John Coll: Helpless against a crooked executor

Our mortal powerlessness

Yesterday marked a decade since the passing of my friend and mentor John Coll. As a blogger, I would normally have written something to commemorate and memorialise the day. The blog I wrote last year was meant for yesterday, I was a year off.

Blog - John Coll: Friend, Mentor, Gentleman – January 2015

Blog - John Coll: Calling on Herbert Dzinotyiweyi to fulfil his wishes – December 2013

Much as I want to reflect on our friendship, there are issues of understanding trust and the powerlessness of keeping that trust when you are no longer in the picture.

It brings to mind when Queen Elizabeth II gave her Christmas message desiring that the Duchess of Cornwall as the spouse of the Prince of Wales become the Queen Consort when he assumes the throne. That wish lasted until the coronation of King Charles III when he as king regnant decided his consort would be crowned Queen.

The clear message there is that regardless of the desires of the much-loved Queen, once she joined her ancestors, the powerful effect of her determination had gone with her passing. There is only one monarch in a kingdom and this time, it was Charles III, we had left the Second Elizabethan era for the new Carolean age from the 8th of September 2022.

The danger of a sole executor

In the affairs of life, we exercise both choice and control to varying extents, our presence enables us to order, arrange, and challenge situations to align with our liking and expectations. However, in our passing, where we cannot exercise control or authority, we rely on trusted persons to fulfil our wills, testaments and bequeaths.

There is a clear basis for an executor of an estate and there is law and precept that governs that responsibility, yet it can be abused. John chose the ‘trusted’ financial manager of his company to execute his will, whether it would have been prudent to distribute that responsibility seeing that John had been an employer of labour and skill for decades is another thing.

When John passed on, the primary elements of his will, such as his funeral and the disposal of his estate were followed through and seemingly completed quite promptly. The other part of his will which included bequests to 10 individuals, mostly outside the UK did not get fulfilment.

Once the executor had seen the largesse of the estate the trust reposed in him evaporated into avarice and over years, he schemed to transfer the full value of the estate after probate of about £780,000 to himself. He might have siphoned it out of the country or gambled it away, but he also had another plan, for he had citizenship of Zimbabwe and naturalisation in the UK.

I was onto him in 2019 when I learnt that most beneficiaries of John’s will had not been informed, and those who should have known were kept from prying because the executor feigned complexity of managing the estate and the required taxes.

He escaped accountability and justice

As I was not a beneficiary, I could only inform and instigate in the hope that John’s wishes would be fulfilled, and accountability is looked for as pertains to the fiduciary duty of an executor. Sadly, the police mishandled the situation and allowed the executor a window of opportunity to escape justice leaving the beneficiaries bilked of consequential resources that could have been impactful on their lives if John’s wishes had been conducted.

The lesson here is not only in choosing a trusted lieutenant or friend to execute your estate, especially in the absence of close relations to do the same but in distributing that responsibility so that the executors can hold each other accountable and true to the requirements of the testator.

Whether John had any insight into the character or integrity of his executor, one cannot tell, but with hindsight, the executor was anything but trustworthy. Mortal man is at a loss, for a will has no enforcement until the person is confirmed dead and the same person is powerless to ensure that their will is totally implemented according to the spirit and the letter of will.

A thought on accountable executors

As a man of faith, one of the reasons why Jesus Christ had to rise again from the dead was that the will for man to have eternal life and a relationship with God came into force with His death and the shedding of His blood for our sins. He rose again to ensure his testament was followed completely, that in accepting His sacrifice on the cross and declaring Him Lord, He confers the same sonship He has with God the Father on us too.

Imagine if, at the implementation of a will, the testator had the means to ensure every jot and title of their will was fully done without any challenge to the executor or resorting to the courts to redefine or alter your intention, purpose, and desire. Trust is a fleeting commodity, when it comes to executing a will, please ensure you have built extensive accountability into the process.

It is not John’s fault that things turned out this way, I never had reason to question either his instinct or his judgment when he was alive, people change and when it comes to money and worse still, the love of money, it is the root of all evil, the unconscionable evil that consumed Herbert Dzinotyiweyi.

We stand assured

We stand alone

For the Lord GOD will help me; therefore shall I not be confounded: therefore have I set my face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be ashamed. [Bible Hub: Isaiah 50:7 (KJV)]

Some of the challenges we face in life, we almost always face alone; when we receive the news of a terrible diagnosis presenting a dark realisation of existential mortality, the thoughts that run riot in your head are a Babel of incomprehensibility captured in a moment that seems like an eternity.

For me, I can only say that I have been blessed as I hear the prognosis and seek to appreciate the import of what has been said. Then from within wells up a fight, my face is set like a flint, unflinching in adversity and refusing to be defined by the immediate incapacity.

We stand assured

It makes sobriety feel like a curse, all your faculties are engaged, you are in no doubt that you seek a repetition of the situation, you heard right the first time, you do not need a confirmation. However, you seek a place to reflect, the quietude of a lonely moment before embracing the healing succour of slumber.

Indeed, sleep does stop the mind from wandering into the wilderness like a marauding prophet of doom bedecked in anything but the finery of the acceptable, mad beyond any redeeming quality, except to instil fear.

We are saved from the situation and saved from ourselves. We are strengthened with resolve to face adversity and to emerge with stories and testimonies that blow the mind. The spirit that is the engine of our sustenance continues to drive us forward with the clear reasoning that as long as we live, we will live well, thrive, and do good. In that, we know, we shall not be ashamed.

Pope Benedict XVI - A man in a modern-day pyramid

As man is storied

Pope Benedict XVI was a man that represented the frailty of our humanity, for all flesh shall perish. That is nature as it has been from long before we recorded history I note that Roman Catholic Church is the longest continuously running political and religious organisation, what she documents in her archives, some unsearchable of the mysteries of our human race would intrigue those who eventually have liberal access to those libraries.

When Pope Benedict XVI took the papacy at the end of the long reign of Pope John Paul II, much as he was highly influential as the Dean of the College of Cardinal and Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, he was also an old man of 78 and for almost 8 years he bore the burden of his ministry with the strength he could muster and the weaknesses that plagued him in the many domains where he wielded influence from within himself to the broader church and global political organisation he led.

As man is frail

When he decided he could no do more, he resigned from the papacy and took on the title of Pope Emeritus sequestering himself at the Mater Ecclesiae Monastery in the Vatican Gardens as Pope Francis succeeded him at the age of 76 and he presided over the solemn funeral mass of his predecessor, also now a frail man of 86 years of age.

Of men of advanced years, there was every possibility that the current pope could predecease the man he succeeded, my cultural heritage of the Yoruba celebrates the lives of people who live to a great old age at death, even as congratulations are offered to those who survived them. Our mortality is ever present in the course of our existence.

The concerns that a pope in retirement would inadvertently interfere with the organisation of his successor were not borne out. Pope Benedict XVI devoted himself to writing, studying, and prayer with the occasional snippets of news about him, what he was up to and his health condition.

As man is mortal

In his death, at the age of 95 on New Year’s Eve into 2023, there became how to celebrate a cardinal and a pope, as he was not the Sovereign of the Vatican City, apart from officials attending from Italy where the Vatican is situated and Germany, where he was from, any other country representatives would have attended in a personal capacity.

For the wealth and influence of the man and his standing, along with the offices he held, “As per tradition, the Pope Emeritus' pallium, coins and medals minted during his pontificate, as well as a "Rogito" or Deed summarizing the highlights of his papacy, were also placed inside the casket. He was buried in a triple coffin of caskets of cypress wood, zinc, and oak. [Vatican News: Deed of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI placed in casket]

As man is mummified

The zinc casket is welded shut with seals and a plaque, but for the man who ruled over men, they see no corruption for they neither return to dust nor are given to ashes, they become mummies of posterity, an eternal reliquary of bones with hair and leathered skin.

It makes one wonder if the crypts of royalty or the papacy very much like the pyramids of the Pharaohs might be discovered millennia from the present time will reveal to that civilisation once again the treasures of antiquity exemplified in the lives of significant persons of our times only for them to be plundered in the name of archaeology for the new museums that as human beings we visit to gawp at artefacts with intrigue.

As I watch a replay of the funeral Mass, the solemnity with the obscurity of Latin clouds the ceremony with mystery and awe. Pope Francis was wheeled in on the chair, and we all at another funeral find that moment to reflect that the times of man are just for a season. The celebration of our lives is informed by how we lived and for all that we might have done, our stories are buried in a summary and our graves have the briefest of inscriptions; our names, the year of our coming and the year of our passing.

Blog - Academic theologians creating Islamic disquiet

As for man, his days are like grass; As a flower of the field, so he flourishes. For the wind passes over it, and it is gone, And its place remembers it no more. Psalm 103:15-16 (NKJV)

Thought Picnic: From the midst of my considered mortality

A considered mortality

Three years ago yesterday, I boarded a plane from the Netherlands after a 147-month sojourn. I left a life completely shorn of everything but with a slight possibility, one of hope and some dignity, the little left.

Days before I left, I wrote an email to six of my closest friends, I also saw them as my pallbearers; about my plans to return to England, bruised, vulnerable and also with a dying wish, instructions given as to where I will like to be buried.

That last paragraph of that email was stark and shocking for some of my friends to read, some even thought I have completely given up. There were many reasons for giving up if I wanted to, I did not, I was 3 years after a cancer diagnosis and the long bushy tail of cancer was wagging the dog of my life. It was my considered mortality in the midst my particular reality.

Blog - Thought Picnic: When Things Don't Matter Any More

A start again

Yet, in the contemplation of an end laid the possibility of a new beginning, how that would become I had no inkling of, but leaving the Netherlands was one that was forced upon me by circumstances well beyond my control.

I arrived in the UK, got a new phone number, updated my resume and posted it to as many agencies as I could find. Within 6 days of my arrival, I had interviewed for and secured a job that was to start in 3 weeks travelling to 26 countries in Europe and North Africa. It was promising, interesting and exciting.

The team met up at London Heathrow and made for France with schedules already in place for Germany and Switzerland. In the end, we only did 4 weeks in France before the whole project was canned. It was a hard blow and it took another few months before another good opportunity came.

That other untold story

The business of settling back in the UK was not easy, you need a proof of address to open bank accounts, to secure long-term jobs, to find a home and to do much else. One was in a Catch-22 situation because there is no template or manual for resettling back in the UK. If not for all sorts of technicalities, good fortune, familial and friendly support along with the story that had become one of the defining elements of my life, I might well have gone to make clear plans for eternal repose.

I reflect today on the story, of return, of jobs, of joblessness, of plenty and of lack, of shelter and the threat of homelessness, of brothers and sisters with large bosoms of kindness and compassion, of friends who never let a hair of my head fall to the ground, of a mentor, one of my six friends who has since passed on.

Thank you for a wonderful life

It was hard and difficult, yet I cannot deny, it is also a wonderful life. Even if I am nowhere near where I once was, I am grateful for mercies great and small, triumphs to whisper and ones to shout about, for where there is life, there is hope. Even is my spirituality leaves me with more questions than I have had answers, a little voice in me still cries out with Christian ululation – To God be the glory.

Thank you for being here, near and where I have needed help, support, encouragement, vision, comfort, advice, love and fun.

Thought Picnic: Only statues stand immortal after men have long gone

I stand before great men

As I visit cities around the world I am attracted to statues, monuments of stone or marble built to the memory of men whose passage in time is recorded for a viewing.

Before you, on a plinth higher than man is the edifice to man and it is usually a man though rarely a woman, the name, the year of birth and the year of death, between the years is a hyphen and that represents the long story of a life so honoured.

Yet my sight plays with my mind for seeing statues at night almost excites my imagination into thinking they would come alive and converse with me.

Men long gone

Then one reflects that statues are very much the yearning for immortality, great men personified in stone as a symbol, a memorial and a story, having walked the earth, they are long gone, dead and buried.

In the square in front of the fantastic neo-gothic Manchester Town Hall are five statues, I know only two of the men, Prince Albert the consort of Queen Victoria had a grand statue set under a canopy held up by four columns, his honour came by reason of marriage and great it was. Albert Square it is.

A few plinths away stood a greater man, William Ewart Gladstone without much ceremony, four times called to be Prime Minister of the United Kingdom during the reign of Queen Victoria, yet the greater honour of a grander memorial fell on him who married than on him who achieved.

But for the stones, there is no remembrance of the men except in history or in conversation where what they did or the lives they lived mattered.

We are transients

Man on whom power has fallen for stewardship yet fails to see this passage of time, a long period of passage that is an eternity and a future also which is an eternity, we men being markers on the chart that offers an opportunity to live, but never the gift of immortality.

In our folly, we grab money and grab power and act as if for us, time has stood still, as if the reckoning has stopped and history ended yesterday, but we are all transients, some for a moment, some for longer, like flowers we bloom, we wither, we die and blessed be the work of nature as we return to dust or ashes to be fondly remembered or completely forgotten.

If honour outlasts us, a statue rises in a likeness for a moment in time when we were most comely, and as I visit another city square, I sit again observing monuments to great men long dead. Lifeless statues with names, the year of birth and the year of death.

When I depart, my slow long walk or journey back home continues as I contemplate how well I shall be truly forgotten, not having made a dent in time.

The memorials in Albert Square, referenced from Wikipedia

• ·         The Albert Memorial by Thomas Worthington and Matthew Noble (1869)
• ·         Bishop James Fraser by Thomas Woolner (1887)
• ·         John Bright by Albert Bruce-Joy (1891)
• ·         Oliver Heywood by Albert Bruce-Joy, (1894)
• ·         William Ewart Gladstone by Mario Raggi (1901)

Thought Picnic: You Only Die Once

Knowing my mortality

I came close to appreciating my mortality when just under 5 years ago, on being diagnosed with a form of skin cancer, I was advised that the possible outcomes were anything between 5 weeks at worst and survival.

I am still here, but careful to keep a close eye on my health and possibilities I have for living much longer than I could have envisaged.

One fact I am always aware of is my vulnerability, and though I do as much to live as someone living rather than someone who is dying, the questions of life and death persist.

Planning for that end

I have lost friends, cousins and uncles, too many gone long before their time due to all sorts of circumstances that leaves one both saddened and fortunate to still be here.

There is a need to plan for that eventuality, probably write a will, decide where one wants to be buried and make the adequate arrangements before time, and prepare people for it by making that final welfare a celebration rather than a sorrowful passing.

I would love to do some things before I go though, the earth is a beautiful place, much of which I would still love to see. I dream and I hope, then get to live those amazing dreams one way or the other, there is no doubt that I have been blessed.

Where to rest in peace

Last year, I spent a week in Walsall where I was born and there was some unfinished business about that visit. I wanted to go to the Anglican Church there and find out about what it takes to get a place to be buried. It is far from my ancestral home but it is the place where I came into this world and I have a strong connection with that idea.

Death is nothing to be afraid of, whilst life is something to be enjoyed to the full. You only die once and this is something I have decided to think about on the 5^th Dying Matters Awareness Week.

Thought Picnic: Would our humanity rise to make a useful difference?

Our calling

What seems to be missing in the story of our humanity is the inability to identify. People who are too preoccupied with themselves, their views, their position or their beliefs to be affected by experiences of others no matter how moving.

There are many events and issues going on in the world around us, some begging for us to acknowledge, recognise, appreciate and understand.

People who for situation, circumstance or experience have no voice either because they have been silenced or because they do not know who to cry out to, and there are many around us.

Our seeing

These are things that we can either be wilfully blind to or actively seeking to understand, sympathise and empathise.

Where we move out of our comfort zones and the padded lifestyles that seem to isolate us from harm and the gruesome reality of others to engage fully in providing support and succour to those around us.

We must not forget how ephemeral life is, how fortunes change and how whatever happens to us in life it is imperative that we do not lose touch with reality and the reality of others.

Our mortality

Everything is for a season, for those who have power or are in proximity to power, kings come and kings go, thrones endure for a while and kingdoms can be overturned in the passage of time to form new hierarchies.

Be aware of your humanity and your responsiveness to others, use power fairly, judiciously, proportionately and responsibly. For in the end, history is judge, a severe one at that, the memories of ills done in commission or indifference in omission are carved into enduring rocks of time as a salutary lesson to all.

Our legacy

However, when real good is done to celebrate our greater humanity, it would be for a memorial from generation to generation and the doers of such would have transcended from being mere men and politicians to great statesmen to identify with.

A legacy beckons, the masonry has already begun on the rocks of eternal scrutiny, for some #BringBackOurGirls might just determine the kind of people we are, those who have a heart of flesh or those who have a heart of stone.

Decade Blogs - Abubakar A. Musa - Challenging the humanity in us

Decade Blogs

One of the reasons why I gave everyone offering to contribute to my #YourBlogOnMyBlog Series commemorating my Decade of Blogging free rein to write on whatever issue, topic or story that they like, was it opened a window into the diversity of our human existence.

Blog - To Celebrate My Decade of Blogging

Indeed, I have loved reading the blogs that have showered underserved praise on me, but just because I provide a platform does not mean I should take the best seat. My job here is to introduce, to curate, to edit, to schedule and to publish – I do this with a great duty of responsibility that people would trust me with their opinions, a sense of honour that people would respond to my request to write for my blog and with deep gratitude and thanks for the many who have appreciated me enough write.

I wish I could say more about Abubakar A. Musa, I cannot, apart from some exchanges we have had on Twitter, but after reading this blog, I found this is someone I would love to meet, in gain and in pain, for a person whose eyes are open to the recognise the core of our humanity is the person that can be true in all things.

We have had five Popes in my lifetime, they have over their reigns done maybe significant things, but Pope Francis seems to have reached deeper into the soul of our humanity with his touching and simple compassion, he has become the Good Samaritan example of our times.

Blog - Pope Francis taking us back to the core of our humanity

Abubakar A. Musa brings to this page, many pictures of suffering, pain and grief, the vulnerabilities and frailties of our humanity and asks that we begin to understand what people go through, how it affects them and how it affects us. Most of all he asks us to visit the sick, offering comfort and succour to them. We must become considerately responsive with humaneness and our humanity.

I completely relate to this, I have been in a situation where a visit, a word, a touch, a smile, a hand was all I needed to ease the pain, if only for a while.

Blog - Thought Picnic: What the gravely ill need

Abubakar A. Musa, once had a blog, but he sometimes contributes to Omojuwa.com and AfricanLiberty.org and his Twitter handle is @blinkingam

Challenging the humanity in us

I was just a little under ten years old, my father held my hand and walked me through the various wards of the then, Ahmadu Bello University Teaching Hospital Kaduna (now in Shika, Zaria). Ward after ward, bed after bed, lots of people lying down with relatives and love ones rendering their support and immortal comforts.

As we walked through, I saw certain family members in shatters and disarray. While some were trying to comfort others, many were in high degree tears. Poor me, my brain couldn't comprehend any bit of the actions of those people nor the ones that surrounded them. I decided not to remain silent by asking my father why those people were crying. I remember vividly, yes, I won't forget, how my dad shook his head and said to me “at this stage, you will never understand what they are going through.”

While walking through life, those words of his keep shaping my thoughts and actions. Each time I was to be taken, either as a patient or escort, to the hospital, the feeling of seeing people crying and or in pain always echoed loudly in my head. True, I've seen many others since, but being my first contact with such incidents and at my developmental stage of life, that first event was my greatest TURNING POINT.

Today, I clearly understand such feelings. Today, I know what it means to be lying on a sick bed battling for survival. Today, I totally comprehend what it means to lose a loved one, a close associate, a companion, and even an enemy. Ironically, it's today, after I can relate with such feelings and reflect on its effects upon the humanity, that such incidents are becoming more than regular to my eyes.

Every time I walk through our hospitals, public or private, the sympathy of human souls battling for existence always met my first step. From the less disturbing to the most severe ones, people screaming, others seeking comfort and some saying goodbye. At that stage, the words of my dad always reverberate in my head. But, unlike then, now I clearly understand what the sick ones are going through, and what the relatives of the recently died are also equally going through. Each time I find myself across certain wards of the hospital, the feelings aren't just frightening, but the core of my humanity is always shaken.

Going through the oncology ward, the sight of many Cancer patients will always make you weep, if only you're the strong type. Going through the special care units and special care baby units, infants that are yet to know the meaning of their existence and parents alike battling to exist against deathly ailments. Walking through the female, labour, and the obstetric/gynaecology wards are equally deeply painful and emotionally scary episodes. Mothers and primers trying to escape the sword of maternal mortality.

While some deliveries are as successful as Michael Jackson in the music industry, others end up with difficult complications leading to many kissing the world goodbye. At the anti-retroviral screening (ARS) centres, the story is less comforting. Depression upon depression, and the fear of stigmatization are well embedded on the faces of the usually many patients. Many couldn't just understand the meaning of life any longer while the few that could, end up facing the challenge of societal rejection.

Of all these, one needs a deep human perspective to understand what they and their relatives are going through. Unlike then, I do not need to ask anyone anymore, because now, I understand what they are going through. I understand their feelings and that of their love ones. I understand that life could be so cruel when you least expect it. I, now, understanding that no human soul is more important than any other. The words of my dad had made me to understand that no flesh is immune to illness much as no soul is immune to dying. But above all, my constant visitation of the sick ones has helped in shaping my positive reactionary human tendency.

Should anyone visit the above mentioned hospital wards and not feel touched to the core of their human compassion, such person should re-examine their human moral consciousness. Looking at my general looks, the healthy lifestyle I'd lived and still living, I feel much lucky as a person. In between, I'd fallen sick and might still do again, that I know. But I've every reason to be grateful for the journey so far.

If you find yourself healthy today, if you find yourself comfortable at this moment, irrespective of your past turmoil and challenges, cherish it, live it, enjoy it, and be grateful to your creator as well. But do remember, you aren't much wiser than those lying on the sick beds or those passing away every second.

It could easily be you on that sick bed, it could be you going through that pain, and it could have been you that passed away. Everyone would, at a point, go back to where we all came from. Reeling the feelings of good health today shouldn't becloud our trait of sympathy towards those being tested by nature.

We should be thankful to God for such opportunity and ensure regular hospital visitation to rewire our virtues of humanity. In the theory of relationships, there's always a point of first contact. Your visitation to hospitals today and fervent prayers could change some other person’s live. Challenge the other side of you and explore the virtue of humanity within your composite make up. This life is nothing but a test of our collective thoughts.

Nigeria: A case for jail threats against those refusing vaccination

Protecting our shared community

I would hate to be in a society where vaccination is forced on people, but we need to understand the responsibility to be vaccinated if we are to participate healthily in our shared commonwealth, society and community.

The news is that 120 parents or guardians were arrested and threatened with jail terms if they continued to refuse to allow their wards be vaccinated. [Punch]

Polio or infantile paralysis, is an acute, viral, infectious disease spread from person to person, primarily via the faecal-oral route. [Wikipedia]

Herd immunity

It is preventable by immunisation or vaccination and recipients of this preventative measure block person-to-person transmission of wild poliovirus, thereby protecting both individual vaccine recipients and the wider community (so-called herd immunity).

The operative phrase here being herd immunity, the threshold in percentage terms a community population has to reach in vaccination numbers against preventable diseases to avoid an outbreak leading to a possible epidemic. [Wikipedia]

Source: Herd Immunity - Wikipedia

The chart above with regards to vaccinations against Diphtheria, Measles, Mumps, Pertussis (Whooping Cough), Polio, Rubella and Smallpox with the attendant modes of transmission implicitly confers a societal responsibility on everyone, first by not being a vector for transmission and avoiding that by being vaccinated.

With thresholds ranging from 80% of the population for Polio to 92% for Pertussis and Measles, it would be considered irresponsible for certain members of the public to shift the responsibility unto others by hoping the coverage of herd immunity when they interact with society assures their immunity if they have not yet been vaccinated.

Preventable means taking responsibility

More pertinently is the fact that in 2008, the WHO estimated that there were 1.5 million deaths amongst children under 5 due to preventable diseases. Preventable and avoidable possibly if those children had been vaccinated. [WHO]

Now, where there are no vaccines or a community has not had the opportunity to avail themselves of this life-saving activity, one’s sorrow and sympathy flows unabated as one also advocates for more vaccination drives to the unreached or deprived ends of the world.

Dread and death

However, where religious ignorance and rabble-rousing rhetoric of stupefying controversy as happened in Nigeria has bewitched the people into thinking the vaccination drive is to sterilise the population, then one wonders about the choices between needless childhood mortality or preserving maternal fertility creating a perpetual cycle of birth and death, joy and sorrow until indifference sets in.

That is not to say there is no cause for concern, vaccines are not perfect and as in the case of the Pfizer experiment in Northern Nigeria; what they did was unforgivable, the unethical conduct was reprehensible, and it set back the global vaccination drive that has left Nigeria as one of the only countries in the world with a polio problem, however, we cannot because of it stop the need to vaccinate and avoid preventable childhood deaths. [Wikipedia]

Just one and it spreads

Back to my premise for this blog, just because certain parents refused to take the MMR jab, in 2013, there was a measles outbreak in Wales, which affected 1,455 persons, 664 of those in Swansea and there was one reported death, in August 2013, there was a measles outbreak that found patient-zero in an evangelical mega-church in America.

The whole point I am trying to make is this, it is your prerogative not to get vaccinated, however, if you intend to share the same space as others, breathe the same air they breathe and interact with others as another social being, then that prerogative has to be subsumed to a greater good – you taking responsibility as much as others to be immunised or vaccinated and prevent unnecessary hardship, avoidable sorrow and needless deaths.

The choice is clear

It is in view of this that I support the jail threats made to the people arrested in Niger State of Nigeria, whilst it might be read as an encroachment on their rights, the wider responsibility is to society, with the desire to interact with the community comes a responsibility to help keep that community healthy and safe by attending to the smart obligation of being vaccinated.

Obviously, you can completely isolate yourself from civilisation, but then, hopefully you are too far away from any community to pose any risk at all, else, get vaccinated at the earliest opportunity.

Nigeria: The embarrassment of maternal mortality

Mother and child can be safe

Despite the opprobrium that it attracts and in some cases justly so, the subtext to the story the woman who with the help of induced conception gave birth to octuplets [1] is that they are all alive as she also is well and alive to take care of her babies.

Just over 10 years ago, a couple also through assisted fertilisation became parents of a set of live octuplets [2], one of whom died within a week of birth. This couple becoming the first of such an event in America were of Nigerian ancestry and received the best of medical attention that the 7 are healthy vibrant normal children today.

Their mother a few years later conceived naturally to give birth to a girl which brings the number back up to 8 blessings of joy – they have only recently been garnering public attention with the birth of the other octuplets.

Care is of the utmost importance

At my birthday just over 2 months ago, I asked my father [3] about when I was born and if anything, what I heard the most was his gratitude to a medical system 43 years ago that gave a 26-week premature baby the opportunity to thrive and become what I am today.

Last weekend, in Sagamu where I went to secondary school [4] and in a hospital where some 30 years ago, my terror of injections was so shamelessly viewed by many, a lady gave birth to a set of sextuplets [5].

Probably no mean feat and amazing in every case, the sextuplets did survive but a few days afterwards tragedy struck with the death of the mother.

This highlights a very serious health emergency in Nigeria where the country counts for 10% of global maternal mortality [6] deaths linked to child birth – Nigeria ranks second only to India which has about 7 times the population of Nigeria.

Lackadaisical attention to health

I have not been convinced of our government's handling that emergency and embarrassment with any sense of responsibility or urgency; giving that after a fraudulent scandal in the health ministry [7] last year, it took the best part of a year to fill the post of minister and minister of state with competent personnel holding the substantive portfolio.

Meanwhile, the lawmakers bungled [8] their first attempt at a health bill which had a committee of probably the most qualified health professionals sitting and debating.

I have written a lot about health and healthcare in Nigeria and it can only be that those who can afford it get shipped out of the country at any feeling of discomfort whilst the masses self-medicate with unproven but mythically effective herbs and natural remedies until they are beyond orthodox, traditional or spiritual help and consequently die of that pathogenic brief illness.

It should not escape the notice of the reader that the hospital that delivered the sextuplets had been upgraded to a university teaching hospital where presumably one would expect to find the best medical hands and brains but the subtext reads that two of the babies were transferred to the intensive care unit of a private hospital in Lagos some 40 kilometres away where their condition has improved.

It is an emergency

Whilst I can only commend the efficacy of the transport and stabilisation systems that allowed the babies to be delicately transferred to another hospital, the damning reality is how a seeming centre of medical excellence could not provide in totality the care for the babies having inadvertently lost the mother through excessive bleeding.

A few years ago it was another teaching hospital where fake anaesthetic drugs were administered to hapless victim patients and a minister of health [9] who could not be bothered by the health emergency this signified.

Can we get better people?

Then we have a minister of women affairs [10], I say this without prejudice and with no condemnation of what is generally acceptable, whose amazing profile [11] includes the main and only hobby of reading the Quran – with what that all entails about the rights of women, the child and its attendant health issues.

The CEDAW protocol [12] languishes in our legislature whilst they promulgate laws about indecent dressing as another unfortunate woman succumbs into another grievous and heinous statistic of utter irresponsibility on the part of our leadership.

This whole matter of the sextuplets must not end with the mercy missions of charity for the upkeep and survival of the children but it should go to the root of the problem which is the extraordinarily unacceptable number of women needlessly dying at childbirth – this is the critical health emergency that Nigeria faces today and it needs addressing urgently.

Sources

[1] American woman gives birth to live octuplets - Times Online

[2] Chukwu octuplets - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[3] Four before three, I am 43 today! [akin.blog-city.com]

[4] Remo Secondary School (RSS) at 60 [akin.blog-city.com]

[5] BBC NEWS | Africa | Nigerian sextuplets' mother dies

[6] HEALTH-NIGERIA: Little Progress on Maternal Mortality

[7] Nigeria: The resignation of Adenike Grange [akin.blog-city.com]

[8] Nigeria: The Senate Health Bill is rejected [akin.blog-city.com]

[9] Unhealthy directors of Nigerian Health [akin.blog-city.com]

[10] Ministry of Women Affairs

[11] Profile of Minister Saudatu Usman Bungudu [PDF]

[12] Nigeria: Women badly represented at CEDAW convention [akin.blog-city.com]