Gateman teaches Buhari, Ngige, Adewole leadership morals
The ides of March notwithstanding, humanity marches on each year to the bloom of April when plants open their flowers to beauty and new beginning. March and April would be non-identical twins if the months of the calendar were paired in twos. But March is benign; it forewarns. April does not; it punishes. Quite unlike Julius Caesar, no soothsayer warned Buba Bello alias Jangebe of the ides of March. A cow thief, Jangebe, had on March 22, 2000, stolen a cow in Zamfara and was running away with it when Sharia bolted after him, caught up and snatched the cow from him f-i-a-m! In the subsequent month of April, Jangebe’s right hand thudded to the floor, gbi!, as the sword of Sharia justice chopped off his wrist, which twitched on the floor, spurting blood everywhere, amid unbearable agony. Sharia could be as fast as lightning and as slow as sludge, depending on who is at the pointed end of its sword. Against Jangede, the sword of Sharia was swift. Against powerful politicians and big public office holders, however, Sharia moves like a snail with a sword drenched in sludge.
Zamfara blazed the trail when it enacted Sharia in January, 2000, followed by Kano State in June, 2000. Ten other states including Sokoto, Katsina, Bauchi, Jigawa, Kebbi, Yobe, Kaduna, Niger, Borno and Gombe established Sharia as a body of civil and criminal laws. Nineteen years down the line, Sharia has only been nemesis to common thieves, prostitutes, drunkards and part-time lawbreakers. It’s gratifying to know that the 12 northern Sharia states haven’t witnessed conviction for corruption of any big government official since 2000 when the law came on stream. Surely, Sharia amazingly makes all things bright and beautiful, I dare say. It also highlights the gulf between those in power and those out of it. I fear for the hands of those fomenting trouble in the goldfields of Zamfara today, ugh!, if Sharia wakes up from its 19-year slumber, the harvest of wrists would be bounteous.
I love April, a month of twists and turns, whose first day is always open to fools with jokes and hoaxes heralding the shouts of ‘April Fool!’ But April isn’t only for fools. It’s also for the treacherous and the murderous. The son of Iscariot, Judas, betrayed Jesus in April while murderous men garlanded His head with a crown of thorns, hoisted Him up on a cross and drove nails into His hands and feet, mockingly proclaiming Him the King of Jews. April isn’t only about foolery, treachery and butchery; it’s also about the comic. Forty-one year-old Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukrainian president-elect and renowned comedian, won election on April 21, 2019 for a five-year term. Zelensky is a Jew like the incumbent Ukrainian Prime Minister, Volodymyr Groysman, potentially making the former Russian region the only country in the world, apart from Israel, that would be led by Jewish heads of state in a few days’ time.
April isn’t all about gloom, doom and cartoon. This April, a gateman in Jigawa, Musa Usman, held a candle to the darkness enveloping the country’s leadership, revealing the hypocrisy and insincerity eating up the President Muhammadu Buhari-led Federal Executive Cancer, sorry, I mean Council.
Usman, according to a story published by Daily Trust, last week, hails from Giljimmi village, a Fulani settlement in Birniwa Local Government Area of Jigawa State. He had served his boss diligently for 25 years in Lagos and was about retiring to his thatched hut in his Jigawa village. In appreciation of his meritorious service, Usman’s boss, Mr V. Verghese, an Indian, who’s the Managing Director of a pharmaceutical company, Jawa International Limited, offered to build a house in Giljimmi for the comfort of the retiree. But Usman turned the offer down, imploring his boss to construct a borehole in his Jigawa community, instead. Usman lamented to his boss that his co-villagers trekked several kilometers daily to fetch stream water, stressing that a borehole was more beneficial to his people than a personal building. Speaking at the inauguration of the borehole, Verghese attested to the honesty and dedication of Usman, saying nothing ever got missing in his house during the 25 years that Usman served as gateman. He recalled that he often left his house to Usman while he went on vacation with his family, only to return and meet his house intact each time.
Though a gateman and an illiterate, Usman’s life is a lesson in integrity, selflessness, consistency, reliability, perseverance and love. He could have chosen the oppressive and wicked lifestyle typical of Nigerian leadership, but he chose love and service to bring smiles to the faces of his people. This is the ultimate mark of leadership.
In April this year, the diminutive Minister of Labour and Employment, Chris Ngige, was interviewed on national television about the scourge of brain drain afflicting Nigerian doctors. He replied, “I’m not concerned at all. We have surplus (doctors). If you have surplus, you export. We have surplus in the medical profession here, I can’t tell you (a) lie; we have more than enough, quote me! They (doctors) go out, they sharpen their skills, they earn money and send back home; yes, we are earning from them, we have foreign exchange from them…”
Ngige’s ruthless ranting followed a sinister interview granted by Nigeria’s Minister of Health, Isaac Adewole, who callously boasted in September 2018 that the man who sews his gowns was a medical doctor. Adewole was asked about his opinion on the unavailability of residency training for Nigerian doctors and the brain drain crisis. The petite Adewole said, “It might sound selfish but we (doctors) can’t all be specialists. We can’t. Some will be farmers, some will be politicians. The man who sows my gown is a doctor, he makes the best gowns, and some will be specialists, some will be GPs…”
If President Buhari knows the essence of leadership, he would’ve terminated the appointments of both Ngige and Adewole as ministers with immediate effect. But these medical doctors-turned politicians know that Buhari would punish no sin if it wasn’t committed against his unproductive hold on power. Ngige and Adewole have both diagnosed Buhari’s character flaw, and have devised a songs-of-praise therapy to massage the ego of the Katsina herdsman.
It’s shocking that Ngige and Adewole could grant those callous interviews in a country notorious for lack of medical personnel when malaria, cholera, diarrhea, meningitis, tuberculosis, polio, measles, whooping cough dispatch thousands of Nigerians to early graves yearly. If a medical doctor personally decides to abandon the stethoscope and take up the needle and thread, it’s ok. But it’s sinful of both Ngige and Adewole to say all is well in spite of the debilitating conditions bedevilling Nigeria’s health sector which force doctors, nurses and other health professionals abroad. It’s ungodly of Ngige and Adewole to pretend not to see that unemployment and brain drain in the health sector are not as a result of sufficiency and professionalism but due to a total collapse of the nation’s health system. Can Adewole pray to have a medical doctor child running a cut-and-sew fashion designing shop for a living? Both Ngige and Adewole know that Nigeria falls awfully short of the WHO recommended ratio of one doctor to 1,000 patients; what then is the honour in their public display of arrant insensitivity? Adewole evaded the question on what the government is doing to overhaul residency practice in Nigeria, but delved into an unsolicited public disclosure of the content of his wardrobe. For Ngige to say that Nigeria has surplus doctors, he must be counting on the innumerable oath-taking doctors he encountered during his celebrated visit to the Okija shrine in 2003.
May God forgive Ngige and Adewole.
(PUNCH)
