To be successful, you must have a role model - Dr Idi Hong

Idi Aliyu Hong, a medical doctor from Adamawa State, was 39 years old, in 2007, when President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua appointed him the Minister of State for Culture, Tourism and National Orientation. He spoke with Sunday Stimulus in Abuja on his rise, emphasising that one needs to have a role model to be a success in life.

COULD you please tell Nigerians a bit about your beginning, and how you rose such rapidly to the pinnacle of your chosen career as a medical doctor and a politician?
My beginning was just like any other beginning of an ordinary rural average person in Nigeria . I was born and brought up in Hong, my village, which is the headquarters of a Local Government Area in Adamawa State . I was born by parents who are farmers. I went to the Central Primary School , a public school, just like every other person and I went to a secondary school in Hong and from there, I proceeded to the Ahmadu Bello University Teaching Hospital in Zaria where I studied medicine. Growing up was challenging but was also inspiring because when you are born in a less-privileged society like me, because truly, I was born in a very poor background in any way you could think about anybody, I mean it was just subsistence living in those days but providence and luck came my way. One has been growing, at least, we have not died. I was able to go to a public school, the Central Primary School , owned by Government, just like any other person, Government Secondary School and a Public University . So it was challenging but surmountable and so there is nothing so special about it. But all these, as a matter of fact, were a very good opportunity because it sharpens one. Your challenges bring the best out of you and I think that is what I have come to understand. The more you are exposed to challenges, the more you tend to learn on how to survive and grow, but most importantly, as a young person, you have to know your limits and you have to look up to other people. I have come to understand, finally, that nobody grows without having a role model and I have always said this thing. My godfathers and my role models have been changing overtime. There would be somebody in your community that you will see and you will be impressed with his life style. When I was growing up, I had a role model and that person is now in the Nigerian Army but I don’t want to mention his name. He was a very neat person and we used to think that being in the University as he was, then, was the beginning and the end of everything and for that reason, I was impressed about his life style and I vowed to go into the university. So, my life dream then was to be able to go to the university and I was able to accomplish that and I now moved ahead. So, for everybody who grows in life, there is always somebody there for him and that is what I have always been telling people.

How did you get into politics when, as a medical doctor, one would expect you to be in the theatre saving lives. But here you are now, very famous and so popular such that you became a minister at the relatively young age of 39 years?
If I tell you that I know how I got into politics, then I am lying because first and foremost, I don’t have the genetics and secondly I don’t have the experience, environmentally, because my parents, before I became very active in politics, hardly ever went to exercise their civic responsibilities of voting. They are these type of indifferent people who felt that politics is just for certain specific people in the community or something like that and so, I don’t have the trait but I think destiny, the invisible hand that is pushing people around, would have been responsible for my being in politics today. There are instances where you find yourself in locations and places and you won’t be able to explain how you got there and what I could only explain about that is the theory of the invisible hand. Otherwise, my life aspiration was to be a doctor and work in a hospital but before I graduated from the university, I tended to find myself drifting away from that calling that I was thinking was my life choice career. So, along the way, I would like to tell you that it is destiny and everyone would have to follow his destiny. There is always the invisible hand that would be pushing you and tailoring you and taking you to that destination where you are carved out to be and that is the only explanation that I can give. But for me, I don’t know because I never knew anything about unionism when I was at Ahmadu Bello University . I used to be a very passive person who would mind his business and do things strictly within the confines of law. Also, getting very strongly and passionately thinking like this, to become political, was also just another calling like that. Finally, I would want to disagree with you on the issue of my being young to be named a minister at 39 years of age. You seem to have forgotten history so soon. There are people who were appointed ministers at 23 and 24 years in this country and so I am not that young. But it is only in this generation, in this dispensation, I happen to be the youngest. But even in this newly-composed cabinet, there are younger people who are now appointed ministers. Presently, I have two junior brothers in the cabinet now who are 37 and 39 years old. The most important thing is what someone told me in good time and that is what people should learn and because he told me early, I learned. He said no one would follow you if you have not followed somebody and that is the lesson I have learnt. So, there must be tutelage under somebody and you have to be religious and very patriotic and agree to follow and worship somebody before someone would worship you too.

And who is that person that you followed so religiously?
Professor (Senator) Jubril Aminu. I have followed so many people before, but the most remarkable, who is known to everybody in the country, and who is my Alpha and Omega, is Senator Jubril Aminu

So, he facilitated your being named a minister?
No. I have not said so. I met him when I was already having the tendency of becoming a politician. But I sharpened and increased my wisdom, my learning, my tutelage, my aspiration, the training, the schooling, the nurturing and everything after meeting him. But when we met, I was already having that tendency of what next to do apart from medicine.

What is your advice to the younger generation to enable them be a success, just like you have done at a very tender age?
There is hope for every Nigerian. There is no reason for you whatsoever to say that you were born in a back-ground that is not privileged and so think that there is no future for you or that all hope is lost. There is hope but you have to be very serious, you have to be a very loyal person and you must be a very hard-working person who is very serious with his studies because, all said and done, you have to be knowledgeable to the minimum standard to even think of being a success in life. So, a student should go to the university as the minimum irreducible decimal and read. When you are reading, you also have to learn other things, but above all, you have to be articulate and humble and be willing to learn at all times because even if you are 100 years old, there are other things which you don’t know and which you must learn about, let alone a young person who is growing. So, if you want to prosper, you have to be tutored, you have to be mentored by somebody and you have to be very articulate and respect people, if not for their knowledge or responsibilities in the society, then, for their age. Don’t think that you can just jump the queue like that and get somewhere without being under somebody’s tutelage no matter how capable you are because you won’t have the capacity if such should miraculously be your lot. So, you have to follow that line of succession and above all, when you are given a responsibility, do it whole-heartedly and very seriously and without any thinking in your mind about the benefits now. Know that people are studying you. Anybody you are staying with would always study you and I have grown up to understand that no matter your status in the society, people are studying you to the minutest level. They are seeing your capacity and your behaviour and if you behave very well, they will keep that in their minds because one day in the future, they would talk about that, just like if you behave badly and when decisions would be required to be taken about you, they will use it against you and declare that for this reason or that, this guy is not capable. People think the world is just so flat like that, just like Thomas Friedman was saying, but the world is not flat but made up of contours, mountains and so on. People are watching you and so many people are studying you especially at close range and more especially when you are given a responsibility and you are able to conduct yourself very well. It gives encouragement for people to give you more and those small responsibilities that you think are immaterial are even those that leave lasting impression on people about you. For example, if I send you now to go and help me buy bread and you hold on to my change and you think that I am a big man and would not need the change, don’t think that, that is a good precedence. Don’t think that all these big men you are seeing have so much money and that they have forgotten their change with you. If you return the change, they will know it and if you don’t return it, they would use it against you. It is just like asking you to prepare a report which is a responsibility and you are able to deliver, they will use it and when the time comes, they will go to your negative and positive columns and where the pluses are better for you, it tends for those deciding your fate to give you more responsibility but when the negatives are too much for you, it would block your chance and this is very important for the younger ones to know.

Finally Sir, what’s your vision for the health ministry?
I am very ambitious about the health ministry. We are changing the direction of the thinking of the ministry. Everything that we are going to do in the ministry will be benchmarked on outcome –oriented and on the result-oriented. Our intention, primarily, is to strengthen and work closely in collaboration with states and local governments towards strengthening primary health care. The disease burden of the country is at the grassroots and it is the primary health care that is supposed to sort out those ones. No matter what you do in the Teaching Hospitals, no matter the high-tech facilities, everything still rests with primary health care, because a lot of the direct diseases such as malaria infections and basic immunization - related diseases are supposed to be sorted out at the grassroots and that is at the primary health care. If you have not worked in close collaboration with the states and local governments to strengthen the primary health care, then, the indices of health would continue to be dismal in the country. So, our primary concern in the ministry is to strengthen the primary health care facilities to become very functional by working in close collaboration with states and local governments.