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Murder in Sanwo-Olu’s hospital (1)

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Murder in Sanwo-Olu’s hospital (1)
Tunde Odesola
(Published in The PUNCH, on Friday, August 11, 2023)
Beauty and brain don’t come in a better embodiment. Tall, slim and vivacious, Diaso Vwaere was an awesome medic, fresh from medical school. She ordered food from a restaurant nearby to quench her hunger though hunger was the least in her list of worries. As a physician forged in the crucible of Nigeria’s inefficiency, the horrible state of the Lagos State General Hospital, Odan, topped her worries.
This high-rise Lagos State General Hospital located on Lagos Island was a rude awakening from the world of well-equipped, spick and span hospitals she had read in textbooks at the medical school. Now, in the dawn of reality, two weeks to the completion of her housemanship, Diaso sadly admitted to herself she had been working in an abattoir, and not a hospital. She sighed as she wondered how she had survived the attempt by the state government to turn her and other medical staff working in the facility into butchers.
“In two weeks, I’ll leave this junkyard for a proper hospital,” Diaso thought to herself as hunger twang the strings in her stomach and she made for the lift en route to the ground floor to meet the dispatch rider who brought her food.
Diaso stepped into the lift on the ninth floor, hit the ‘Ground’ button, and watched the two opposite metal doors crawl out from the walls noisily, clicking together in a kiss of death.
Tuesday, August 1, 2023, was a day luck departed the lift, having got tired of being pushed too far, and Diaso, with all her promise, prowess and potential, plunged to a painful death on an empty stomach, crushed like an animal in a trap.
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Her colleague, who wrote via the Twitter handle, @LaseMoye, shed some light on what Diaso was subjected to by her employer, the Lagos State Government. She wrote, “I was literally standing in front of the elevator and (had) pressed the open button so I could step in, I was on a video call with my friend and it’s the singular reason I hadn’t entered just yet when I heard the Big Crash…, elevator crashed from the 9th floor all the way to even below the ground floor, glass shattering, bricks clashing, sand trickling down…”
The lucky medical doctor said the dispatch rider bearing Diaso’s food ran out of the building because of the deafening noise of the crash.
She continued, “It was then I realised what just happened. I froze, then I heard Mr Charles shouting ‘hope nobody is inside’. I said if someone is there, the person is gone, not knowing she was there. Then Quadri ran down and shouted Vwaere is there. We started running out to get help. They tried to use rods to open it, to be sure it wasn’t a joke, they finally opened it, the sight was gruesome.
“Muffled sounds of excruciating pain and agony became apparent. Her forehead had a horizontal cut, her mouth had another one, raccoon eyes, no! She was lying in between the base of the elevator and the ground floor with the engine hanging over her head, which meant any miscalculation in movement, she’d be crushed to instant death…It was not a sight to describe. She’s a tall person, so imagine the crush. God!
“Called on professional engineers to come and dismantle it. It took almost 40 minutes for them to get there. Initially, they sent representatives to dismantle it and those guys came dressed in suits. Suits? They were at VI, (which is) literally 15 minutes from from Marina. What took them so long?
“I remember telling her to relax and that help is coming. She said, “Don’t tell me to relax, tell them to get me out of here.” We eventually got her out and she kept saying she thinks she’ll die. Emergency care was almost zero inside a freaking hospital for that matter. There was no blood in the hospital. We were taught to give blood for blood loss in med school but no blood (is) available for Vwaere; it’s all theory and the books in Nigeria. She was stuck in the elevator for one freaking hour. Eventually wheeled out but she was already weak and she kept saying ‘I don’t want to die’. They commenced CPR and the finality of it all happened.”
Not done yet, the female colleague of Diaso recalled that the lift was initially taking a maximum of eight persons before the number was trimmed down to two, owing to its deplorable state, adding that times without number, it stopped between floors, forcing people to trek the stairs.
Diaso’s death wasn’t an accident. It was plain murder. She was killed by her very employers, the Lagos State Government. An accident, the Cambridge Dictionary reveals, is an unexpected and unintentional incident resulting in damage or injury. The death of Diaso was anything but unexpected and unintentional.
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Matter-of-factly, staff and members of the public familiar with the rotten services provided by the hospital were unanimous in their submission: the lift had given more than enough fault notices over the years, but the hospital refused to act and save the impending calamity.
The father of the deceased doctor, Kennedy, rightly said the hospital intentionally killed his daughter. He bemoaned, “They killed my daughter. I don’t want to believe that they were negligent. It was a deliberate attempt to kill her. I cannot fathom how somebody who lost so much amount of blood and (they) cannot administer blood to her. With the amount of blood that she lost, that was up to one bucket on the floor; and they will say she did not need blood. We will see whether they will not be charged with murder.”
Of all homicide offences, first-degree murder is the most heinous because it involves intention, willingness, premeditation, and a dose of malice. Second-degree murder involves malice but is devoid of premeditation while third-degree murder has neither intent nor premeditation.
The General Hospital, by ignoring the plethora of warnings from staff and non-staff to repair the lift, intentionally, willfully and premeditatively killed Diaso, throwing her family into everlasting sorrow.
Tí a bá perí ajá, a ó pe orí ìkòkò tí a fi sèé: You cannot reckon with dog meat delicacy without reckoning with the pot that cooked it. As the owner of the General Hospital, Odan, the Lagos State Government is vicariously liable for the actions and inactions of the hospital’s authorities. It’s in this same token that the wife of the President, Mrs Remi Tinubu, felicitated the victorious female national basketball team, D’Tigress, for conquering Africa, and the female national soccer team, Super Falcons, for shining at the ongoing World Cup. Sanwo-Olu cannot identify with only good incidents and leave out the bad ones.
If Diaso had died in a road accident or even at the hands of kidnappers, the pain of her death in such a circumstance wouldn’t have been as horrifying as her dying in the very place where lives are supposed to be saved.
Back to @LaseMoye, may the Lord bless her, may the Lord bless our country with such more courageous citizens. May I sound her a note of warning, the powers and principalities she exposed aren’t smiling. They will reach out to her to pull down her posts. If she refuses, she should look out for subtle threats and intimidation.
If she notices a scintilla of threat, she should not hesitate to escalate it to the most widely read newspaper in the country, PUNCH.
The exemplary friend of Diaso said the lift had been faulty for the last six years, revealing that at a time, for the lift to work, passengers needed to stand away from the door.
@LaseMoye further said, “There was enough time to fix the damn elevator! We had been complaining about basic amenities in those quarters. No light, no water, fix the damn elevator! They’ll say we should write a letter, we write a letter, they tell us it’s not HSC but it’s medical guild, the medical guild will say it’s Alausa, Alausa will say it’s not on them! Back and forth for years, six good years!!! Will you say she died? It’s MURDER! She was murdered, she has two weeks to finish HJ.”
* To be continued
Facebook: @Tunde Odesola
Twitter: @Tunde_Odesola

Opinion

Tinubu’s Buharization of NNPC By Farooq Kperogi

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President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and former President Muhammadu Buhari

Tinubu’s Buharization of NNPC by Farooq Kperogi

After the sustained, unwarranted personal attacks I endured for eight years from northerners for unswervingly calling out what I called the “embarrassingly undisguised Arewacentricity of Buhari’s appointments” in a February 2, 2019, column titled “Even Ahmadu Bello Would Be Ashamed of Buhari’s Arewacentricity,” I promised that I would look the other way if a southern president returned the favor after Buhari’s tenure.

But promises made in the heat of disillusionment often crumble under the weight of principle.

Ironically, this column was inspired by a well-regarded Yoruba supporter of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu who is worried, in fact embarrassed, by the optics of what he says is Tinubu’s relentless Yorubacentric take-over of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC).

His concern wasn’t just partisan discomfort; it was a profound unease about how this nepotistic approach undermines national cohesion.

I frankly hadn’t been paying attention to the internal dynamics at the NNPC, but the acquaintance pointed out that Yoruba people now occupy major positions at the NNPC and that a certain (person) is “being proposed as GMD after Mele Kyari’s term expires” early next year.

I haven’t independently confirmed the accuracy of this claim but given the closeness of the source of information to people in the circles of power, it’s probably best to not dismiss this with the wave of the hand.

His concern is that Tinubu, from the Southwest, is already the minister of petroleum. Senator Heineken Lokpobiri, the Minister of State for Petroleum and Chairman of the NNPC, is from the South-South. Chief Pius Akinyelure from the Southwest is NNPC’s Non-Executive Board Chairman.

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The head of the NNPC Upstream Investment Management Services (NUIMS), Mr. Bala Wunti, my acquaintance pointed out, has been replaced by one Seyi Omotowa. Gbenga Komolafe is the chief executive officer of the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC), making him the highest-ranking upstream regulator.

“If a Yoruba man were to be the GMD, another Yoruba man is the Chairman, and yet another Yoruba man is the regulator, that’s extreme lopsidedness,” and other parts of Nigeria would be justified to feel uncomfortable, my acquaintance said.

As with issues of this nature, the reality may be more complex that the surface-level impressions that I have been presented with. Of the 12-member non-executive Board of Directors, I counted at least four names that I recognize as northern, and that includes Kyari, the outgoing GMD.

The 7-member Senior Management Team on NNPC’s website has three northerners (if Kyari is included). That seems fair. Plus, Buhari actually appointed many of the Yoruba people in high places at the NNPC. By these metrics, one might argue that there’s a semblance of balance.

However, Tinubu’s broader public image tells a different story. His administration is rapidly cementing a reputation for Yorubacentric provincialism. Like the late Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, who governed Nigeria as if he were still a Katsina governor, Tinubu appears to be governing Nigeria as though he were still the governor of Lagos.

Just like Yar’adua was elected a Nigerian president but operated like a Katsina governor in Abuja, Tinubu is also, so far, a Nigerian president only in name. His mindset is still that of the governor of Lagos.

With a few notable (and in some cases unavoidable) exceptions, Tinubu’s government is largely the re-enactment of his time as the governor of Lagos. It is, for all practical purposes, an unabashed Lagos-centric Yorubacracy.

To be fair, though, with the possible exception of Olusegun Obasanjo’s administration, all civilian regimes since 1999 have been insular ethnocracies.

My source reminded me of a viral social media post I wrote on January 14, 2019, titled “New IGP: Why Progressive Northerners Should be Embarrassed” where I gave four reasons for being insistently censorious of Buhari’s Arewacentric appointments in response to southerners who asked why I was bothered since I was a northern Muslim who was “favored” by such appointments—“favored,” that is, on the emotional and symbolic plane.

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I pointed out that I criticized similar such parochial appointments by previous presidents from the South and that it would be hypocritical to look the other way because I was now “favored” by such appointments.

I said people from my region and religion won’t always be in power, and I wanted to be able to stand on a firm moral pedestal when I criticize future presidents who replicate Buhari’s (and previous presidents’) provincialism.

Most importantly, I said, I was personally embarrassed by Buhari’s insularity and that every progressive northerner should be. I described it as the sort of embarrassment you feel when your best friend who thinks highly of your mother visits you in your home and your mother, during a family dinner, gives you a considerably bigger food portion size and choicer pieces of meat than your friend.

“You feel like screaming: ‘Mom, I know you love me, but you’re embarrassing me by showing overt preferential treatment to me in the presence of my friend’,” I wrote.

The Yoruba acquaintance of mine who alerted me to the creeping Yoruba-centric take-over of the NNPC said he was doing so out of a feeling of the same sense of embarrassment that inspired my rage against Buhari’s appointments that favored the North unfairly, especially in the areas of security.

Tinubu is doing in the economy sector what Buhari did in the security sector. The minister of finance, the governor of the central bank, and every other consequential agency in finance is headed by a Yoruba man. I am not sure Nigeria has ever seen this level of extreme, state-sanctioned ethnocentric domination of a critical segment of national life.

Appointing another Yoruba individual as the head of the NNPC would complete what many already perceive as the ethnic capture of Nigeria’s economic nerve center. It would not only cement Tinubu’s image as an insensitive ethnocrat but also exacerbate public discontent and foster deeper divisions in an already polarized nation.

If Tinubu is unaware of this burgeoning perception, he needs to awaken to its reality. Leadership is not just about policies and actions; it’s also about managing optics and inspiring confidence in a nation’s collective identity.

In a September 5, 2015, column titled “Buhari is Losing the Symbolic War,” where I railed against the exclusion of Igbo people in Buhari’s first appointments, I wrote:

“Symbolism isn’t the same thing as substance. Appointing people to governmental positions does nothing to improve anybody’s lot—except, perhaps, the people so appointed and their immediate families.

“Jonathan’s disastrous 5-year presidency couldn’t even bring basic infrastructure like boreholes to his hometown of Otueke, yet his people derive vicarious satisfaction from the fact of his being Nigeria’s former president.

“Human beings are animated by a multiplicity of impulses, including rational and emotional impulses, both of which are legitimate. When we turn on our rational impulses, we may ask: What would appointing an Igbo man as SGF, for instance, do to Igbo people? The answer is ‘nothing.’

“But we are more than rational beings: we are also emotional beings. That’s why people are invested in symbolism. Appointing someone from the southeast or the deep south is merely a symbolic gesture, but it inspires a sense of inclusion in the minds of many people from that region; it serves as a symbolic conduit through which people vicariously connect with the government.”

This cycle of ethnic favoritism must end if Nigeria is to realize its full potential as a nation. To grow and thrive, we need leaders who can transcend the narrow confines of ethnocracy.

We need leadership that embraces diversity and inclusion, not as buzzwords but as guiding principles for governance. Only then can we begin to heal the fractures that divide us and build a nation that serves all its citizens, regardless of ethnicity or region.

Farooq Kperogi is a renowned Nigerian columnist and United States-based Professor of Media Studies.

Tinubu’s Buharization of NNPC by Farooq Kperogi

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Ademola Lookman showed Davido and Kemi Badenoch that wisdom is not by age – Omokri

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Reno Omokri, Ademola Lookman, Davido and Kemi Badenoch

Ademola Lookman showed Davido and Kemi Badenoch that wisdom is not by age – Omokri

Recently, the singer David Adeleke was given a global stage to do whatever he wanted and deliver any message.

Sadly, Mr. Adeleke used the opportunity to speak in an American accent. Not only that, he used that American accent to talk down on Nigeria and tell the world not to invest in Nigeria because, as he put it, Nigeria’s “economy is in shambles”.

Coincidentally, a month after his faux pas, Kemi Badenoch, probably inspired by Davido, used her British accent to talk down Nigeria, calling us “a very poor country” where the police rob citizens.

But the interesting thing about her own case is that the next day, the BBC featured a panel of Conservative Party big shots, and one of them, Albie Amankona, a party chieftain from Chiswick, who is also a celebrity broadcaster, said, and this is a direct quote:

“If you are a Brexiteer, and you are saying we need to be expanding our global trade beyond the European Union, we want to be looking at emerging markets for growth, don’t slag off one of the fastest growing economies in Africa.”

Is it not strange that it took the BBC and a British politician to promote Nigeria as one of the fastest-growing economies in Africa?

And just when we thought it was all bad news, God gave us a breath of fresh air in the youthful Ademola Lookman, who used the global podium granted to him by his winning the 2024 African Footballer of the Year award to promote and project Nigeria and the Lukumi Yoruba language to the world.

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Wisdom is not by age. If not, Ademola Lookman, who is just twenty-seven, will not have displayed greater wisdom than David Adeleke, who is thirty-two, and Kemi Badenoch, at forty-four.

Mr. Lookman proved that the age of Methuselah has nothing to do with the wisdom of Solomon.

And it is not as though other ethnicities with global icons do not also project Nigeria. They do.

Dr. Mrs. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala spoke Igbo on the podium of the WTO in Geneva. In terms of prestige, she is FAR above Lookman.

My campaign is not for the Lukumi Yoruba alone. It is for all sub-Saharan Black Africans to learn to speak their language and not use ability to speak English or another colonial language as a measure of intelligence.

Besides Lukumi Yoruba and Hausa, every other Nigerian language, including Fulfulde, is gradually dying out.

General Buhari is half Fulani and half Kanuri. Yet, he cannot speak either Fuifulde or Kanuri. But he speaks Hausa and English.

Fact-check me: In 2012, UNESCO declared Igbo an endangered language.

However, the Lukumi Yoruba are to be commended for their affirmative actions to advance their language and culture.

Let me give you an example. All six Governors of the Southwest bear full Lukumi names: Jide Sanwa-Olu, Seyi Makinde, Dapo Abiodun, Ademola Adeleke, Abiodun Oyebanji, and Orighomisan Aiyedatiwa.

No other zone in Nigeria has all its governors bearing ethnic Nigerian names as first and second names. They either bear Arabic or European names as first names or even first and second names.

If we truly want to be the Giant of Africa, we must take affirmative steps to preserve our language and culture so we can have children like Ademola Lookman.

Teach your language to your children before you teach them English. They will learn English at school. Being multilingual is scientifically proven to boost intelligence.

Fact-check me: In the U.S., Latino kids do not speak English until they start school. They learn Spanish as a first language.

Even if you relocate to the UK, the best you can be is British. You can never be English. And if your choice of Japa is the U.S., the highest you can be is an American citizen. You will never become a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant WASP.

Your power lies in balancing ancient and modern, Western and African, English (or other colonial languages) and your native tongue.

That is the way to reverse language erosion, like the Lukumi Yoruba.

Ademola Lookman showed Davido and Kemi Badenoch that wisdom is not by age – Omokri

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Kemi Badenoch’s Hate for Nigeria – Femi Fani-Kayode

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Femi Fani-Kayode

Kemi Badenoch’s Hate for Nigeria – Femi Fani-Kayode

“I find it interesting that everyone defines me as a Nigerian. I identify less with the country than with my specific ethnic group. I have nothing in common with the people from the north of the country, the Boko Haram, where Islamism is. Being Yoruba is my true identity and I refuse to be lumped with the northern people of Nigeria who were our ethnic enemies, all in the name of being called a Nigerian”- @KemiBadenoch.

Dangerous rhetoric

Kemi Badenoch, MP, the leader of the British Conservative Party and Opposition in the @UKParliament, has refused to stop at just denigrating our country but has gone a step further by seeking to divide us on ethnic lines.

She claims that she never regarded herself as being a Nigerian but rather a Yoruba and that she never identified with the people from the Northern part of our country who she collectively describes as being “Boko Haram Islamists” and “terrorists”.

This is dangerous rhetoric coming from an impudent and ignorant foreign leader who knows nothing about our country, who does not know her place and who insists on stirring up a storm that she cannot contain and that may eventually consume her.

It is rather like saying that she identifies more with the English than she does with the Scots and the Welsh whom she regards as nothing more than homicidal and murderous barbarians that once waged war against her ethnic English compatriots!

All this coming from a young lady of colour that is a political leader in a multi-ethnic, multi-religious and multi-cultural country that lays claim to being the epitome of decency and civilisation! What a strange and inexplicable contradiction this is.

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Her intentions are malevolent and insidious and her objective, outside of ridiculing and mocking us, is to divide us and bring us to our knees.

I am constrained to ask, what on earth happened to this creature in her youth and why does she hate Nigeria with such passion?

Did something happen to her when she lived here which she has kept secret?

Kemi Badenoch’s Hate for Nigeria – Femi Fani-Kayode

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