PRESIDENT RETURNS – WHAT NIGERIANS DONT KNOW ABOUT BUHARI’S EAR INFECTION

Nigeria’s President Mo­hammed Buhari has an ear infection—as if he didn’t have enough to keep him awake at night. What with the Niger Delta exploding from a sputtering of lethal in­cidents into full-blown insur­rection by militants in the oil region threatening to murder him if he visits the area, and public enthusiasm for his war on evildoers proceeding apace with mixed results as the fight­ing waxes.

What with those an­noying nosy-bodies writing in the papers and tossing out nas­ty insinuations that his admin­istration has not been waving a magical wand fast enough to ef­fect the change he so eloquently shouted himself hoarse during the election. 

They expect him to say: “abracadabra” and sud­denly we turn from our habits as bribe-giving, bribe-expect­ing, and bribe-taking people into model citizens one and all. Now, he is faced with the unset­tling prospect of a nation ques­tioning his seeking medical treatment for an ear infection in the U.K. instead of Nigeria.

In case you are wondering what ear infection is, and as­suming the disease has nev­er taken a swipe at you grow­ing up, it is a nasty little illness whose complications have the eerie ability to kill you. I’ll ex­plain. First, you have this ear-ache.

 The ache will gradu­ate to an excruciatingly severe pain that would have you hear­ing weird sounds at the end of which you hear nothing. You know how sometimes you get some foreign object in your eyes and your nose begins to drip? That is the origin of the prov­erb which roughly translates: Something that happens to the eyes, has also happened to the nose. 

Analogously, the ear ca­nal is only a skin thin away from the brain. When something happens to the ear canal, it has happened to the brain. Sim­ply put, if you have ear infec­tion; soon enough, you’d have brain infection a.k.a Meningitis which means, while your ear is oozing barf-inducing pus, you also stand the risk of a seizure, a paralyzed face, and a behavio­ral disorder.

Dr Osahon Enabulele, who has done time in unionism as the president of the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA), couldn’t help but grimace. In an open letter to the president where he most tellingly noted the unpleasant fact that about $1 billion was spent funding foreign medical trips in 2013, mostly for Nigerian public of­ficials, Dr. Enabulele, by way of explication reminded us Ni­geria does not lack the right healthcare facility and the ex­perts to run them. 

A “nation­al shame” he calls it, but much as I share Dr Enabulele’s angst, permit me a dissenting groan. I think, despite the vehement op­position of the rest of the world, the president should go over­seas for what ails him. Heav­en forefend I subscribe to the president patronizing a Nigeri­an hospital. If he tries it, he will be dead (of ear infection, that is) in as many days as I can count on my fingers.

It is easy to get so worked up—positively choleric, really—about a president not patroniz­ing the business of his country, but in the unlikely event pres­ident Buhari visits a Nigeri­an hospital; he will be in for a big unpleasant surprise. In the non-flowing gutter in front of the hospital premises, he will be welcomed by a filth-pile of spent pure-water sachets and plastic bags which had assumed the dual purpose of clogging the gutters and breeding malaria-laden mosquitoes.

 At the cor­ridors, he will find sick, near-dead, and dead patients lying on mats exposed to the elements and with their families turning the compound into make-shift kitchens cooking with discard­ed beverage cans. Inside a 20-bed hospital ward, more than 60 patients would have some­how crammed themselves in there, with some spreading their mats in the spaces be­tween beds breathe-exchanging whatever ailments they brought with them. He will hear nurs­es cursing, yelling, and some­times slapping patients for mak­ing “unnecessary” demands.

Then the harassed-looking, but visibly overwhelmed doc­tor shows up, highly educated, patriotic, compassionate, and true to his Hippocratic Oath, willing to save lives. He will have to shine a light in the Pres­ident’s ears and take pictures that should show on a comput­er screen so that he would know how far the infection has gone. Problem is, there is no light; there is no instrument; and there is definitely no computer for him to do this. Don’t forget, for years, there have been budg­ets for such items, but someone took the money. We know who took the money, and none of us said a thing.

The president will have to bribe the doctor to be seen. The doctor didn’t use to take bribes, but after he had had to bribe professors just to see his grade at the university, he had caught the bribery bug.

Okay, let’s say the doctor is able to prescribe medication, the pharmacy section manned by a pharmacist who gets monthly pay will tell you there are no drugs. Someone had tak­en the money for the drugs and pocketed it. We know who took the money, and none of us said a thing.

To fill his prescription, the president may be directed to a patent medicine store where a stark-illiterate person would sell you NAFDAC-approved med­ication some of which are so fake they could kill you. We all know this, and none of us will say a thing. The citizenry these past many years has been able to shrug off, or, at the very least, take in stride, virtually any kind of bad news that is thrown at us that we now all have ear in­fection.

As is his wont, the president won’t talk much and won’t even listen to the noise makers some of whom he would have decreed jail when he did time as a sol­dier.

And so, the president will be frustrated enough to bribe eve­ryone—from the gate man who will direct him where to park his car, to the hospital admin­istrator/matron who will make a doctor available to see him—in order to get treatment. 

Don’t forget, the longer you don’t treat ear-infection, the sooner its complications set in. I can’t imagine president Buhari as a demented, hard-of-hearing, president with a paralyzed face simply because he must fulfill an election time promise.

As a postscript, every person who has ever run for office has had to promise something to the electorate without deliver­ing. We know who, and none of us said a thing.

Emeaba wrote in from Port Harcourt.