Nigerians: Living in the shadow of death

Nigerians showing their disdain for
government insensitivityOn a daily basis, Nigerians face terrible experiences of life often occasioned by government’s insensitivity and lack of value for life. In this piece, OLU OSUNDE looks at the total life of an average Nigerian and its paradoxes.

FOR the Nigerian, the trouble of life starts from the womb. From there he shares from the earthly troubles of his parents most of which are linked with the negligence and wickedness of those who by law are charged with the civil responsibility of care. For instance, about 75 per cent of Nigerian babies are conceived and born in poverty stricken, obscure areas without electricity and most times in an area without medical care or an iota of government presence.

The worst are those born in the riverine areas including those within the oil rich areas whose communities are daily polluted by the gas flaring from oil and gas industries and whose wells are destroyed by the incessant oil spillage.

For the mothers in that area, their polluted blood resulting from the gases fumes they inhale from their squalid environment are transferred to their babies in the womb. The result according to Dr. A.O. Ogunniyi of Dura Clinic, Ibadan is usually babies born with series of deformations. The traces of the toxic elements are found in their blood. In such babies, growth is hindered.

A report recently released in the United States ranked Nigeria amongst the countries with the worst basic health care worldwide. Like ordinary living homes, most government hospitals lack basic facilities like electricity and water. Because of the absence of electricity, medical operations are carried out with electricity generating plant most of which for lack of maintenance can most often not be relied on. So, in some of our government hospitals, lives are wasted.

In such hospitals, the spectacle is often too odd to behold as most patients after treatment leave the hospitals with bad eye sight having stayed too long in a dark ward and pitiably, most times with defects in their breathing organs occasioned by long use of local lanterns which fumes according to Dr. Ogunniyi is as dangerous as those from the electricity generators. The extension of the tragedy associated with the use of lanterns when electricity supply fails is the kerosen explosion which have and still claim the lives of many Nigerians.

Closely linked with that is the danger of being electrocuted especially during rainy season or when changing from PHCN line to generator set. In 2004, a 13-year-old school girl in Lagos, Miss Ajara Aarinola Bello got electrocuted in an uncovered gutter she fell into during a heavy rain. It was unbelievable that such gutter could contain a live cable.

PHCN transformer most of which have
remained moribund
In Osogbo, the same year, a three-year-old girl was also electrocuted shortly after a downpour in Ayetoro community. So, with the problem of PHCN becoming multi-dimensional without any hope of resolution, the alternative which many therefore see as a temporary measures or a stop-gap now appears to be more dangerous approach to the issue.

With the electricity supply getting worse pushing up the demand for electricity generating sets, the health of most Nigerians appears to be nose-diving faster than what it used to be. A story is told for example of an elderly woman who had her brain tumour operated on in London. Back home, the health deteriorated when she could not heed the doctor’s advice on the long hours prescribed for her to sleep. Her undoing was the neighbour’s heavy electric generating plant the deafening noise of which kept her awake all night. She relocated to London when legal action instituted to stop the generating plant failed.

Apart from the noise which medical personnel say could have devastating effects on eardrum, there have been series of cases where people lost their lives to the fumes from even the smaller generating sets. A case in point was the one that occurred in Lagos sometime ago where many who went for all night browsing in a cyber cafe were picked up stoned dead the next morning.

Worse for it are compound with several blocks of flats with many of the occupants owning electricity generating sets. Such situations, apart from exposing the occupants to danger of possible fire outbreak, do constitute a health hazards. There had for example been several houses burnt as a result of the placement of electricity generators close to naked light while the noise is often said to constitute danger to those who are hypertensive. The noise keeps them awake cutting short their hours of rest”, explained the doctor.

In Nigeria, most private hospital are located close to living houses where generator sets are used for energy supply. So, unless the hospitals are equipped with sound-proof gadgets which is rare, the patients in such hospitals usually live in despair and in such situation depending on the ailments of the affected the patients may stay longer than necessary even for a minor illness, said Dr. Ogunniyi.

“I stopped attending my favourable hospital where I go for bed rest when a landlord close by bought a plant he now switches on till about 1 a.m every time there is no light,” said a middle aged woman, Mrs. Grace Adeyanju.

“The noise from the plant each time I went there for a check up is always embarrassing capable of aggravating my high blood pressure,” she said. She wondered when Nigerians would ever be free from the threshold of death saying it is regrettable that every moment of Nigerian life is spent close to the pit of hell.

According to her, apart from the lighting problem each time she goes for a check-up, she is always full of prayers. “I do usually pray to come back because any crazy driver can send you to your grave, it is as bad as that,” she said.

True to her word, in Nigeria, pedestrian crossing marks are mere decoration while other road signs and co-road users are pawns in the hands of mostly commercial vehicles’ drivers.

Also, while the bus stops and parking lots are mere relaxation spots for the insane, the traffic lights are mounted to guide the sane who are few in number, but whose span of life also depends on the whims and caprices of the drivers suffering from insanity.

At every slight traffic hold-up, they drive against the traffic killing most times, unsuspecting pedestrians in the process. Some years back, two school children were crushed to death by such a driver along old Ife road Ibadan on their way to their school. The accident occurred when the driver in an attempt to beat the traffic hold-up drove against the traffic. After the accident, the driver ran away, but had his bus burnt by sympathisers who milled around the scene.

Also common are corpses on the highways of those who may have dropped dead from the back of unprotected trailers. Although there are traffic laws prohibiting such careless admission of passengers into such open trucks, those who are meant to enforce the laws are often bribed with stipends to make them close their eyes to the life claiming acts of negligence.

In Nigeria, the life of every citizen be it adult or children is daily threatened most times by installations that are even meant to give them comfort. For instance, there are cases of electric poles meant for power distribution falling atop moving vehicles while electric transformers sometimes explode due to overloading constituting danger to the lives of those living close-by.

For instance, in December last year, a three-year-old boy, Aduragbemi Bewaji and the mother, Mrs. Abosede Bewaji suffered from burns when a high-tension PHCN cable fell on them when a transformer exploded close to their home at Aladelola Street, Ikosi Ketu in Lagos.

Without exaggeration, every aspect of the Nigerian’s life is endangered. In some parts of the country like, Lagos, Port-Harcourt Kaduna and Benin etc. people are often scared of going out any time of the day.

While ritual killings are common in Lagos, Port-Harcourt and some parts of the Eastern States, people mostly get bored by incessant cases of child trafficking and robbery incidents in Benin and religious killings in Kaduna and some other volatile parts of the interior north.

What makes the situation more serious is Nigerians inability to trust their law enforcement agents for protection. In that wise, the Apo killing in Abuja and many other crimes committed by the police for mere pittance as low as N20 at road blocks give them off as murderers in uniform.

Apart from the police, the army poses more danger to the life of an average Nigerians. In January 27, 2002, many Lagosians died in canal when trying to escape from a bomb blast that razed Ikeja Military cantonment.

Lamenting the situation then, Senator Jonathan Zwingina said, “I can hardly find any justification for keeping materials of such explosive nature in a populated area, but that is how it is”.

More than 600 people, mostly children died in the stampede that greeted the explosion on that black Sunday. Also commenting on the situation then, a human rights lawyer Mr. Clement Nwankwo said, “to have such huge stockpile of heavy weapons there shows lack of concern about the safety of ordinary people”.

In the same Lagos in May this year, not fewer than 45 persons died in Lagos pipeline explosion, this time not because of careless scooping of fuel, but because an escavator mistakenly burst a petrol pipeline while working on a construction site in Ijegun Alimosho local government area. The tragedy consumed some students of Ijegun Comprehensive High School while also destroying houses and vehicles.

By various account given so far, there seems to be clear evidence that Nigerians are confronted everywhere with the challenges of danger that constantly lurks around. As it is in the urban areas so it is in the rural areas where ordinarily, one expects some level of decency, the people, being the representatives of our traditional heritage. The Okija tragedy tells much about the high level of traditional degredation.

Also of mind boggling is the extension of the negligence displays in the city to the rural areas thereby endagering the lives of the common people. In Onibirin farm, Ajilete, Ogun State, about 500 meters from the shooting range of an army barracks, a three-year-old girl died of bomb explosion.

The police Public Relations Officer in the state then, Mr. Olufemi Awoyale when explaining the situation said that the girl’s mother, Francimu Jera ignorantly used a bomb as a local stove to which she lit a fire.

Also in Kebbi, a 50 year old man Malam Umaru Dabagawa was also killed by a bomb claimed to have been planted in a Kodo village by the combined Nigeria and America’s soldiers about three years back for military training.

In the same vein, and within the same period in 2004 another 22 year-old-boy Bashar Usman picked a can which later exploded blasting his legs. The sad events related above shows ignorance made possible by lack of enlightenment and negligence on the part of the military authorities.

Today in Lagos, congestion due to lack of proper planning has also started manifesting in some of the lives being wasted through collapsed buildings. With most of the calamities tied to government negligence and insensitivity, it may take sometime for Nigerians to get out of the threshold of hell. And as Governor Osunbo of Edo State rightly said, the hope of achieving the vision 2020 may be doused unless we realise the dream of a regular power supply.