ADVANTAGES OF OWNING THE FIGHT AGAINST CORRUPTION BY LOCAL COMMUNITIES: A CASE DISCUSSION OF CORRUPTION I&N PUBLIC HOSPITALS IN KWARA STATE

By

Abdullateef Ishowo

When I was contacted by Wadata communications via Mr. Abdulrasheed Adigun of Albarka FM to speak to the above topic on the former’s Town Hall Meeting on Amplifying the Campaign against Corruption and Accountability among Local Communities, held at Peace Hotel, Tanke, Ilorin on Saturday 22nd February 2020; I considered myself a misfit to discuss such a sensitive topic in the medical terrain. But Mr. Adigun’s persuasion and a closer look into the topic eventually convinced me that the intervening variable in the topic (not extraneous variable please) which is CORRUPTION is within the confine of my research area in which I’ve written extensively.

​Paraphrasing Segun Adeniniyi’s analogy of six idle doctors, one would pity the present condition of our hospitals. According to the veteran journalist, after a morning walk, six medical doctors were at a neighbourhood restaurant enjoying their cups of tea, when they saw a man limping across the road towards their direction. Out of idle curiousity, a conversation ensued on the nature of what might be ailing the man. The first doctor to comment said from the way the man was walking, he must be suffering from Left Knee Arthritis. The second doctor disagreed, saying he suspected Plantar Facitis. The third doctor said from what he could discern from distance; the man may have just suffered an Ankle Sprain. ‘Look at the way he is walking’, said the fourth doctor, ‘It’s obvious that man cannot lift his knee, he looks like he has Lower Motor Neuron lesion’. At this point the fifth doctor cut in: ‘To me he seems to have Hemiplegia Scissors Gait’. Before the sixth and last doctor in the group could offer his own diagnosis, the man entered the restaurant and asked one of the attendants, “Is there any cobbler around this place who can help repair the pair of sandals I am wearing?”

​Ladies and gentlemen, the above scenario paints a picture of what is obtainable in our corruption-ridden health sector across the nation, which unavailability of necessary tools that often lead to wrong diagnoses is causing. But before I delve into the depth of corruption in our health sector that has turned our hospitals to mere consulting rooms, let us ask ourselves in this hall if majority of Nigerians clearly have a full grasp of the term corruption that has over the years become one of the most overused words in Nigeria.

​A quick Google search for the meaning of corruption reveals that it is ‘dishonest or fraudulent conduct by those in power, typically involving bribery’. Or ‘a form of dishonesty or criminal offense undertaken by a person or organization entrusted with a position of authority, to acquire illicit benefit or abuse power for one’s private gain’. Longman Dictionary simply put it as dishonest behaviour by politicians or people who worked for the government. These definitions are rather too simplistic, restricting corruption to only those in government or positions of authority. This probably influenced former President Jonathan’s confused assertion of ‘stealing is not corruption’. Corruption is much more complex than that in this part of the world as many forms of social vices fall to the pit of corruption. That is why our forefathers in Ilorin here were simply guided by the concept of ‘aatigbo’ which simply means how will I defend myself if found to have committed this particular crime? But today, nobody cares any longer as many forms of yesterday’s social vices are now seen as civilization.

Sadly, corruption has become the greatest stumbling block to Nigeria’s developmental strides, preventing her from achieving its enormous potential. On daily basis, the country loses billions of naira to this monster called corruption. Yet, an average Nigerian is culpable. The environment is so porous that it compels an average Nigerian to being vulnerable to corruption. Hence, the need to wage war on the unwanted monster.

Be that as it may, the several approaches we’ve adopted over the years to fight corruption have failed to nib it in the bud. At this point, permit me to x-ray the several approaches we’ve adopted in the last 200 years to wage war against corruption in this part of the world as narrated by Professor Dahiru Yahaya and as captured in a book I published in 2018 titled “2019: Nigeria at Crossroads”.
Uthman Dan Fodio in the early 19th Century concluded that the state and society in Hausa and its neighbours were corrupt. Therefore, those who were able should overthrow the corrupt order and raise a corrupt-free society. His students throughout the Central Sudan thought likewise. There was a jihad and a caliphate arose with clean principles. The purity of the caliphate came under question even before it fully established itself. Mallam Abdullahi Gwandu saw the beginning of what he considered the betrayal of the revolution. In the first 50 years of the Caliphate, corruption rebound to an unacceptable level that there were widespread rebellions, which saw the end of the Caliphate. However, the theoretical foundations of corruption remained intact.  Some other scholars in Hausa and Borno did not ab initio see the wisdom of the jihad to remove corruption. Shaykh al-Kanemi of Borno was the prominent advocate against a revolution to remove corruption. He thought corruption was a personal affair; it needed persuasion rather than coercion to remove it. Any coercive action to remove it may result in the violation of the liberal foundations of Islam. It would also result in the worse corruption of bloodshed and civil disturbances. Since corruption was part of human nature, the provision for its removal in the Koran must necessarily be persuasive to allow persons the God-given freedom of choice.  Sultan Muhammad Bello considered the arguments of al-Kanemi as fallacious and spurious.
During The British conquest, corruption became a purely economic matter. In fact, the colonial administration restricted it to the embezzlement of public property.  The Governor of Northern Region, Sir Bryan Sherwood Smith said that the question of “corruption” in form of gaisuwa was a complicated issue that was central to the traditional roles of the sarakuna.” He said as long as state treasury was intact and no one complained of extortion the question of corruption did not arise. The British closed eyes to all other forms of corruption. Sultans and Emirs used the British definition of corruption to depose and imprison potential rivals on the pretext of the question of tax return. The cases of some illustrious victims such as Sultan Hasan Ɗan Mu’azu and the Sardauna Ahmadu Bello of Sokoto, Ɗan Iya Aminu in Kano and Magajin Gari Lamba in Katsina were well known.

Shehu Shagari supported the position of the British in colonial days, but Mallam Aminu Kano opposed it. The entire philosophy of NEPU was the removal of corruption and the NPC stood for maintaining the status quo. These are general statements; there were some individual exceptions in both parties. However, the dichotomy that the Sokoto and Borno Schools of Thought established on the fight against corruption persisted in Nigerian politics until recently. In independent Nigeria, the meaning of corruption assumed a new dimension. The British scruples about public finances became inoperative. Public finances became subject of plunder. Kabiru Gaya, a Governor of Kano State, was the first state chief executive to abuse the strict financial regulations when he demanded and got public money without the necessary due process to the shock of Sa’idu Gwarzo, a top civil servant. Subsequent governments turned public funds into private property.
Military rule presented us with two facets of the meaning of corruption. Murtala Muhammad was vehemently against corruption that he took punitive measures resulting in the inadvertent destruction of the civil service and other organs of state whose duties were the watchdogs of public morality and social ethics. In the process of discrediting the Murtala Muhammad efforts against corruption, Ibrahim Babangida gave rise to an unprecedented meaning to corruption. He did not only return looted properties to the looters, but instituted policies that favoured corruption. Many young individuals in the service of the state destroyed themselves through corrupt activities in his regime. He made it difficult for clean people to operate in his government. We now arrive at a point that the society sees generally ill-gotten wealth as alheri or good things. This is the present trend in all facets of public and private lives as society accord ill-gotten wealth recognition and merit.

The reactions to this development were the rise of uncoordinated efforts using different methods to address the triumph of corruption in Nigeria with varying degree of success. Some other efforts met with colossal failure. During the pre-colonial period, division of opinion as to best method of tackling corruption became clear between the coercive revolutionary school of Sokoto and the persuasive liberal school of Borno. Shaykh ‘Uthmān took the FIRST, albeit revolutionary approach, which set the tune. The Shaykh established a state to stop corruption. Ever since that time, there were other approaches to fighting corruption in this society and in this state. Al- Kanemi took the SECOND initiative. He established a new state in Borno on liberal foundations.

The THIRD approach, the intellectual one, manifested itself in the flight of Mallam Abdullahi Gwandu and his sojourn in Kano. That translated itself into the writing of Ḍiyā’ al-Ḥukkām, a book of political guidelines against corruption for the new rulers in the Caliphate. One may consider it as the harbinger of the recent anti-corruption laws.  The habitual intellectual polemics, which paved the way for the sporadic rebellions against the Caliphate on the second half of the nineteenth century that contributed immensely in bringing down the Caliphate, constituted the FOURTH approach. The sporadic Mahdist revolts against the British occupation and especially the flight of Sultan Attahiru and its well-articulated reasons left a permanent impression on that corruption sensitive society. These inspiring movements in the beginning of the twentieth century constituted the FIFTH approach. The arguments of the Maitatsine movement, which unfortunately scholarship was unable to determine its mission and those of the Boko Haram, which attracted many foreign interests and recalcitrant aggrieved Nigerian individuals, represented another dimension of the fight against corruption and the SIXTH approach.  These were violent reactions. Violent reaction against corruption according Al-Kanemi would result in death and destruction, which he considered as the worst form of corruption. The Sharī‘ah and the Shī‘ah movements represented the SEVENTH action against corruption. The Sharī‘ah movement was from within the state. The Shī‘ah movement was from within the society. These were peaceful movements.  The EIGHTH approach was through the promulgation of anti corrupt practices laws that were selective in their operations.  These were legal initiatives. The NINTH approach was by the selective or arbitrary wimps of the often half-hearted rulers of the country. These were most often the reflections of their state of mind rather than a well thought out plan against corrupt practices. These were dubious movements. The extent to which these approaches reduced corruption or emboldened the perpetrators of corruption will determine the role of leaders of civil society organizations in combating corruption in Nigeria. Their new effort, which is the TENTH approach, would have been a novel movement, if they had remained committed by staying away from politics. Unfortunately, they have equally failed as many civil society organizations have become politically aligned.
And if we want to result to the fourth estate of the realm to fight the war for us, we run into same problem as they are not independent of same corrupt politicians. Most vibrant media houses in Nigeria are owned by these politicians we are waging war against. Brown envelope journalism has equally taken the stage. Some write against corruption so that they can equally have access to positions of authority and continue from where their predecessors stopped in their corruption activities. The freshest case at hand is the ongoing N2.5billion scam involving the DG of National Broadcasting Commission, Mallam Kawu Modibo, who had ab initio written vehemently against a single personality in Nigeria on corruption allegations.

Ladies and gentlemen, now is the time for the populace or communities to start owning the war on corruption. And the simple way is to be determined to continue voting corrupt politicians out power by replacing them with better ones. Unfortunately, Nigerian electorates are yet to resolve on what they really want as they in most occasions replace the bad ones with worst ones who do not only sustain the corrupt past but take a step further by legitimizing their own acts of corruption.
My people, the corrupt activities discovered in public hospitals in Ilorin are replica of what is obtainable in virtually all Nigerian public hospitals. The present situation of our hospitals fails to justify the huge amount of money budgeted for national and state hospitals on yearly basis. What rents the air is blame game between past and present leaders of the country; this unfortunately does not solve the problem. For instance, while President Muhammadu Buhari was trying to justify the situation of the health sector under his government, he blamed the situation on the previous leaders of the country, especially the administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan for neglecting the health sector between 2010 and 2015. The President said this while delivering a speech at the 58th Annual Delegates Meeting and Scientific Conference of the Nigeria Medical Association in Abuja on Thursday May 3, 2018. The President, who was represented by Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo, said that when the global price of crude oil was over $100 barrel per day, the Jonathan administration failed to seize the opportunity to invest in the health sector. Speaking at the event with the theme, “Quality Healthcare: An Indicator of Good Governance”.

But earlier on October 9, 2017, wife of the President, Mrs. Aisha Buhari condemned the poor state of the Aso Rock Clinic and berated the Chief Medical Director (CMD) of the clinic, Dr. Husain Munir, for running an ill-equipped healthcare facility. She expressed displeasure over the terrible state of the clinic for which huge sums of money are budgeted every year, and demanded accountability on the clinic funds by its management. She made her view known as at the Banquet Hall of the Presidential Villa, Abuja, during the opening of a two-day stakeholders meeting on Reproductive, Maternal, Newborn, Child, Adolescent Health and Nutrition organized by her pet project, future assured. She therefore demanded a probe into the N11.1billion budgeted to the State House Clinic in the years 2015, 2016 and 2017. Of course the House of Representatives immediately took this up by setting up an Ad-hoc committee to investigate the allegation. Till this moment, Nigerians are still waiting for the reports of the committee. Year-in-year-out, fund budgeted to institutions that would have impacts on the citizenry hardly get there but money budgeted for the personal welfare of the few in political offices are implemented immediately. In the 2020 national budget, members of the 9th National Assembly budgeted N5.5billion for luxury cars for principal officers and it has been implemented. In Kwara state’s 2020 budget, N1.2billion is budgeted for vehicles meant for the few people in government. This accounts for why our health institutions remain in their sorry state.

In virtually all states’ hospitals across the nation— from Lagos, Kwara, Kaduna, Enugu, and Adamawa to Delta the nature of corruption activities is similar. For instance, Wadata Communications carried out an investigative journalism on General Hospital Ilorin recently and its report shows how the laboratory attendants carried out medical tests without channeling payments through the KWIRS but rather request patients to pay by cash as against the normal payment procedure in state government agencies. It is also discovered that blood from regular donors are sold out instead of using it for the intended charity purpose.

Investigations have also revealed that doctors on duty are not always found on their seats thereby putting the lives of patients in danger and many emergency cases are forced to be taken elsewhere as a result of absenteeism of many medical staff of the hospital. Though it is observed that the state government failed to employ enough medical practitioners to these public hospitals in the state, but the few ones engaged are not sincere with their job. Many doctors divert unsuspecting patients to their private hospitals and the laboratory attendants carryout tests without including them in KWIRS payment procedure thereby denying the state owned ones from generating money to the purse of the government that pays same doctors and other staff their salaries and allowances.

Pants of blood are collected from patients and sold out to others under the pretext that inconsistent power supply has damaged the pants of blood and thrown away. Mosquito nets taken to the hospital by the state governments to be distributed freely to the patients are eventually sold or rented out to same patients.

Another case of corruption discovered in the hospital is nonchalant of attitude to work. For instance, on 17th November 2019, a woman was labouring in pain and it became obvious that she would need to be operated as a leg of the child in the womb had come out and she was in serious danger. It was demanded of the husband to produce a hundred thousand naira before the operation could commence. The pleads of the husband to let the operation commence while he went to town to source money came to the deaf-ear of the medical practitioners as the woman was forced to leave for University of Ilorin Hospital, Oke-Oyi. Eventually, the baby was delivered dead. This shouldn’t be happening in a public hospital under a government that sworn to protect the lives of citizens. In J.J Rousseau’s social contract where citizens submit their allegiance to the state for protection comes to mind. He encourages people to retrieve their allegiance should their government fails to secure them.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is the situation of our hospital yesterday and today. What was obtainable under previous government is still on in the current administration. What is required of us all is to persistently continue to call attention of government to what we need from them, not what they want to force on us. That explains why I said the fight against corruption must be owned by the community people. Let the war be returned to the streets.

There is equally the need to systematize our institutions in such a way that they will be technologically drive. Let the mode of income generation in the health and other sectors be systematized so that human intervention would be completely discarded. A situation where KWIRS collects money at Ilorin General Hospital in the day time only to leave the assignment for who whoever that cares in the night is not transparent enough. Let also there be CCTV camera in all parts of the hospital so that all activities and transactions in the hospital shall be recorded.

Lastly, as a matter of urgency, employ more competent hands like qualified doctors and nurses to General Hospital Ilorin. Let doctors be adequately enough that we may have at least two doctors in each of our cottage hospitals in towns and villages. Let them be well remunerated like their counterparts in the countries they often run to for greener pasture.

Many thanks for your rapt attention