Still on that Mamman Daura health hoax

A few days ago, rumours spread that Mamman Daura, the president’s nephew had been flown abroad for urgent medical attention.

Barely 48 hours after, there was a video showing a healthy Daura pacing in his home as he took a call. It is hard knowing what to believe from a regime fighting its own shadows. However, one has learnt not to desire evil omen on fellow humans. By Nigerian standards, that is either maturity or weakness.

Aisha the president’s wife, has returned from Dubai where she treated pain in the neck, according to reports. These events reflect a familiar pattern in which government functionaries and their lackeys are rushed to foreign hospitals to treat simple ailments as citizens die of preventable diseases. The state of public health care is more awful now than when Gen. Abacha in his coup speech of December 31, 1983, described them as ‘mere consulting clinics’.

Instead, Buhari has broken the records for any president absent without leave in search of health. The wife that once loudly complained that the State House Clinic, exclusively meant to cater to her and her family has no analgesic to treat a headache is probably now dead.

Buhari bashfully tells the nation how he has kept a London doctor since his time as a petroleum minister. Yet as president, he has yet to build at least one functional hospital anywhere. It is only a matter of time before he jets back to London for another checkup. While those checks come with age, the non-availability of a functional public hospital in Nigeria is a national embarrassment.

As Nigerians heal on hopes, prayers, and lots of wishes and incantations, other nations rise up to their health challenges with concrete action. While it is depressing to compare life in a developed nation with living in Africa, it is occasionally imperative to sometimes make that link. Twenty percent of Nigerians have no access to handwashing facilities at home, sharing that shame with one-third of West Africans.

When COVID-19 was declared a global pandemic in March, Canada was not caught unawares. Its governments have run the country’s health care delivery system to applause that Americans cross the border to buy certain prescription drugs or take advantage of its medical facilities.

But in March, Canada felt ashamed when Donald Trump ordered American manufacturers to stop supplying its neighbour needed personal protective equipment, PPE. The Canadians protested but got by importing them from China. A good number of the Chinese PPE were substandard. As it dawned on Canada that it had no control over the production of the PPE needed by its frontline health care providers, Canada decided to do something about it.

Several privately owned businesses retrofitted their production lines to meet the demands of the day. Politicians from different parties developed a synergy to tackle the pandemic.

Last week, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, walked with opposition Ontario, Premier Rob Ford, to commission a Canadian 3M factory with the capacity to make 100 million medical-grade N95 masks a year. The factory was built at the cost of $23.3 million and goes into full stream to meet a possible COVID-19 second wave as well as earn foreign exchange.

An elated Trudeau described it as “part of our made-in-Canada plan to find solutions to COVID-19” adding “we want to make sure that we have N95 masks at our disposal if we are ever faced with another public health crisis in the years to come.” Remembering the failed imported masks and respirators Premier Ford declared, “This will never ever happen to us again”. When will Nigeria move from sending its topmost citizens abroad to practically declare this embarrassment is enough? After all, Nigerian medical personnel are at the base of running some of the most efficient health care delivery systems abroad. Majority of them trained here in Nigeria.

The WHO estimates that Nigeria accounts for 24% of global malaria deaths. America, which has a zero death per populace of 100,000, yet it has just announced plans to release 750 million, genetically engineered mosquitoes to the Florida Keys according to a CNN report.

The Florida Keys experiment aims to tackle aedes aegypti mosquitoes ravaging the area. They are vectors for the Zika virus, dengue fever, chikungunya, and yellow fever. This experiment targets the female species of the mosquito that needs human blood to hatch its offspring. Killing them before they grow would reduce or eradicate their harm to humans.

It would save American taxpayers the $1 million they spend annually fighting the pests. But above all, it would help preserve the environment from the poison associated with spraying chemicals that are equally harmful to humans.

While Nigerian government officials and their lackeys get access to the best health care facility it is yet to develop a single standard hospital anywhere in the country. Not even the Aso Rock Clinic meets the president’s health care needs. But Aso Rock kitchen gets more money to buy spoons than some medical institutions get in a year for food that does not prevent presidential ailments.

The rest of our society lives on wishes, prayers and, herbalists even as we contribute to global pollution flying our leaders and their relatives for treatment abroad. State governors now include foreign medical check-ups in their retirement packages. Not one of them has built a hospital worth writing home about. This is no way to develop.

Canada gets a new finance minister

These are wonderful times to be alive and a great time for women in politics. It is a greater time for journalists. Following the WE scandal reported on this column a few weeks ago, Bill Morneau, Canada’s erstwhile finance minister fingered in the scandal (Daily Trust August 4) has resigned.

His resignation letter says he was leaving to pursue a career at the international level. That is not the news. The story is that of Christia Freeland, a former journalist who came into the Trudeau cabinet as a political rookie but has risen to become Canada’s first-ever Deputy Prime Minister and has now added the responsibility of finance minister to her portfolio.

Tough-talking Christia comes with a whole lot of grit for a former journalist. The 52-year old Canadian had been Canada’s minister for Intergovernmental Affairs and its former foreign minister. She negotiated the new NAFTA deal for Canada, giving Trump one of the toughest times so far.

Author of two books, Freeland worked for the Economist, Washington Post, Financial Times, and the Globe and Mail. She was editor, Thomson Reuters Digital, and earned her spurs as a Rhodes, Harvard, and Oxford scholar. Described as a Russophile for her expertise in Russia, she speaks five languages fluently.

As if that is not enough, Joe Biden has picked an African-American, Kamala Harris, a California senator as his running mate. Ms. Harris is the first black woman to be picked for that position in the history of American politics. Harris, a Howard University law graduate attended the Hastings College of Law. She rose to become the feared district attorney who was tough on drugs. She has African, Asian, and American blood running in her veins.

All these come as another woman, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya challenged Europe’s longest maximum ruler, Alexander Lukashenko for Belarus’s presidency before being forced to flee into self-exile in Lithuania.