Mayowa Ahmed is dead. The cancer sufferer passed
away in the early hours of Sunday. She was a victim of the
state-sponsored genocide that is silently decimating the Nigerian poor.
Mayowa would have lived longer or even beat the disease if the
circumstances of her birth were different. She would still be alive
today had she been born in a country that works for all its citizens and
guarantees them access to quality healthcare. She would still be here
if she was born into the class of Nigeria's 1%, those who have the
luxury of escaping Nigeria for a foreign address whenever they fall
sick.
Mayowa died the death that is the lot of the ordinary Nigerian.
She died without dignity; in slow, debilitating, daily installments. She
died a skeleton.
Still, she could be said to have been lucky. According to the lay of
the Nigerian land, she was supposed to die as a non-statistic, unknown
and unsung. She was the daughter of a nobody. She wouldn't have made the
list of Nigerian rich kids, the exceptional breed eligible to be
secretly employed by Godwin Emefiele's Central Bank of Nigeria and Tunde
Fowler's Federal Inland Revenue Service on account of the sheer weight
of their fathers' name and affluence.
Mayowa Ahmed became known to many Nigerians outside the circle of her
family and friends because a Nollywood actress, Toyin Aimakhu, and Miss
Aramide Kasumu, the director of Lifestake Foundation, met her, by some
stroke of fate, empathized with her and brought her plight to light. The
two Good Samaritans made Mayowa a celebrity of sort. They made her
trend on Nigerian Twitter. They popularized her story and launched a
fundraising bid for her treatment abroad.
The charity venture grossed 80 million naira and $100,000 in
donations. A hoax would later interpose and see the Nigerian Police
freeze the gofundme account opened for Mayowa's cause. But after the
distraction was determined to be what it was, she was flown, on August
10, to a South African hospital where she eventually died.
Mayowa arrived too late, nonetheless. The cancer in her body
metastasized and spread beyond the organ of origin while she waited an
eternity to have a meaningful medical intervention. The space of time
between the diagnosis that confirmed her case as cancer and the moment
Nigerians of goodwill contributed enough widow's mites to fund her
treatment severely diminished the probability of her survival and made
her death a fait accompli.
Nigeria records 250,000 new cancer cases yearly and 10,000 cancer related deaths annually.
That makes Nigeria the country with the highest cancer death rate in
Africa. But Nigeria does not have a standard cancer treatment facility.
Not even one to serve as a well-intentioned caricature of a world class
cancer treatment center. And, yes, Nigeria has no plan either to build
one or to equip its existing hospitals for the purpose!
Cancer is a deadly disease. Early detection and treatment increases
the odds of the patient experiencing long term survival. Nigeria has
few cancer diagnostic centers. And they charge prohibitive fees for
screening.
In the event that a poor Nigerian manages to secure a correct
diagnosis, if it's cancer, there is no hope. It's a death sentence. He
goes home and dies. Killed, not by the disease itself, but by the
gnawing regret that he is too poor to fly abroad and rescue himself.
In a country where citizens have to buy generators or stay without
power till kingdom comes, in a nation where citizens have to dig their
own boreholes or die of thirst, in a land where the lifeline of the sick
is a witch doctor's concoction, an Imam's prayer, or a pastor's 'holy
water,' to have cancer as a member of Nigeria's 99% is to be reminded
that you matter as a voting entity but not as a human being.
Nigeria loses its thousands of its medical doctors and nurses to work
emigration. The health professionals leave in waves because of the
frustration of working in a hostile space. The politicians that pay
themselves the highest salaries in the world would not pay medics that
heal the people reasonable remuneration. Neither would they furnish
Nigerian hospitals to run well and save lives.
Last week, PUNCH reported that the State House Clinic had no drugs.
It had no medical supplies to conduct dialysis. It had no paracetamol.
That's the facility that is meant to serve as the hospital of the
president of Nigeria, his vice president, and other top officials of the
Nigerian government!
The scandal is a reality because the State House Clinic can exist
without drugs. It would have been inconceivable if the lives of Nigerian
leaders depended on it. But it doesn't. If President Buhari had a
health scare today, he would not be rushed to that mockery of a clinic.
He would be flown abroad in a twinkling of an eye. A Nigerian leader
would rather be ferried to the farthest hospital abroad than taken to
the nearest Nigerian hospital.
In 2007, President Olusegun Obasanjo flew then
Governor Umaru Musa Yar'Adua to Germany because the presidential
nominee of the Peoples Democratic Party caught a cold. Obasanjo had
earlier lost his wife, Stella, in a Spanish hospital. The First Lady
died while undergoing a tummy tuck surgery she didn't need.
President Yar'Adua would later spend more than six months in a Saudi
hospital. He traveled without handing over power to Vice
President Goodluck Jonathan, precipitating a constitutional crisis that
pushed Nigeria to the brink of anarchy. In the last days of his terminal
illness, Yar'Adua was smuggled into Nigeria in the dead of the night.
He died thereafter.
In November 2013, President Goodluck Jonathan checked into a London hospital for ''acute abdominal pains.'' There were rumors he provoked the condition by overindulging in a birthday party. The state media celebrated his discharge.
Earlier, in February 2013, Jonathan's wife, Patience, returned from
her treatment in a German hospital. She held a 'thanksgiving service' in
which she testified that she experienced a Lazarus resurrection. She had 9 surgeries in one month and ''died... for more than one week.''
As a presidential candidate, Muhammadu Buhari, promised to 'end medical tourism.'
He said it was a shame that Nigerians hospitals were empty shells that
Nigerian leaders were loath to enter. If elected, he swore, he would put
an end to the spectacle of a Nigerian president going overseas for
treatments and medical checkups. He would raise the standards of
Nigerian hospitals and save us a lot of foreign exchange.
Buhari was elected president in May 29, 2015. He broke that promise.
He traveled to London few months ago and spent a whole week there to
treat a supposedly ''persistent ear infection.'' His media aides tried
to sell the trip as a holiday getaway befitting a 73-year-old hard
worker!
As recently as April 2016, Buhari
bemoaned the oddity of Nigeria spending $1 billion annually on medical
tourism. He had vowed that taxpayer's money would not be wasted on
treating officials overseas when Nigeria has the expertise.
Nigeria had 250 ENT specialists and a National Ear Center in June 2016, when Buhari went for his own medical tourism!
And when he returned to Nigeria from his medical pilgrimage, Buhari didn't walk into his residence quietly. He had a festival and a ceremonial parade. A band dressed in ridiculous splendor played him welcome tunes!
In Nigeria today, the sick person is literally hopeless. There is no
universal health insurance for the poor. The minimum wage earner cannot
pay hospital bills. Only wealthy individuals and corrupt politicians can
survive cancer.
The immediate past petroleum minister
of Nigeria is a cancer patient. She relocated to the United Kingdom to
take care of her condition. She would have long died if she wasn't a
woman of privilege. If she was in the trap of poverty, she would have
died like my neighbor – a petty trader and a mother of five.
Mayowa died as a stage IV ovarian cancer patient.
That's the last stage of cancer. The cancer had spread beyond her
ovaries, to fluid around her lungs or beyond her abdominal organs. Had
she been diagnosed early and subjected to surgery, chemotherapy and
humane care considerably sooner than before she landed in South Africa,
the lady would not be due for burial this soon.
Mayowa died the deaths many Nigerians die every day. Nigerians of
humble birth die of terminal sicknesses that can be expertly managed.
They also die of 'simple' diseases like malaria. 300,000 Nigerians die
of malaria every year. That's the highest malaria death rate in the world!
Nigeria is killing off the most vulnerable of her people. Nigeria has
put the Nigerian poor at the mercy of hospitals that Nigerian leaders
themselves detest. Africa's most populous country is executing a cynical
population control policy that amounts to crime against humanity!
To mourn Mayowa is to mourn her company. She died along with other
unknown Nigerians whose obituaries will not make it to the pages of our
newspapers. Men and women who didn’t attract get-well tweets from
strangers. People whose diseases could have been cured or properly
managed if the government of their country cared.
Other Mayowas will die today. And tomorrow…until the day the Nigerian
people choose for themselves cadres of leadership that believe that the
lives of Nigeria's 99% matter!
Emmanuel can be reached at immaugwu@gmail.com. You can follow him on Twitter @EmmaUgwuTheMan.
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