The Nigerian drug

Let me begin straightaway by stating thus: our current political rulers’ wrong attitude towards Nigerians, and especially towards those who are truly poor – and who constitute the huge percentage of the hapless masses – is leading to the consequence of an inevitable doom. And this inevitable doom, once it descends, will spare no one.

The political rulers and their mechanised, fake, commercialised, empty, politicalised, urbanised vain life will not definitely be spared contrary to their exploitative expectations. What I am saying is or may not be new.

In fact, some persons may say, as their accusation of me may allow them, that what I am saying is common place, personal, and derives from my sentimental and private creative and journalistic imagination. But I will appropriately reply them as follows: They are entitled to their impression, but without yielding to any attempt from their end to sentimentalise, as they wont to do, theirs and their bosses’ exploitation of the Nigerian earth for commercial and economic profit.

This is the Nigerian drug or part of the Nigerian drug that they regard as progress; and that we have been accustomed to regard and accept it as always integral to our plane and existence.

Let me be plainly plain. In the past one week and more I was in Warri, my dear distinguished city of modern modernity some individuals want to dismantle but cannot. I was there for five days of leisure that was really no leisure. Let me help you to revise your notions of leisure.

I was in Warri for work, the kind of work that enabled me to have more education on the way of my people, community and broad family. Through that I was admitted into the knowledge of how my education, my high education, that is, was/is still going to demand or require a great deal of drudgery. This drudgery which was no leisure was an aid to the further acquisition of wisdom for me in my further enterprises and undertakings on this earth plane where Nigeria is my country of residentship.

Now on the day I left – or was leaving – Warri I had an ailment which came from an infection from I knew not where – although I suspected/suspect that it came from the ugly atmosphere that ill-governance has condoned and cannot immediately disable. This is not a fallacious fallacy. And public health physicians will not disagree with me.

I tried to self-treat the ailment – meaning that I self-prescribed the drug that I took. My un-diluted and un-adulterated assumption was that the ailment was so little that it would evaporate from me in no long time. My self-medication bolstered my precious conviction and motive to be my own physician. How wrong I was! How wiser I have been now!

I did not make the progress I assumed that I would make. The drug I bought on self-medication, or, self-recommendation, better, on self-prescription, disappointed me. I bought the drug at a middle-brow pharmacy at a high price even though I am not free from financial anxiety, despite my social status, on account of the current central governing regime. Under normal circumstance the drug which should not have been above two hundred naira (but which I got for five thousand naira – even though un-branded), did not give me back my good health.

Should I blame my good self or the central government that has killed (and keeps on killing) our naira in order for the American dollar to thrive and to keep on thriving at our naira’s expense? Let me not detain you with an answer.

I remembered Marcus Aurelius (Roman emperor from 161 to 180, born 26 April 121 and died 17 March 180): “Death stands at your elbow.” The emperor, and Stoic philosopher and author of Meditations spoke to me in the quiet of my anxious concern for my health. The drug did not seem to halt the deterioration of the something going wrong in me. I called my doctor, my very worthy physician, in Lagos. I conveyed my thoughts and how exactly I was feeling. The prescription found me in no distant time via a text message.

I should take the prescribed drug for one week – one caplet in the morning and one in the evening. If the drug did not equip me well enough to fill my health contentedly, I should go straight to my physician and care-tenderer in the city I was communicating with Lagos from. Alternatively, I should Air-Peace myself to Lagos without delay. (Why not a direct flight to Paris or London? I chuckled quietly to no one in particular).

As I am writing this I am still on the recommended drug. My main motive of reporting this experience profusely here is this: in the relatively middle-brow pharmacy where I went to purchase the medicine, an un-branded one as I was advised to buy to beat down drastically the cost, I encountered a number of persons who could not buy any of the drugs they went to buy.

As a matter of fact, my own un-branded one which I expected to be cheaply cheap enough for me squeezed twenty-five thousand naira from my shallow pocket. What was/is the ailment I purchased the drug for? Let me not be vague about it any longer. Let me pluck you down from the realm of suspense I have kept you in for this long. My ailment was/is an ear infection.

If I am disturbed as I have been, you can imagine what the large majority of Nigerian very poor fellows and indigent chaps, very ordinary folks, are passing through and enduring. I remember Etel Adna, Lebanese-American poet (February 24, 1925 to November 14, 1921): “In the wheat stalks there are insects vaccinated against bread.”

Whatever our diverse thoughts and opinions, health in Nigeria your country my country our country is a subject which cannot be discussed in a void – as TS Eliot, the highly influential American-British 20th century poet, critic and essayist would say. Whatever questions we raise, will raise other questions, “social, economic, financial, political.”

Our bearings must be on more fervent problems even than these: to know or have a picture of what we want in our health system we ought to know or should and must know what we cherish generally speaking, we must derive appropriately our theory, technology and practice of medicine and health in general from our philosophy.

Unfortunately, in this country of the current time our philosophy of life centres on corruption of the highest degree. This is the Nigerian drug that runs, controls and ruins our life. Will somebody prove me wrong and call me a liar?

In the Sunday Vanguard of October 6, 2024, on pages 7 and 8, there was a special report on the state of health in your country my country our country. I am echoing loud and clear the wish and prayer of Chioma Obinna, the author of the detailed report: “Pray you don’t fall ill as costs of drugs, healthcare surge.”

Corruption is the tragic drug killing our healthcare; corruption is the tragically devastating thing emasculating our health in a manner that has been un-usually un-usual. When will China descend here? But why should I really care? Let’s go to Marcus Aurelius again: “Do what you will. Even if you tear yourself apart, most people will continue doing the same things.” But we must not yield to the destroyers of our system.
Afejuku can be reached via 08055213059.