Ayilara, Another Avoidable Death!  

Have you read the story of the Akwa Ibom State Commissioner of Police, Waheed Ayilara, who just passed away at the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital? If you haven’t, please try to read it and have your own share of the shock.

The fact that this has just happened after the pathetic story of what Mr. Yusuph Olaniyonu, a veteran journalist and former Commissioner for Information in Ogun State, went through in the hands of the nation’s medical practitioners in Abuja, is a cause for concern.

It’s easier to call out the government and our leadership and forget that nation-building is about roles and responsibilities. We glibly talk about the roles of government and our leaders but brush aside our responsibilities as people and citizens.

The nation’s medical system is a major culprit in the abdication of responsibilities, flooded by inefficient characters, whose only concern is periodic strike in demand for better pay. Better pay without commensurate service, professionalism, and efficiency.

You wonder why your leaders don’t stay back for the simplest of medical needs? Now you know. Former President Muhammadu Buhari, despite the Almighty Aso clinic, went abroad for mere ENT, and the whole nation came down heavily on him. Akpabio traveled abroad over minor accidents despite building an “uncommon hospital” in his state, and we were angry.

Doctors who operated on a former vice-president, Yemi Osinbajo, at a Lagos, were mostly practicing abroad and just came in to attend to him. Yet, the irony is that our medical practitioners are being poached daily from other countries, where they deliver their best.

If you’ve ever traveled abroad for medical needs, you’d have noticed that a majority of those who would attend to you are Nigerians, especially during the post-ops. So, what is our problem? Are we just wicked and deliberately unpatriotic? What has government and poor pay got to do with doing your job well?

Mr. Ayilara, just like Mr. Olaniyonu went into the theatre hale and hearty. But while one moved from there to the morgue, the other visited the gate of heaven and back and was only rescued in Egypt.

Unfortunately, they both went in for the same thing: enlarged prostate. This is a simple surgery that is daily done abroad within minutes, and the patient would be fine and ready to go home.

The time for the medical association in Nigeria to take charge and start looking into this increasing “killing” of Nigerians by their people is now. Enough of this deliberate negligence and avoidable quackery. You guys can honestly do better. It’s such a shameful verdict on an otherwise proud institution with professional esteem.

My condolences to the Ayilara family.

Olawale Olaleye