Generation X

Wednesday, 27 August 2014

Dr. Ameyo Adadevoh: A Woman of Substance

Vanguard News - Latest updates from Nigeria, including business, politics, entertainment, fashion, health, technology, naija lifestyle

Femi Aribisala, Remembering Adadevoh

By Femi Aribisala
As Samson was a savior to Israel, so is Ameyo Adadevoh our savior in Nigeria.

I don’t like early-morning phone-calls, but this one was a distress-call from Femi-Kevin. “Do you know that the doctor at First Consultants that contracted Ebola is Dr. Adadevoh?” he asked. He had to tell me this twice because his call woke me up. I tried not to believe it. In a very selfish and foolish manner, I wished it were not her but someone else. But if it were someone else, that someone else would also be somebody.

We are used to bad things happening to others. Every day, someone is reported killed in the news. Some Chibok girls get kidnapped. A journalist’s head is chopped off. Some hapless Palestinians get bombed. Slowly, we become inured to this. We become abstracted from calamity until one day, it comes home to us. The news is about us, and not about someone else. The people concerned are our loved ones and not some abstract, distant person on our television and computer screens.

Ameyo Adadevoh

First Consultants

First Consultants Hospital, Obalende, Lagos, has been our family hospital for over thirty years. Ebola or no Ebola, it will continue to be our family hospital after all this tragedy is over and its decontamination is complete. It is a first-class hospital in a city where few hospitals are first-class. Femi-Kevin was born there 27 years ago. Some 15 years ago, I had a hernia surgery there, performed by the brother of the late Bola Ige.

Moreover, Dr. Adadevoh, Senior Consultant/Physician and Endocrinologist at First Consultants, was our family doctor. She was the first port of call many patients at the hospital. She oversaw my annual medical check-ups. She helped me manage my blood-pressure over the years. She had a Rolodex of the best specialist doctors in Nigeria that she would easily phone and link you up with in any emergency.

When I developed acute shoulder pain a few years back, she quickly linked me up with a specialist at LUTH. I did not know that our shoulders continue to grow even when we are older. When my wife had a medical crisis of a detached retina; it was also Dr. Adadevoh to the rescue; recommending specialists that would quickly perform the delicate surgery. When Femi-Kevin came down with a bout of acute malaria a year or two back, it was also Dr. Adadevoh who was on hand to treat him while he was hospitalized for days at First Consultants.

Cut above the rest

I don’t believe the lie that we must always say good things about the dead. When someone dies, people start making up all kinds of stories about him; saying how good and wonderful he was, even when this was not the case. I believe the truth must be told at all times. However, I also believe that, for some strange reason, it seems it is the best people who die prematurely. The wicked seem to live forever, while the righteous perish needlessly.

Dr. Adadevoh was an excellent doctor. Without a doubt, she was best-loved of all the doctors at First Consultants. You could reach her any day and any time. Even when she was on leave out of the country, she would take your calls and give you directives and recommendations.

But it was not just that she was an excellent doctor. I dare say there are many excellent doctors, even in Nigeria. Dr. Adadevoh had the distinction of being, at the same time, an excellent human-being. Many good doctors are grumpy. Not Dr. Adadevoh. Many good doctors make you reticent about going to the hospital. Many good doctors make you afraid of even the smallest ailments. Not Dr. Adadevoh.

She was a doctor, charged with treating the sick. Nevertheless, she was a breath of fresh air. She was very personable. She loved people and made you feel at ease, no matter your condition. She remembered every little detail about you, and about your family. She would talk to you about her son, and ask you about yours. She left you in no doubt that you had a doctor who is not only interested in your health but in you.

We had a dear friend, Mrs. Arinze, who was diagnosed with terminal cancer. She was hospitalized at First Consultants; although there was nothing medically that the doctors could do for her. It meant spending days on end at the hospital, building up her faith; singing praise songs; praying for divine healing. We lost her in the end. But Dr. Adadevoh was there with every possible care. She was there encouraging her husband, Emmanuel. She was there giving the support that goes beyond the medical; that reaches to the depths of the soul.

Hoping against hope

So that fateful morning when Femi-Kevin gave me the distressing news, I wanted it not to be true. Even now, I still find it hard to believe. Patients never imagine their doctors being sick. Dr. Adadevoh ministers to the sick; surely, she does not get sick as well.

So I googled her name for confirmation, and out came the news and also that haunting picture. One of her colleagues was appealing to the American government to send the miracle ZMapp drug that seemed to be working on the Ebola virus; claiming Dr. Adadevoh contracted the disease out of her love for humanity. Surely, such a person as this would not be allowed to die.

It was prayer time. It was time to call upon the name of the Lord for this virtuous woman. My wife leaves for work at 6.30 am in order to beat the Lagos traffic. I called her to tell her the news: “You won’t believe it. The First Consultants doctor with the Ebola virus is Doctor Adadevoh.” “Oh no!” cried Karen. “How can this be?”

That Saturday evening, the news on the internet told a different story. It said Dr. Adadevoh is the first Nigerian healed of Ebola. It said she had been discharged from the isolation ward; and we started dancing for joy. At our Sunday fellowship the next morning, we were lavish in praises to God. Is this not yet another one of his miracles? Is this not another example of his marvelous providence? Indeed, God’s ways are unsearchable.

But by nightfall, news came that it had been one big mistake. The person healed was apparently not Dr. Adadevoh, but one Dr. Adah. By the next morning, the thing we feared had come to pass. Dr. Adadevoh had gone home to be with the Lord.

Saviour-doctor

As more and more news came concerning the passing of this virtuous woman, I came to the conclusion that she had been appointed for this very purpose. Apparently, Dr. Adadevoh had to physically restrain Patrick Sawyer from discharging himself from First Consultants; having been diagnosed he was suffering from the Ebola Virus Disease. In the process, she contracted the disease herself.

Therefore, rather than wallow in sadness, we need to give thanks to God for Dr. Adadevoh. We need to thank God that Patrick Sawyer, who brought this dreadful disease to Nigeria, went to First Consultants. Only God knows what would have happened if he had gone to one of our General Hospitals. We might have had an epidemic in our hands already.

We need to thank God that it was Dr. Adadevoh who attended to him. Here was a doctor seasoned in public service who truly lived the Hippocratic Oath. We need to thank God that Dr. Adadevoh physically prevented Sawyer from going to T.B. Joshua in Synagogue, or to some ECOWAS conference in Calabar.

There is an Old Testament prophesy by Obadiah that “saviors shall come to Mount Zion to judge the mountains of Esau.” As Samson was a savior to Israel, so is Ameyo Adadevoh our savior in Nigeria. Hers is the glorious death of the righteous that died that many might live. Dr. Adadevoh will forever be remembered for this in Nigeria; and our heartfelt prayers remain for the family and relations she left behind; especially her beloved son who is studying abroad.

Doctors like Adadevoh are a rare breed. She was compassionate, dedicated and highly professional. She was also very cheerful; a necessary attribute in a doctor. It is my firm belief that her soul rests in perfect peace.

Fear of Ebola

Nigerians, and especially Lagosians, need to know that Ebola is a viral infection. Skin and eyes are the suggested routes of viral entry as well as food and water. Therefore, proper hygiene, including the washing of hands with alcohol-based sanitisers, and disinfecting of surfaces, is advised.

A virus is a living organism. It lives in a host. Without the host, it will die itself. Therefore, within a certain number of days of quarantine, whatever Ebola virus Patrick Sawyer brought to First Consultants will be gone. It would be double jeopardy to now ostracise this fine hospital. It would be unfortunate to typecast it as an Ebola Hospital. Therefore, the Minister of Health needs to make a big gesture of re-opening the hospital publicly after its decontamination.

It would also not be remiss for the government to give some compensation to First Consultants, in appreciation for the role it has played in this Ebola saga, and the cost this has brought to the hospital. We must make a point of rewarding genuine service in Nigeria; rather than the penchant we have of giving national merit awards to discredited politicians and coup-plotters. We owe a debt of gratitude to Dr. Ameyo Adadevoh; and many other doctors like her in the length and breadth of Nigeria.

We are not yet out of the woods. Ebola has become an epidemic in our sub-region; and we know Nigerians are everywhere. We cannot ask a Nigerian with Ebola not to return to Nigeria. But we can be extra-vigilant with everyone entering Nigeria. We must also remember that people don’t only return to Nigeria through our airports. Nigeria has porous borders. In any case, every preparation must be made now for an Ebola epidemic in Nigeria; even as we do our level best to prevent its occurrence.

Ribadu’s politics of defection and Nigerian politicians

By Rotimi Fasan

TWO phenomena are currently playing out and defining the Nigerian political space. This is the politics of defection and impeachment. Politicians are either defecting, that is changing party affiliations with the sole aim of positioning themselves, literally, for personal aggrandizement. Or they are being impeached from one position or another by erstwhile friends turned foes- also for the same selfish reasons of personal elevation.

While those already impeached or being put up for impeachment can yet be counted on the fingers of one hand, that is when we look at the real big fish among our politicians; those who have defected or are planning to have exceeded this record. Many times they are in their hundreds.

This happens when a leading politician moves to another party and either claims or actually decides to do so with his or her supporters. It is not often an easy business verifying these claims of defection in hundreds.

Nuhu Ribadu

That is even when politicians about to defect turn up at organised rallies followed by crowds claimed as supporters in an obvious attempt to dramatise their political strength and popularity. It is still not an easy task knowing how many in these crowds are true party stalwarts or rented supporters. Anyhow, the claims of defection never stop; nor are the acts of impeachment.

Murtala Nyako, the loudmouth former governor of insurgency-ravaged Adamawa State, was the last heavyweight to bite the dust in this manner. Al-Makura of Nasarawa State was able to outlive the raging inferno. A few more heads are still slated for the slab.

With regards to defections, the latest stories making the front pages of newspapers are about Nuhu Ribadu who first came into prominence as the chair of the anti-graft agency, EFCC. After much sabre-rattling and skullduggery initiated against him by the Umaru Yar’Adua administration, time during which he was forced into exile, Ribadu returned to favour after Yar’Adua passed on. Somehow, he found favour with the Jonathan administration.

He had in fact contested the presidential election of 2011 against Goodluck Jonathan on the platform of the Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN. He lost amid claims that he had been sacrificed by his own party whose attitude to winning the election seemed at best casual. Even after serving the Jonathan administration, Ribadu returned to his old party that had been rechristened APC as a good party man. But there have been insinuations ever since that he might jump ship. He always denied this.

The question of Ribadu leaving his party to join the PDP again resurfaced about four months ago. Again Ribadu was emphatic in his denial, claiming such insinuations were personal insults that showed little respect for his person.

The matter seemed to die off- but just for a while. For like his own shadow that would trail him wherever he goes, the rumour mill was again agog last week. This time it was persistent and would not stop.

At least not until it was finally confirmed that what started as mere gossips many months ago has indeed been actualised, to wit, that Nuhu Ribadu has left the APC to join the PDP.

Ribadu’s decision which he said was well reasoned out, based on wide consultation and had benefitted from long reflection on his part- this decision has taken many unawares. This is in spite or, indeed, because of the many months of denial during which Ribadu had practically sworn on his honour to remain in the APC.

Perhaps the fact of Ribadu’s denial is what dulled many, including members of his former party, to the possibility of his leaving them to join hands with others in a different party.

In a way too, many, it could be inferred, subliminally didn’t see Ribadu as the typical politician who could go to bed one night as a member of the PDP and wake up the next morning as a member of the APC. His political career which came as an offshoot of his public service career is indeed short. Which could have strengthened this perception.

His role as the no-nonsense anti-graft boss also seemed to have conferred on him an aura of believability that many would be hard put to extend to a Nigerian politician. Yet now Ribadu, their Ribadu, has acted in character, that is like a Nigerian politician.

What then does this make him? An untrustworthy schemer and opportunist with his eyes set on this from his first day as the EFCC boss (for we cannot say he enlisted in the police to use it as a platform for politics)? He has indicated interest in the governorship of his state alongside others in his new party. Was this his plan all along? Did he just see an opening he felt he could exploit? Or is this a case of bad communication corrupting good manners?

Had Ribadu’s dabbling in politics after his time in the EFFCC exposed him to bad political influences? What should we make of the man’s politics? To rub palm oil on his seemingly sparkling white apparel, he is being portrayed in certain quarters as attacking some of his former comrades in the APC, a portrayal he has denied. Whatever is Ribadu’s real person or character, what does his defection say of Nigerian politics, for that is what should be of concern here?

This latest in a tradition of defections simply underlines the absence of ideological basis for much of what goes on in Nigerian politics today. There is hardly anything that separates Nigerian politicians in the different parties jostling for position. Elsewhere people make lifetime, even multi-generational, commitments to parties of their choice.

Here it has become a matter of convenience and personal gain. The parties out there are so rotten and so very much alike that nothing differentiates them ideologically, if there is anything so-called in Nigerian party politics. This was not always so. But that has been the case in the last 20 years since the military sought to create parties of identical plumes- a little to the right, a little to the left it was called. Now it is in the middle of nowhere.

There is hardly anything to blame Ribadu for. He has made what would seem to him a pragmatic decision in the circumstances before him.

He recognizes the lack of ideological mooring in the parties and has elected to join those people he believes, for now, meet or can help meet his aspirations. There are good and bad people in the parties, he said. So indeed there are. But that is not what politics should come down to. There would always be good and bad people in different parties. But Nigerians should also return to that era when we had objective ideological criteria separating political parties, one from the other.

Nuhu Ribadu, m.n.i.

By Hakeem Baba-Ahmed

“How long shall they kill our prophets,/ While we stand aside and look.”- Bob Marley

IT is not easy finding anything new or profound to say over the defection of Malam Nuhu Ribadu from the APC to the PDP in search of a governorship position of his state, Adamawa. I know how deeply personal that decision has been for him.

As someone I closely observed and admired for fighting many odds to remain consistent and loyal to values that were very dear to him, I know some of the more scathing criticisms cannot fail to hurt him. But he has been an opposition politician since his return from exile, so he knows better than to wear thin skins to battles.

Ribadu

The most charitable of his critics say a good rider chose a poor horse in an important race. Such is the uniqueness of Nuhu in the political firmament, it will be unfair of him to expect anyone to cut him an inch of slack.

He will, for the next few months, have to swim in waters with crocks and sharks, shepherded by bigger fish who may be preserving him for dinner. His singular motivation for this ground- breaking action will be tough to achieve, but not impossible.

The big question is whether, win or lose, Nuhu will ever be the same man after October. Many will ask if it really matters to Nuhu anymore.

Some people have said there has never really been the same, one Nuhu Ribadu. They point to his remarkable achievements in the fight against corruption, much of it sending many of his current compatriots in the PDP to courts or prisons, or getting them to disgorge massive amounts of stolen wealth.

Then they point at the cynical manipulation of the Nuhu Ribadu/EFCC franchise by Obasanjo, and blame Nuhu for unpardonable naivety, or active collaboration, in the deployment of the awesome powers of the EFCC in pruning political enemies of Obasanjo. Many political careers were torpedoed by Nuhu’s list, including many in the opposition.

Nuhu’s list helped the Yar’Adua/Jonathan ticket fly against Odili’s billions and other contenders who could have survived closer scrutiny and done better for the nation. Nuhu’s list placed prominent politicians such as Tinubu on the public’s bad guys list, and reinforced earlier reports of massive corruption against mostly PDP governors. Without being tested in a judicial context, Nuhu’s list helped Obasanjo exercise life-and-death stranglehold over post-2007 developments.

No Nigerian had made as many powerful and wealthy enemies as Nuhu. The long list included Vice President Atiku Abubakar, governors and prominent businessmen. Most succeeded in stalling the process of concluding investigations and prosecutions which left Nuhu exposed to backlash and revenge from people who wielded frightening powers. The world and millions of Nigerians who saw in him a glimmer of hope could not protect him when corruption fought back.

The new leadership he unwittingly facilitated to power felt uncomfortable with a man who knew too much and who stepped on toes that had grown even bigger. The Yar’Adua/Jonathan leadership soon turned on him, hounding him out of office, out of his new rank, out of a NIPPS graduating ceremony and eventually out of the country into exile.

His record was smeared and rubbished in his absence. He fought gallantly from exile, but it was obvious that too much of the EFCC zeal and cutting edge was the person of Nuhu. Many of the people he investigated and accused are more powerful today, and some are directly involved in the fight to get him to become governor.

The same people who sent him into exile attempted to make some political capital out of him by allowing him back. The Jonathan administration wanted to look good in the rule of law department and it thought welcoming Nuhu Ribadu and Malam Nasir el-Rufai back will earn it a few browie points, or perhaps, even more naively, a couple of high profile new recruits.

President Jonathan miscalculated. They both went straight to the opposition, becoming some of his worst critics. Nuhu was convinced to run against President Jonathan and General Buhari on the platform of the ACN, a personal outfit of Tinubu, a man whose corruption Nuhu may have forgotten he had described using a few choice words.

ACN fielded Nuhu, then its leaders promptly turned and instructed its multitudes not to vote for him, but for Jonathan. Nuhu’s profile earned one additional entry: a former presidential contender.

With the merger of ACN, CPC and ANPP, Nuhu became a smaller fish in a larger pond. He had the potential to become bigger, but the pond had massive sharks who determined who ate and who starved. Everyone tip-toed around them, carefully concealing personal ambitions and waiting for the slightest signs that they had any future in a merger that promised a lot, but leaked very badly. The bottom appeared to fall out when the desire to oust Jonathan in 2015 was identified as an absolute priority, but strategic mistakes were being made. The floodgates were opened to PDP’s legion of disgruntled to move into a party that promised to be everything the PDP was not.

They did, and were handed over large chunks of the party to do as they wished. Massive territory of the APC were taken over by former PDP bigwigs, and in the specific case of Nuhu, they included the liability inherent in impeached governor Murtala Nyako. Prominent APC founders and members who complained were told to go and sit down. PDP money and members took over and built new structures within APC. APC leaders began to leave in droves, which suited the new defectors from the PDP. Nyako obliterated the APC he met in Adamawa, without putting anything in its place, because he lacked anything to put back.

Then PDP goes and impeaches Nyako, and a whole new vista was opened in Adamawa politics. The people who convinced Nuhu to dump his party and move to PDP must have used very powerful arguments: he, more than anyone else, is qualified to pull his state out of its dangerous levels of despair. He cannot become a governor unless he runs on a PDP ticket, because his party, APC, is either incapable or unwilling to give him the ticket.

Atiku, the only game in town will rather die politically than give Nuhu the APC ticket. Every trace of APC has been wiped off through defections after Nyako was impeached. Without money of his own, and even less of a structure, he cannot re-invent APC in a few weeks and win on its platform.

They must have assured him that the presidency will blast his way through massive resistance from old Adamawa PDP warhorses and newly-defecteds who left the APC for Nyako. Perhaps, they made the case that his own party had elevated defections to an art form, evidence of which is that Atiku, Nuhu, Saraki, Sylva, Amaechi and Kwankwaso are now roommates; and Shekarau, Bafarawa, Sheriff, Marwa and Belgore are now Soulmates. Perhaps someone had reminded him that Nigerian politics has no room for principles, ideologies or values, only powerful people.

They may have assured him of the existence of a warchest to treat local injuries, and massive resources to create a local presence to mitigate the limitations of an Abuja politician.

Whatever it was they told him, it worked. Or, to be fair to Nuhu, he accepted to engage in the biggest gamble of his political life. He has been told that he has done incalculable damage to his image and standing as a principled politician in the eyes of millions particularly younger Nigerians; that he is today just another politician whose respect for party loyalty is zero.

He is trading this off against scary intangibles: that he will scale all the odds and win; that he will so dramatically transform the fortunes of Adamawa State in such a short time that all will be forgiven; that the PDP will trust a man who was its enemy yesterday not to turn his back on it once he gets to power on its back; that the crises that will attend his attempt to get the ticket will not bring the whole PDP house down in Adamawa; that he would bring to an end the awesome powers of Atiku in Adamawa and in APC.

For now, Nuhu has made his choice. Few will grant him the concession that he means no harm to his former party, his fellow rivals, or the democratic process. He is likely to be reminded that he may soon share a plate with one of the administration’s multi-tasking muscles, Steve Oransaye who attempted to rubbish the work he did in the fuel subsidy probe panel. He will have to mount the podium a few months from now to appeal to the people of Adamawa to vote for President Jonathan in 2015.

He will need to convince many sceptics that he will not become the reincarnation of Nyako, a politician who knows that his ambitions were made real in Abuja, not Adamawa.

Above all, Nuhu should worry that he does not become part of a history that will record that his party the PDP is so desperate to put him in power that it has to violate every rule known to the party and the electoral process.