My Binoculars: Memo to Governor Zulum on the state of emergencies in the Borno health sector and the perceived interventions of development partners in ending the war

By: Bodunrin Kayode

Your Excellency, I must congratulate you for the myriads of achievements you have recorded in the entire state since you assumed duty. Your development of Borno regardless of the saddening insurgent war tormenting residents is quite remarkable. For me as a watcher of this kind of persistent social engineering, the health sector comes to mind as one that has literarily risen from dry grass to grace. My binoculars cannot forget in a hurry, your nocturnal visits to the hospitals when the guards of some of the medical managers were down. Many of them were shocked when caught napping at home instead of working while some accused you of barging into general hospitals without notice when you were sworn in. You did this obviously at very odd hours to find out how you can turn things around for the common man who has nowhere to go but those existing battered facilities when sick. A template has been set for the pretenders among them and they now know you don’t get pleased by eye service.

Before your first term of intervention as Governor, almost every thing regarding this sector was done haphazardly. Principal Medical officers (PMO’s) lacked the basic equipment to average at least 3/10 marks in terms of efficiency. Patients were told to buy 95 percent of their drugs outside the hospitals while the non governmental organizations (NGO’s) feasted on the ignorance of the generality of the residents. They were seen as the only saving grace within the emergency sub sector in the ministry of Health. Some humanitarians criminally feasted on the ignorance of the people by making huge harvests by way of corrupt blood money from a war which had no reason to have lasted till this day. Some of them came in as mere money mongers claiming to want to eliminate diseases like polio which have tormented residents long before you started your first tenure. No wonder some of them rent homes for three to four years for themselves because they don’t expect the war to end very soon. They are clogs in the wheels of the non kinetic which the military insist entails 75 percent of the efforts to end the war. Many benefitted immensely from the last flood which ravaged the city of Maiduguri one year ago.

BOACSDHR’s role in managing duplication and rouge NGO’s who lack the interest of the people

And this is why you set up an agency of accountability to streamline particularly the international NGOs who did what they wanted and felt they were untouchable and cannot be criticized.
Prof, you brought accountability within the health sector when you set up the Borno State Agency for the coordination of sustainable development and humanitarian response (BOACSDHR) in 2019 as part of government strategy to streamline the influx of some of these NGOs with twisted mindsets into the state. And I must tell you some of us watchers are very proud of the cerebral inputs into its steady growth by your Chief Adviser and coordinator Dr Mairo Mandara. She has actually been whipping them into line. No cow is sacred under her watch. They either conform with your visions and agenda or are shown the way out. Indeed within the 15 years of this pogrom against the Borno people so many unexpected woes have been unleashed on residents. The last one was the bursting of the seams of the Auno Dam which supplies drinking water to the state capital.
Sadly, while many of the NGOs meant well and came in with deep empathy to help the people, some others were just out to exploit the vulnerabilities of residents by converting resources meant for their well being to their fat pockets. Some carried a puritanical air of importance as if they are even above their parent bodies in Europe and America. Some of them are so full of themselves that they forget that the government should be on the drivers seat even if they are the ones paying the piper.

Compromises within the system

Sadly your Excellency some of your appointees are also bootlickers who worship international bodies because of what they gain at the sidelines from them. They see some international bodies as angels not made from dust like the rest of us as such they cannot make mistakes. But thank God you had the political will to create the BOACSDHR to coordinate humanitarian and development activities in the state towards efficient and effective use of resources to achieve the Borno state development aspiration to restore the age old honour, dignity and prosperity of the state, while ensuring all citizens and future generations have access to basic necessities and thrive in every stage of their lives. This has also assisted in elimination of deliberate duplication of activities between the international, national and local NGOs within the health sector. With this, the mindset of your appointees are being adjusted intermittently so that the Borno residents will become the ultimate winner. We may not all be perfect but there is always ample chance to move closer to the realm of excellence which some of us can decipher that you long for in the system especially now that the state teaching Hospital is on the way.

When Heads of agencies play with mediocrity

Your Excellency, I had a strange experience with one of your political appointees name withheld who castigated me recently for criticizing the world bodies like the World Health Organization (WHO) and United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). I will leave his name out so that he doesn’t earn reprisal form you. But he is of the medical sector and claims to have been made in unimaid. He sounded so subservient to the development partners in his comments that I started wondering if he actually went to a university as he claimed. He is of a completely different mindset from your orientation which is to look out for excellence at all times even as you crush mediocrity. I used to think that all who work for a particular principal like you will adopt most of your characteristics. But this young fellow is a complete sell out in health health system far different from Professor Baba Mallam Gana whom he works under. He sounded so mediocre for my liking that I started wondering if the civil service is all about eye service and yes sir. If not what is it about the WHO that we can’t criticize them if they stray away from your plan? Have they become gods or the anti Christ that we should begin to fear to tell them to fall in line when they make mistakes? How much money are they spending in Nigeria that we should pamper them like some holier than thou agency who do not make mistakes? The same applies to the UNICEF and the rest of them. If you could say no to the world bank in the acresal project in the Dala swamps and they finally reached you at a common ground, does it not mean that no agency is above being corrected if they do not flow with our indigenous way of doing things?

Need for an urgent law guaranteeing emergency care for all

After what I want to describe as the careless deaths of two women at the Umaru Shehu hospital about two years ago due to alleged abandonment by the Medical Officer in charge then Dr Philibus, I agree totally that we must create a law “guaranteeing emergency care” for all regardless of ability to pay. It is important too harp on this your Excellency because we have a lot of awkward emergencies cropping up in the health sector which we are yet to fix. And some of these challenges such as neglect of desperate emergencies of residents, cut across the primary to tertiary level not only in this state but in Nigeria as a whole. We may also have to exempt the health sector from too much politics which it sometimes suffer from depending on who is in charge. In saner climes medical practitioners like Dr Philibus would be defending himself against the medical council of Nigeria by now for neglecting obvious emergencies brought right before his nose. Even if the ministry did not supply him with common cotton wool, it was not an excuse to drive those crying ladies to the University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital (UMTH) where he insisted they should go to without any first aid to keep them alive. After the medical council ordeal, the families of those late politicians would have dragged him to court.for further damage no matter who he thinks he is in the medical sector. Health managers must be more vigilant to ensure some of these perceived harmful practices of negligence does not go on in any of the sub sectors outside emergency. Keen binocular watching of local and international partners like the NGO’s should be stepped up not only by health managers but even the surveillance pillar to ensure that the common man does not die like chicken because he lacks the resources to pay for a particular service especially if he is not registered in the national or state health insurance scheme.

Medical practitioners in the 36 state management levels should also realize that issues like emergencies in the government hospitals not carried out free should bother them. And they should not necessarily bother about less important issues within the sector. We should be interested in lives of the common man other than those with the ability to go for medical tourism in Europe or Asia. This is real food for thought that should bother all progressive health managers and you and your colleagues in the 36 States of the federation.

My Binoculars: Memo to Governor Zulum on the state of emergencies in the Borno health sector and the perceived interventions of development partners in ending the war

Historical Market Days: Matrix of Cultural Heritage, Center of Information and Social Interactions

By: Balami Lazarus

As the wind blows in the savannah through the rural town of Kamdadi somewhere north of the Niger, whispering scents and particles of cultural heritage on a certain faithful market day. A day notable for the buying and selling of a rural economy with a matrix of cultures, information, and social interactions that are part of our history.

As the sun begins to go down in the west to fall, rest and close the day. The old and young are seen walking in file along the rugged narrow paths with no innovation that had felt the feet of sages on hundreds of historical market days.

With volumes of literature on Nigerian history, where true and untrue have co-joined to live together, becoming a confluence in our socio-cultural heritage, hook, sinker, and liner.

However, with the reconstruction of Nigerian history, an attempt by the Historical Society of Nigeria (HSN) is part of historical engineering for a new version of historical knowledge of our history.

The emergence and the torrents of Western civilization have not been fair to our history, cultures, and traditions, which came with the subtleness of modernization that attacked, destroyed, and gradually killed our rich cultural history.

And whether we believed it or not, these changes were aided by deponents who signed off on our cultural heritage, some out of ignorance, others out of an inferiority complex. This has brought gross and grievous historical harm to the body politic of our nation, Nigeria, causing radius lines in our cultural heritage with a wider circumference gap among the people, where historical market days have become a near-forgotten history.

As a historian, I was long taught by my teachers that in any human development there is history in such endeavors. Historical market days are such. Therefore, our historical market days are not a carnival of buying and selling but a documentary of cultural heritage and a body part of our economic history that cannot be put away in the dustbin of Nigerian history because it is a source material of our historical identity.

Long before now, I noticed there was not much work on historical market days in our history.Notwithstanding the gap, the history of the Igbo people has lightened this stage of our cultural history through some recent works on the four (4) Igbo historical market days: Eke, Orie, Afo, and Nkwo, in line with their traditional calendar. These market days serve not only as commercial hubs but also as matrices of cultural heritage, information, and social interactions. For the Igbo people, these market days are part of their history, cultural heritage, and identity.

Similarly, towns and cities have since succumbed and stooped to the pressures, demands, and challenges that came with urbanization that has made it possible for daily market activities for the dwellers. Moreover, most urban dwellers are unaware that the daily market operations/activities they patronize for their daily needs/services have their historical market days; some are oncea week, others twice. The Biu central market is an example. While the Monday Market in the city of Maiduguri has its market day on Mondays, which was its historical market day. That is why today is known, called, and addressed as Monday Market Limited, her corporate name.

Historical market days have heralded diverse cultures, styles, and different ways of social interactions brought in by traders and strangers from other places. It has further increased population growth in most towns and cities, making them commercial and industrial centers with strong economic and educational bases.

This discourse, hopefully, might be an inroad for intellectual historians, researchers, and students to begin to develop a template on the significance of historical market days as cultural source material of our history. And likely, someday it shall be an academic field of study in our educational institutions.

Balami, a Publisher/Columnist 08036779290

Historical Market Days: Matrix of Cultural Heritage, Center of Information and Social Interactions

UMTH: Fakeeh University Hospital Dubai commended Professor Ahidjo and the management team for uplifting hospital standards beyond national boundaries

By: Balami Lazarus

In a recent workshop organized by the management of the University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital in collaboration with Fakeeh University Hospital of Dubai on ‘Advances in Kidney and Neurosurgical Management’ in Maiduguri, experts within and without spoke on the latest advances in kidney diseases and neurosurgical treatments/management and their remedies. While some made presentations on advances in neurosurgical management.

Dr. Omer Mohammed Al-Derwish, a urological surgeon/consultant from the Fakeeh University Hospital in Dubai, has commended the Chief Medical Director (CMD) of the University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital, Professor Ahmed Ahidjo, and his management team for uplifting the standard of the hospital, stating that ‘Your capacity in both human and medical materials/equipment is of global standard.’ 

Al-Derwish made the observation while giving a talk on ‘Overview of Advances in Urology’ recently at the Babagana Zulum Conference Hall UMTH, medical

Speaking on urinary tract stones, urological cancers, bladder dysfunction, and urodynamics, among other related ailments. Al-Derwish drew the attention of his colleagues to the advances in the treatment and management of these diseases. He also stressed the need for UMTH to replicate Fakeeh University Hospital methods. 

Also in his paper, Dr. Tommaso Tufo, a neurosurgeon/consultant, spoke extensively on ‘Overview of Advances in Neurosurgery,’ paying more attention to advances made in neurosurgery. He said that neurosurgery is more scientific than what was obtainable in the past, where death mortality was high in the course of surgery. ‘Today medical neuroscience tools and materials/equipment have heralded a new chapter in neurosurgical treatments and management.’

The Fakeeh University Hospital experts said that CMD Prof. Ahmed Ahidjo and his management team are to be commended for their efforts. Adding that those at the helm of affairs for the day-to-day running of the hospital are to be applauded in no small measure.

During the workshop, Dr. Hassan Dogo of UMTH spoke on ‘Update on Infrastructure/Equipping of Kidney/Urology Centre of UMTH.’ Dr. Dogo informed participants on the available advances in medical tools and equipment at the center, which are of international standard, and these are being utilized in medical treatment of kidney/urology. He, however, said that the center needs more tools, materials, and equipment to meet her patients medical demands. He further said that the center is making progress in the treatments of kidney/urology using the latest medical methods.

In a similar vein, Dr. Babagana Usman, also of UMTH, made a presentation on ‘Update on Infrastructure/Equipping of Stroke and Neuroscience Centre of UMTH,’ making clear that the Stroke and Neuroscience Centre has first-class modern medical materials and equipment for the treatments of stroke. He called for more additional tools/material to achieve her aims.

“Patients and visitors to the hospital are witnesses to all this progress made by the CMD, Prof. Ahmed Ahidjo, for putting the hospital on the medical world map as being the best in Nigeria.” He said,

NEWSng reports that both experts gave UMTH a pass mark on her medical services, teaching, and research facilities. They promised to initiate the processes of partnership between Fakeeh University Hospital Dubai and UMTH.

UMTH: Fakeeh University Hospital Dubai commended Professor Ahidjo and the management team for uplifting hospital standards beyond national boundaries