What is your assessment of this country?
To me, I will say I knew Nigerian colony of British Empire. And independence was granted to us, it’s not easy to say what we have gone through but my description of Nigeria is that Nigeria is like an old man climbing a standing hill. We had it somehow good in those years when Nigeria was supposed to be under a yoke, but today I think we are under a greater yoke than what we had in those days. That is why I described it as an old man climbing a standing hill he cannot get anywhere; they say two steps up and three down are the best than standing on one spot. We have been very unfortunate to have government without any direction like a vector quantity that has no direction or magnitude. We are not moving anywhere, we are not going anywhere. We’ve had it long a time, but today we have a country where there are so many laws that are not implemented or enforced. When we talk about state, sovereign national conference or whatever you call it, all those things can be put on a paper. Just like education, you can educate anybody in a class room but you have done nothing until the parson is prompt to use it and needs to put into practice what you have taught him. In Nigeria we have conferences everyday call it whatever you choose to call it but there is never any time we have implementation of the outcomes. What do I mean by not implementing it? When you have a country where there are no sanctions, what do you think you are doing? Somebody steals a fowl because he is hungry or even something less and goes to prison. Another parson steals billions you honour him by publishing it in the newspapers and that is the end of it, you won’t know whether he went to prison, whether he was sanctioned, the next day you see him asking to be given appointment in the government. These are part of our problems. And what is the reason for this? Another one is tribalism, if I do something because I am an Igbo, the Igbos do not even care about what I did wrong, the most important thing is where do I come from? They will support me and fight for me for being a thief and it goes on and on all over the place. So this is one of the greatest problems we have, I have said it everywhere that no country can survive without sanctions. When some people talk about Malaysia, Singapore even India, I told them that they are developing rapidly because they are disciplined. The governments are disciplined and the people are disciplined. In the Nigeria of today, corruption thrives with legs untamed. In Nigeria, We had a short example when Buhari and Idiagbon were in government for a short period.
Nigerians behaved because all those that misbehaved were sanctioned by the law which we already have, and if you don’t have such an implementation there can be no progress. And anarchy will prevail as we see today. We are running a government that is full of anarchy. That is what is killing all the things we do in this country.
There is no power because of corruption. We know where the money is going no one is in doubt. You create all sources of impossible avenues to run down the state and promote some individuals. This is why we have a country developing with a lot of smart fellows all over the places such that we have individuals who are richer than the state. Our government is built on immunity, it is not done anywhere in the world. If a governor kills he has the immunity to kill, if he steals he has immunity to steal. In the last 51 years, all I can say as a summary is that Nigeria is on motion without movement.
How do we solve these problems?
By having somebody or a group of people or a government that has direction that believes without fear or favour? the right thing has to be done at all times. Ghana solved their own problems, they had a parson in Jerry Rawlings who came in and said no, this thing must be over and it became over. We have example also in Nigeria in December 1983 and before General Mohammed Buhari and Brigadier Tunde Idiagbon were pushed out, Nigerians behaved well because they knew the leaders were upright. When the head is rotten the body will follow suit and vice versa. You can even drop banana pills on the road somebody will ask you without any authority, my dear go and pick that thing and you will go back and pick it. Every Nigerian has the power to discipline but today its anarchy everywhere and this is one of our greatest problems. When we become disciplined, things will work. We have problem in the electricity sector, the police- we know what everyone says about them, if you are for them it means you have given money if you are against them, you might be shot. So this is what has been happening in this country and it has to be checked. We pray for the new government we have today, we hope they have direction, we pray for them to have courage to do the right thing. Courage is absolutely important in Nigeria.
Remember the oat taking to do good to all manners of people, to correct the wrongs of the country and encourage the right thing. To me this is one of the greatest problems we have in this country.
The general belief among the opposition is that President Goodluck Jonathan doesn’t have the capacity to deliver.
I don’t know what they saw in those who ruled us before him. Of all our rulers, only President Jonathan and the late Umaru Yar’adua were graduates that have ever ruled Nigeria. No, leadership is a function of knowing why and knowing how. Knowing why you have to be well educated to know why you are doing A,B,C,D.
Education doesn’t mean only? going to the university, you have to be properly trained, you have to be properly exposed to know what is right from wrong before you know how to do it. In 1999, we gave a figure that power will go up from here to there I was made to understand that we generated a lot of power and carried them in wrong files and all the files failed and that was the end of all the whole issue and we went back to square one. I believe that Jonathan if he has courage can change a lot of things in Nigeria.
Let’s forget where Jonathan comes from, let us all come together and support him because his achievement is our achievement and his failure is our failure. There is no other country you will run to that will be better than your own; we must build it up together.? To me Jonathan seems to be listening but when the troubles are too many confusion sets in. Let us just encourage him, let us pray for him.??????????????
But so far has he shown courage?
I cannot judge him. Hundred days is so small to access anybody’s performance in office.
He has been there for almost two years now.
No he was there on a wrong garment; he was not wearing his own toga. This is a country which has a president and a vice president. In some countries, it is automatic, if a president is ill or absent, his deputy takes over. In Nigeria, we have to curl all sorts of words to enable Jonathan take over the leadership of the country. We made rubbish of our constitution with the so called doctrine of necessity. So when Jonathan came in through the doctrine of necessity, he stands with one led, but when you have proper authority you stand firmly on both legs. So he came in standing on one leg and could not perform, he could not do much now that he is standing on two legs let us see what he can do, let us support him. Boko Haram is a new one, who is he? What is the aim? Is it to destroy or to make? Some people have said openly that if they are not so and so the country will be ungovernable.
Who is supposed to do something about this, is it not the president?
It’s the president that was why I used the word courage. Let us pray for him to have courage, let us believe that he has courage to tackle those things.
Recently in his speech, he said he needs not be a General or a Goliath to rule Nigeria. What is your take on this?
I cannot say he has not got the courage, but let us pray for him to muster enough courage because you need a lot of courage to perform. And in Nigeria if you start to perform you should not look back, don’t look at Igbo man, Yoruba man, Hausa man, Fulani man or any tribe, go for the right thing and do the right thing and stand by it. That is the kind of courage I mean.
When you were talking initially you said Buhari -Idiagbon government was disciplined. But the same man offered himself on two different elections, you didn’t vote for him. Why?
It was probably because he was no longer singing the best song he sang in those days. In fact the Buhari music we heard in 2007 and 2011 was not the same music we? heard in December 1983. The music changed and the electorate too changed and this is not good for Buhari and the nation. The kind of music he is singing lately is making it difficult to say it was Buhari or it was Idiagbon. And because the combination of Idiagbon is no more there, Buhari lost.
Can you do an appraisal on the health care system?
The health care system was neglected for too long a time. When people like us qualified as doctors, all we needed was man power we had encouragement, we had most things we needed to function and improvised as much as possible. A doctor can work in a hospital without a generator and still performed but today it is not the same. The policy needs to be completely re-organised and we have had people with no knowledge of medicine becoming Minister of Health. I thank God that today we have a young man, a bright man and a medical doctor who knows his onions because, he who wears the shoe know where it pinches.
I feel ashamed when Nigerians go to India for medical treatment, I feel ashamed when Nigerians go to South Africa for medical treatment, when you get there in South Africa, UK or USA you will discover that you will be treated by a Nigerian. Why don’t we use them? Why don’t we do the right thing? Why do we have conferences every day without implementation of the reports on those conferences? These are the problems we have; again why is our government not putting money where it should go. World Health Organisation (WHO) recommended certain percentage of every country’s budget for health; we are not using up to 10% or 15% of their recommendations. The health delivery in this country we should have had all it takes to deliver but the support is very negligible.
Doctors in Nigeria butcher patients but when they travel abroad they behave themselves, why are doctors behaving like this?
When you were minister I insist, I won’t accept that doctors butcher patients. But probably most of the doctors in Nigeria have divided attention. When we started practising in this country it is either you are working for the government that pays your salaries or you are in private practice; there must be a line drawn between the two. You don’t have to be in government to be a good doctor, you can practice on your own. I practiced before I joined government and have been practicing on my own since I left government. I am sure I am not one of the butchers you are talking about. But I don’t even see, because we have laws governing the practice of medicine. You know your rights and your limitations you don’t treat a patient which you cannot treat, you have right to refer. But when you have divided attention, you run from one office to the other it is not right. There should be medical insurance for all doctors which in other countries it is called negligence insurance for which you are penalised when the need arises. There must be regulations in ever thing we do in this country. Nigeria medical council has a branch which is into those problems. Two weeks ago, a doctor was suspended for life almost, two were suspended for six months. This is part of the things Nigerians want to see and I urge the council to do more. Every hospital in this country even if it is a clinic should be registered. And who registers them? Most of the doctors in government hospitals have their own private hospitals. They are killing government hospitals because even though government pays them, they corner patients in public hospitals to their own hospital and this is greed and wickedness. In some cases patients pay for medical bills in the private hospitals through the skin of their teeth. Government must reverse this trend through legislations.
Today, when doctors in government hospitals are on strike, the impact is not felt much because the rich visit private hospitals.
Only the poor who can not afford the bills die in public hospitals.
When you were Minister of Health what did you do to make doctors who are employed by government to actually concentrate on their job?
If you remember those days when I came in doctors were on strike for almost six months. I had a very wonderful dialogue with them and the strike stopped immediately. As a past practitioner, I took my time to study the problem and I told them to give me a period of few months to solve the problems and they obliged me. And that was the end of it and we started working together, changed a few things, tried to change their lots but I didn’t stay long enough. You must remember that roll back malarial was organised by the ministry when I was there at no cost to Nigerians, by their deeds they said in the bible you shall know them. If you can get an article written by economics about that short period I did some work you will understand how we have planned to go. Before I left, we did approvals that every single local government will have a minimum of 10 million to organise primary health in the grass roots. It was approved by the National Assembly, the money was released I don’t see much done anywhere on that. In Nigeria there is no continuity if you go, another parson will come and say this bad man he did this and did that, and tries to change all the things you did whether he is knowledgeable or not. We should create a government of continuity. When I was a minister, the Minister of Health from Ghana has been there for over 10 years, the Minister of Labour from Zambia, Uganda and Namibia have been there for a very long time following policies and programmes that will lead to a better health care delivery. Here some last for just 5 months or there about what do you expect? So many things have to be done in this country to get it right.
What were the circumstances that made you to leave?
I can say am a bit controversial, I am not easily persuaded, I did come into government not as a young man. I have practiced medicine for about 36 years or more, I have my private practice, I have one ambition which is to make a difference. But I was told in the system I needed not to clean it because if I cleaned it, my enemies around will benefit from it. I said no, am not a medical doctor for a group I was a minister for the whole of Nigeria poised to improve health care delivery for everybody and we need money to do that and WHO said that we needed so much. When in Nigeria the GDP for every Nigerian health wise was less than 50 kobo how can you provide so much in a very big country like Nigeria.? When we were there, we started a concerted effort to win a lot of things, we started journal repatriation where we piloted vaccinations not only for Nigerians but for all our neighbours. If we don’t eliminate polio virus in Niger Republic and it is cleared in Nigeria, the boundaries are porous, it would spread to us. So whatever we did in Nigeria, we did in Niger Republic, Cameroon, Chad and in Benin Republic. When I came we started house to house immunization. Before it used to be in schools or here and there, making it impossible to reach the children. So we started house to house, if we visited house A and there were so many children, they would come out and the experiment paid a lot. We vaccinated children at the age of five totaling about 13 million and 40 million in general. Vaccination then was about 10% today I am sure it must be much more than that probably over 60%. But most of the time the policies are changed
What did you do on HIV/AIDS?
I will say one thing, before 1999 there were so many conferences, so many researches done on HIV/AIDS, the reports were there but locked up in the closet. When we came to office, we opened the closet and brought it out and told Nigerians to look at where we are, we are in danger; everybody should know it and the campaign started. We wrote to United Nations to tell them that please don’t attend our funeral but help us now. That was the paper and the committee I chaired and help started coming. Some mediators wrote me that I blacklisted their states, some said they were the red spots, I said no, the whole country was endangered. We have had ministers of health who worked so hard to prepare all these papers but they were not known, so the war against HIV/AIDS started, I won’t say during my time but at least we brought it out of the closet. We have all sorts of potentials in this country individually Nigerians have done extremely well. Most Nigerians have created both wealth and employment, all we need is a government that will put direction and that will have courage to act and sanction ills. Corruption is endemic and must be stopped otherwise we cannot move, I repeat we are like an old man climbing a standing hill.
Are you a politician?
Am a professional first and all of us are politicians.
What is your take on Igbo presidency?
Everybody have said it, there must be equity.? We were left out with South/South today they have produced the president in Jonathan, only Ndigbo are left out.? Maybe one day after probably we have seen that this is not a tribal thing, Nigerians will then now say let us go for the best and Igbo stands for the best.
In 2015, we shall not gun for president, we shall work for it, nobody is going to die. We will work for it and if God wills, we will get it and if God wills, we will change Nigeria for good. We still believe that we were brutalised in the war and we were treated as such. If you go to Igbo land or South-East today, the distance you should cover in five seconds, you might have to do that in one hour. There are no roads anywhere, there is no infrastructure anywhere we are completely neglected. A Nigerian president of Igbo extraction will give Ndigbo a sense of belonging and unite the country.
Are you sure if an Igbo man becomes the president these problems will be solved? The Yoruba’s had President Olusegun Obasanjo who you worked under as minister, yet they claimed to be worse for it.
The most important thing is to have a man who has direction, who has courage, who initiates and implements beautiful policies. And we have them in abundance.??
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