A young man fumes as he narrates his ordeal in a federal hospital. From every indication, he has completely given up hope for the country. He said to me, “Bro, I won’t complain about anything again in Nigeria. It’s a hopeless situation. Complaining won’t help it. Nigeria’s situation is chronic”
He stated that ‘no medication or human would cure or solve the deteriorating situation in the country, except God’.
“We got to the FMC Owerri past 9 pm on Friday.
They refused to attend to her near-dead condition because of unavailability bed space”.
I pleaded that they should even attend to her in my car.
A staff of the hospital had the effrontery to tell me, ‘no doctor I bribe would attend to her if they don’t give her bed”
I did all I can to convince the hospital staff, that this is an emergency situation. I made the staff know the risk we took driving her on the road from Lagos to Owerri, but, all I did couldn’t change the staff’s mind.
According to this young man, his resolution now is to get out of this country; establish there, and pull out as many of his family and friends as he could from Nigeria.
He said he will probably make alternative arrangements and fly out those in Nigeria that are passing through what his Mother experienced for emergency treatment.
He continued in an outburst, “this will never happen in Yoruba or Hausa land. I mean in Owerri my home town, all my contacts made an effort to get a bed for her. They only told us to wait for any available bed space. And that waiting it’s at our own risk”. ..could you imagine that?..he asked.
“I wondered alternative hospitals they expected us to take someone in a coma that required intensive care.
We had to move her around 2 am to a private hospital owned by one of the consultants working there in the hospital”.
In a melancholic mood, he said to me, “Bro, look for a way out of this country.
Do you know that within that 4 hours or so, they removed 2 dead bodies from that emergency ward? Nobody reacted as if something happened.” Bro, It’s that bad!
The young man said that Nigeria is good if you are wealthy and can always afford to fly yourself or loved ones abroad for medical treatment.
In a bid to express how bad things have gotten in the country, he empathizes with Okada and Keke riders who are managing to make ends meet and how it affected him in his daily hustle.
He summed it up this way, ‘the situation is the same across the board.
Imagine those currently managing, Lagos State banned Okada and
Keke without making alternative arrangement”
Now, we can’t pick up clothes since morning.
Because we currently rely on them to move within the estates
We have lost a lot of money already.
Then, consider the multiplier effect on the economy and condition of living of the citizenry, he said.
I am not in support of the nuisances they’re constituting in Lagos and other major cities. If there’s a free flow of traffic no sane person would take a bike or Keke, he concluded.