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE) and Professional and Linguistic Assessment Board (PLAB) of the United Kingdom. The hospital, being given this herculean task, set about mobilising and training all senior doctors so as to ensure the exams were carried out hitch-free. A few years back, the exams had gathered attention when it was debated on the floor of the Senate. The members of the red chambers wanted to know why international medical graduates were failing the Licensing examinations. They spoke in their typical boisterous tones about how the exams were conducted and even insinuated that the exams were intentionally made difficult so as to fail their darling children. Some even wondered if the Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria (MDCN), an assembly of some of the greatest professors of Medicine in the country, had the ‘know-how’ of how to set examinations for international medical students. Surprisingly though, I am yet to hear of an outcry from them on why our doctors will write USMLE, seven, eight or even ten times before qualifying to practice in the United States. Are they saying our universities are not producing qualified doctors?

Anyway, I digress.

During the 2-day examinations, I met my friend’s brother again. This was his third time of writing the exams. His family were worried. He had finished medical school with good grades in China! And yet, here he was struggling to pass an exam in Nigeria. Haba! Gaskiya, there is bad belle involved. I shook my head as I listened to him.

The exams were conducted peacefully. Representatives from the Senate and House of representatives were sent to monitor the affair. Luckily, they had the good sense to send the medical doctors among them. During the clinical examination, a senator walked up to where I was scoring a candidate and peeped at the question. He then looked at the candidate’s answer and shook his head.

‘Look at the question again. They said counsel a patient with Fibroids. Fibroids o!’ He whispered angrily.

I just stood there silently watching as the candidate, looking morosely at the patient (simulator) went on to tell the patient that fibroids meant she could never have children.

The song by Afrobeat Legend, Fela Kuti, ‘Colonial Mental’ has never rung so true. The average Nigerian believes that everything foreign is good, better even, than ours. That is why a doctor, trained in a derelict university, in a village in Ukraine, will tell you that Uterine Fibroids is also called cancer of the cervix! Abomination?! And these are the people you want to practice in Nigeria?

My friend’s brother did not pass. Again. She called me and handed the phone to her father. He begged me in the typical Nigerian fashion to ‘help my brother’. I told him that there was nothing I could do. He insisted- saying that he would pay. I dropped the phone angrily. If only he knew how basic and simple the questions of the examinations were. The exams were not even up to the standard we give final year medical students in Nigeria!

Later, I called my friend and told her some home truths. More than half the people who sat for that exams passed. A lot of the students did excellently well. As my mother would say- Do they have two heads? Her brother had simply not prepared for the exams; he had already programmed it in his head that Nigeria wants him to fail. I asked for the name of the university in China and when I searched for it online, I realised that the degrees awarded to foreign students was different from that of their indigenes. The type of degree awarded meant he could NEVER practice in china, only in his home country. I told my friend quite bluntly- they had been scammed.

These past few years, despite Buharinomics, has seen an increase in the number of students leaving the country to study medicine at undergraduate level. This is not to query my colleagues who went abroad for medical school- nope; on the contrary, lucky you! – but, to bring to light all those mushroom universities that parents are sending their children to, all in the name of getting a foreign degree.

Is the Nigerian medical curriculum perfect? Not even close! But are the schools good? Yes, they are.

My advice- if you are not sending your child to a university with top ranking, please save your dollars and stay in Nigeria. No be only Nigerians sabi yahoo yahoo!