How our old people eat the young

One

My resignation from the National Hospital, Abuja, after seven months as neurosurgeon was accepted within minutes. Alas, it was not a match made in heaven. I was unhappy not to have the right conditions to practise.

The hospital felt I was too demanding and perhaps surplus to requirement. This, in a country with a serious famine of doctors, let alone trained neurosurgeons! You would think that our hospitals will recognise talent, welcome change and celebrate innovative practices. But, for reasons you will see later, maintaining the status quo and mediocrity favours some people.

Thus, many talents are ruined daily in Nigeria.

Two

A young surgeon

went to train in Endoscopy (using small cameras to see inside the body) and returned to Nigeria, full of hope and promises. In fact, the trainers were so impressed with his hand/eye coordination they decided to locate a training facility in Nigeria, so that more Nigerian doctors could be trained and so provide a much-needed service. Unfortunately, they did not realise there was a Nigerian sickness of ‘What’s in it for me’ to scupper their best laid plans. They did not understand why ‘they’ had to plead, beg and bribe some people before spending their own money, time and effort on Nigerians.

The facility has now been established in another country. We lose!

Three

Another Nigerian, who is an IT specialist and entrepreneur, went to the people in the Nigerian Emergency Management Agency a few years ago with grand ideas and plans to establish a national emergency telephone number similar to what obtains in the UK (999) and the USA (911). As usual, the plans were killed in similar fashion to the story above (What’s in it for me?). We are, of course, no further forward and you have to dial almost eleven numbers in an emergency and still get to no one in particular.

In fact, if you do get through, they are likely to ask you to come fetch them!

Do we have brains?

My dear friend, Dr. O, once asked me if Nigerians have black brains. They don’t. We don’t. In my operations on the brains of Nigerians, the colour and consistency are similar to other peoples’ brains. Our problem is, therefore, not one of the colour or a structural brain defect. I submit that it stems from persistence of crazy, old, inadequate people running the day-to-day affairs of our motherland. In all aspects of Nigerian life, there are ‘mummies’ who are simply too jaded to know they are dragging us down.

Old buggers

Many of the people in positions of power and grand puppet masters are old, decrepit chaps without enough neurons between them. These people have short-term memory loss. All they remember is what happened 30 or 40 years ago — stuff that cannot be applied today. They do not remember what happened at breakfast, so they cannot plan for tomorrow. They do not understand science and technology and are truly brain challenged. Or else, why are we moving backwards with speed, while the rest of the world is making huge advances?

It is my considered opinion that the elderly people in Nigeria are a cog in the wheel of progress.

Money

(Love of) money is the root of this evil. The lack of money is a big issue for these people. The real reason why they persist in government and in positions of power is that they have failed. They have failed as human beings, as people, and as Nigerians. These people have failed publicly, privately and yet we entrust our collective future in their hands.

They have failed to invest in economic prosperity that ensures a good quality of life in their old age. Hence, without a cushioning, they stay longer at work and end up destroying whatever they have built. They cannot move forward and so no one else must move. They cannot be shoved aside, as they are the original cats with nine lives and they constantly reinvent themselves.

No plans

They have failed to cater for the future by providing safe, comfortable retirement pensions and benefits. They build roads that disappear, refineries that import oil, hospitals that crumble and banks that lose money. They have not provided side-walks for wheel chairs since they think they are infallible. Some even expect to live forever, forgetting that hypertension, diabetes and stroke accompany old age.

Yet, the elderly people in Nigeria do not welcome change and innovation. In all aspects of life, they are destroying instead of mentoring. They use culture, religion and other vices to tether young minds, forever keeping us all in the dark ages. These people are snakes, slithering and slumming through grime, gobbling up the young as they moult, shed their skins and conceive themselves.

You simply cannot rely on a nest egg in Nigeria. You will find that snakes have eaten the nest, eggs and the young ones. The young people in positions of power now must not make the same mistakes. It’s your life, our lives; so, let us plan for a better future for all Nigerians.