Renal Failure Patients’ Prayer & And The Government Offering
A reaction by one Rev Agamugoro Peters to my recent article tittled“Fashola & The Limb Corrective Surgery” states thus: “The gesture of
Governor Fashola is most laudable, a great example for leaders and all who
are financially better than others. However, I have my fears about things
as these: the Nigerian factor has made much life improving projects end up
in the refuse bins of many leaders in the past. Once the excitements of
such projects die down and popularity earned, they throw away such
initiatives. We are also aware of how aides and persons assigned by many
benefactors to ensure their initiatives are successful, introduces
strangulating bottlenecks to enrich themselves to the detriment of the
goals of the initiators.”
And the above comment could why once you open any HEALTH pages of our
local newspapers and magazines, one incessant caption that would hit your
eyes is, “Help me! I don’t want to die.” Your mind would skyrocket,
drawn back and eager to read the story so as to know what the story is
talking about – having such heart-touching tittle. But when you begin to
read, it doesn’t make a good read because it usually becomes a story of
a man or a woman suffering from renal failure.
Much as people with renal failure continue to increase in Nigeria, the
government love for its citizenry continue to grow cold or decline. Why?
How on earth a government that professes democracy would allow its
citizens undergo through one form of ailment to another without a support
or a total support? Even before government comes for assistance of such
patient, the person must have passed through a deal or ordeal and the hope
of surviving are many a time on a rare chance.
We watched our own and only Sunny Okosun gnashed teeth and passed to glory
of a colon cancer related ailment in a country he held so dear like his
own baby without any help from the government. Is it not a shame that our
government allowed a celebrity like Okosun to wash his linen in the public
where he was begging form alms before help came his way through an Indian
who footed his medical bills abroad?
But one thing would have remained obvious today. Perhaps, Okosun would not
have died if urgent attention was given him when he was making the
numerous clarion calls for medical assistance to travel overseas.
However, Okosun even had luck to have gotten a person who came to his help
because he was a STAR. What about the numerous Nigerians undergoing
through one form of ailment or another that even their next-door
neighbours could not lend ears to their pleas, hues and cries for help
because perhaps they are not like the Okosuns?
That reminds one why we have many lunatics in our streets. Suffix it that
we are living with lunatics, and their characters also affect our
characters that many of us behave like lunatics especially those in power
who carry as much looted money as the lunatics carry dirty shreds
everywhere and they are not satisfied. Are we not living with lunatics and
what stops those in authorities to help quell the mammoth increase of
these once beloved brothers and sisters on the road on a daily basis?
Much as we ado to seeing a country with heaven-like streets one day, it
would amount to fool-hardiness that our citizens are left to their fates– to treat or die – of their ailments anytime they develop any
illness. And I wonder who would remain to live in the NEW Nigeria if our
people are left to die at every slight touch of the wicked hand of
ailment. And perhaps we do not know: ailment of any kind is a visa to
death.
Notwithstanding, a word, they say, is enough for the wise. Traveling to
abroad for any sickness we develop here doesn’t worth it. The Nigerian
government has a duty to its citizens. We must reinvigorate and revitalize
a new approach in the health of our citizens, and not reforming the health
sector, because pumping money to the sector without thorough checks and
balances would make some good-for-nothing Nigerians occupying positions in
that sector to grow fat to the detriment of the people (local people) it
is meant to serve.
Though, the Nigerian government should and must build hospitals and equip
them. Our medical practitioners are left to be lazy out without good
equipments. The government should and must slash medical bills for kidney
failure patients, since it is one of the difficult ailments of the latter
days. And there should be all-quick attendance to patients with kidney
failures. This approach has to be enforced. People are dying unsung in
Nigeria, too many. And who cares?
By Odimegwu Onwumere
Odimegwu Onwumere, a poet and author, is the Founder, Poet Against Child
Abuse (PACA), Rivers State. +2348032552855.