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Season Of Death By ‘Dare Lasisi LONDON
In a season like this, there exists no reason why we cannot all reflect on the two monumental tragedies that enveloped the whole nation of Nigeria. We need to re-value our existence on planet Earth and be getting ready for the hereafter. Who knows tomorrow-as the saying goes!
23rd of October, 2005 is a Black Sunday indeed! Bellview airline, a privately-owned airline carrying prominent Nigerians and some foreigners nosedived and crashed few minutes after its take off from Lagos airport in Ifo local government area of Obasanjo homeland. All the 117 passengers on board perished!!
We were yet to recover from this plane crash tragedy when we received devastating news from Spain that Mrs.Stella Obasanjo, the beloved and colourful wife of President Olusegun Obasanjo has died in a Spanish hospital as a result of complications arising from plastic/cosmetic surgery. How can a nation like Nigeria cope with these two tragedies?!
The former first lady was in Spain for plastic surgery to reduce the ‘excess fat’ from her body when she met her premature death in the hands of Dr.Roger Amar and his medical team. As an asthmatic patient, Stella fell into a ‘state of advanced shock’ during the ill-fated operation and Dr Roger and company tried all their possible best to ‘wake Stella Obasanjo up’ from this state of coma. They first transferred her to another specialist hospital in Spain where she finally gave up the ghost!
Mrs. Stella Obasanjo died tragically in Spain and the rest is history before our very eyes. This is a real painful death from Spain! I do not wish to cry more than the bereaved as thousands of people are dying every day throughout the world and who cares about such death??!!
T.S Eliot, a modern English poet once said, ‘Not everything can go round, but birth and death would surely go round in this world.’
Death is a necessary end and it would come like a ‘thief in the night’ and visit all mortals; good people will die and death will not spare the evil ones too.
Late Dr Martin Luther King once declared that: ‘Everyman must decide either to walk in the light of creative altruism or the darkness of destructive selfishness. Life’s most persistent and urgent question is-what are you doing for others?’
What matter most in life is to leave a good legacy behind for present and unborn generations. But mankind has a shorter memory of history!
Nigerian politicians and government officials are apostles of the ‘winners take-all’ syndrome, thinking less about the suffering masses…..
A school of thought actually believed that simple dietary procedures/controls along with regular exercises in the gymnasium could have considerably reduced the so-called ‘excess fat’ in Stella’s body instead of spending (or wasting?) Nigerian taxpayer’s money to fund ill-fated plastic surgery abroad. Most government officials take pleasure in going abroad for simple ailment that can be cured in Nigerian hospitals but because there is no TRUST in our health sectors due to chronic neglect and poor motivations of our health workers!
Due to recent economic hardship and mismanagement of resources in Nigeria, most people are on ‘instalmental death’ while the privileged people in power will continue to appeal to the people to pray harder and endure than pains (or dividends) of democracy and good governance!
At the beginning of this year, my elder brother’s wife lost her baby within few minutes of delivery due to medical neglect in a private hospital in Lagos. It was a painful death for the whole family. Since government hospitals are in total shambles and while moving to a privately-owned hospital for adequate medical attention, icy tentacles of death still grabbed the innocent baby!
Despite the preventable death of the innocent baby, the hospital still insisted that the remaining bills must be paid to the last penny! Another sad example of a medical neglect, few years back, an uncle to my former University friend went for a surgical operation (kidney)in government hospital in Abeokuta, Ogun State, but as fate would have it, the medical team mistakenly left behind a ‘gift’ of cotton wool and sterilised needle in the belly of the old pensioner!
After few weeks of discharge from the government hospital, the old man started experiencing ‘burning sensation’ in his stomach and unable to urinate properly. He was a caricature of his old self due to medical errors!
He went back for another medical check-up in the same hospital where he was x-rayed and the ‘gift’ detected and removed through surgery. But Alas! The man died during the operation while also waiting for his several unpaid pensions/allowances. sad story you will all say?
The list is endless and I can go on and on to tell you more on this. The death of the Nigerian former first lady, Stella Obasanjo must serve as an unforgettable lesson for all of us, especially for those privileged to be in power in Nigeria and in other third-world countries. Life is indeed transient and no condition is permanent. However painful her death might be, those in power in Nigeria must address the health/welfare needs of all Nigerians for posterity.
While we sympathise with President Obasanjo and fellow Nigerians on the sudden transition of Stella Obasanjo (Nee Abebe), this is the right time for the federal government of Nigeria to effectively restructure the ailing health sector and discourage the routine overseas medical check-ups of government officials and top politicians. A word is enough for the wise!
As a ‘giant’ of Africa, most of our brilliant and experienced medical personnels are seeking greener pastures abroad due to lack of motivations and conducive environment to practise their profession in their country of birth. This trend needs to be reversed as soon as possible.
This ‘exodus’ of Nigerian doctors, nurses and laboratory scientists to countries like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, United Kingdom, United States, Canada, Brazil, Australia/New Zealand, Germany, Botswana and even Mandela homeland of South Africa must not be interpreted as an act of disloyalty or unpatriotism to one’s nation because someone who has invested over seven years of his life to medical education in his country cannot graduate with good grades and settle down for ‘peanuts’ wages!
May the good Lord rest the soul of Mrs Stella Obasanjo and may her premature death (few weeks to her 60th birthday!) serve as a ‘wake-up’ call to the present government to improve the health sectors significantly and subsequently reduce the ‘man-made’ poverty that is still ravaging the country (despite the return to civil rule since May 1999?) for the sake of present and future generations.
The rich cannot sleep with comfort in Nigeria because the poor are hungry and awake with empty stomach. A hungry poor man is expected to be angry by the natural indices of life. Poverty kills more than diseases! Poverty of ideas among the government people and poverty of human/material resources to re-position the whole nation!
A couple of weeks ago in the popular Lagos suburb called Ojuelegba, a simple misunderstanding broke out between two uniformed men, a policeman and an army officer. Different versions of the incident emerged but during this unfortunate civil disturbance, precious lives and valuable properties were allegedly destroyed by the Nigerian soldiers (along with drug-addicted jobless area boys?),a pregnant woman was also killed during the stampede, a whole police station was razed down which ultimately gave undeserved ‘amnesty’ to awaiting suspects like armed robbers, rapists, pick-pockets and murderers.
The mother of the civil rights movement in America, Rosa Parks is dead aged 92; this fearless Black woman sparked a revolution in American race relations when she refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama on Dec 1, 1955 to a white man. We shall continue to salute her unique courage to speak out the words of truth to her oppressors! Rosa Parks lives forever in the lives of those left behind. ‘She just fell asleep and didn’t wake up’ according to her lawyer, Shirley Kaigler.
This boycott of public transport system for 381 days introduced the then ‘unpopular’ Revd Dr Martin Luther King to the limelight. He championed the long protest and the legal challenges led to the Supreme court decision to desegregate its bus system and put an end to ‘Jim Crow’ laws separating blacks and whites at public facilities throughout the American South.
It is noteworthy that Rosa Parks died in the month of October 2005, which is a ‘Black History Month’ in both Europe and America.
Rest in peace Mama Rosa, we are all proud of your courage and ideals, and thank God that you did not end up your sojourn to this world through the hot bullets of assassins like those two respected revolutionary American civil rights leaders, Malcolm X and Dr. M L King.
For Stella Obasanjo, Rosa Parks and Bellview crash 117, continue to move from earth to earth and to the deepest of the earth till the day of accountability. We meet to part, and we part to meet again and in the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson : ‘We `shall all meet again, if we are related.’ Adieu and goodnight to you all!!!
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