STEALING THE DESTINY OF THE YOUTH OF NIGERIA IS SENATOR IKE EKWEREMADU’S MORAL BURDEN

David Ukpo Nwamini — the young man — who ratted Senator Ike Ekweremadu to British police, may be a bloody liar and opportunist; dressed up to the nines to escape the shores of Nigeria for a better life in Europe. Or may be not: just an average Nigerian youth who sees only poor, poorer, and poorest options ahead for his future. A commenter said out aloud that maybe if David found himself in a position of power, he will act no differently than Ekweremadu.

But that is neither here nor there. He’s not on trial yet.

That said, my issue today is that the considered opinion of Ekweremadu, who required a kidney for his daughter, Sophia, was to recruit, David, an indigent youth, transport him out of Nigeria to UK, and then arrange to have the poor boy’s kidney plucked. The process did not go through for the reason mentioned earlier. Senator Ekweremadu has been in government since 2003 — David, born in 2000, was only 3 years old at the time: But has Ekweremadu contributed any meaningful structural development for his people in Enugu?

The reaction of his presumed personal benefactors to this basic statement of fact was to inundate me with details of his retail philanthropy and low-budget projects such as boreholes and rural access roads, and scholarship awards for indigent students in Aninri his homestead. They left out the fact that senators get humungous allocation for these image-serving constituent project initiatives. The only proof required is a photograph which they feel free to photoshop.

If there are legislative bills that the good senator sponsored or wrote, and which got signed into law and increased access of our youth to opportunity, at home and abroad, his benefactors have kept to themselves. He’s reputed to have donated money towards the construction of many churches in and around Enugu state. Again, I have not found any reason to believe that his philanthropy extended to the building of standard hospitals or industries. In Britain where he took his kid for kidney transplant, he would probably have been attended to, in the excellent medical institutions over there, by Nigerian nephrologists, histopathologists, and such other specialists practicing in the diaspora.

Unofficial sources estimate that Nigeria loses about 9000 locally-trained doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and allied professionals, annually.

https://vickynwugo.medium.com/goodbye-chinelo-bf8802420a94

Isn’t it sad that as a senator he never pulled enough influence to get a private or public medical institution, with state of the art facilities, established in Nigeria? Perhaps, then, it would have been superfluous for him to travel to London, in the first place, for a kidney transplant. And I know one or two persons who can avow that there are many Nigerian doctors abroad who would willfully return home and practice happily … if the power, facilities, and wherewithal were in place.

Finally, I suspect the vaunted British health system may have something similar to what Americans enjoy here — free chronic kidney disease care. This was started by President Nixon and some powerhouse senators and representatives in the early 70s who considered that the cost of chronic kidney disease care was too high to be borne by families alone. So they passed a bill and funded it — Medicare End-Stage Renal Disease (ESRD) Program which went into effect on July 1, 1973. It was a curious thing to me, as an alien, to find that CKD care, is available to even the rich. There is no discrimination against the rich for this government program. Everywhere you go in the US you’d see standalone DaVita Dialysis Centers or Fresenius Kidney Care hospital networks which provide dialysis and such other specialist care, all funded by that law.

How long would Ekweremadu be in the senate before such quality of life and people-friendly progressive initiatives interests him? Where’s his institutional competency? Any sympathy I may express here won’t be genuine. So I won’t bother. I have known too many young people who died in Nigeria for the lack of the most basic medical care or access to quality of life capacity, while Ekweremadu, Buhari, Tinubu, Atiku and other members of their privileged class hop into planes bound for London, Berlin, and Dubai for premium specialist treatment for their old, tired bodies and feeble minds with gnarled hands grasping on to their privileges.

Digression: It was a sight watching a recent viral video where a minder leaned over to click Atiku’s seatbelt, as he settled into a car. Atiku could not be bothered with securing himself for a car commute. “How will he secure Nigerians?”, asked the busybodies. Nigeria is not America, so the banality goes, but I must let you know that I have seen Joe Biden on a bike.

When Ekweremadu travelled out with that Nigerian youth to harvest his kidney to save his own daughter, it was one stick up too many — It was tantamount to transacting the “destiny” of the youth. This is aggravated by the fact that since the beginning of the 4th Republic, 24 years ago, the executive and legislative arms of the various governments — General Olusegun Obasanjo, Alhaji Musa Yar’Adua, Chief Goodluck Jonathan, and Major General Muhammad Buhari (the incumbent) — none has increased the capacity of Nigeria’s youth for innovative and productive insertion and participation in a fast-paced technological world.

It is safe to wager that if David, the proposed kidney donor, were a programmer in a Nigerian Silicon Valley, unconsummated somewhere in our heads, he wouldn’t have given away his kidney for a pittance? Or for any price for that matter.

Our privileged class won’t learn. They are too far gone in iniquitous impunity - but the West can help us. If the British legal process prosecutes the Nigerian senator to the full extent of their laws — as vigorously as they did with the corruption case of Governor James Ibori, who was convicted and served jail time there — and convict him (Ekweremadu) for modern day slavery; then another red line of consequence is drawn for our leaders when they travel abroad to countries guided by law and order.

Then, hopefully, something good— let’s those without a vocation to public service keep away from government — can come out of this particular abuse of privilege by just another PEP (person exposed to politics).