Opinion: My first time in Nigeria

by Paul Phillips

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I work as media consultant and my job has taken me to many challenging parts of the world.  I have been questioned by security police in Beijing, followed by mysterious people in Moscow, found myself in the middle of a Muslim Brotherhood protest in Tahir Square in Cairo and had a gun pulled on me in Istanbul.

I received a lot of advice before coming to Nigeria for the first time. Most of it was meant to be helpful – nearly all of it was negative. Those with a bit of experience of the country were pretty blunt.

‘Don’t go’, they said. ‘It’s too dangerous; you will be kidnapped/ripped off/robbed/generally have-less-than-pleasant-things happen to you.

‘Oh, and everything is ludicrously expensive.’

Which, naturally, made me feel really happy about my choice of destination.

But I am not long back from Kurdistan (Northern Iraq) where grim things happen almost daily so I reasoned Nigeria had to be better than that, which, admittedly, is setting the bar rather low.

Also I have had the benefit of being trained to work in a hostile environment by ex-military people. Their main advice was not to be conspicuous. As I am a rather large, grey haired, blue eyed white person that would clearly be a straightforward task in somewhere like Nigeria.

I work as media consultant and my job has taken me to many challenging parts of the world.  I have been questioned by security police in Beijing, followed by mysterious people in Moscow, found myself in the middle of a Muslim Brotherhood protest in Tahir Square in Cairo and had a gun pulled on me in Istanbul.

So, I am naturally a bit wary and to be honest, it was with a little trepidation that I boarded the flight to Abuja at the beginning of August.

And, now, after nearly four weeks in Delta State, I feel a little like the football fan, reading a report of a match in a newspaper and wondering whether the reporter was at the same game as I.  All that negative advice I was given conflicts totally with my experiences so far in Nigeria.

That’s not to say everything is rosy everywhere. I know bad things happen in parts of Nigeria but bad things happen all over the world.

It’s the amount of nice things – and there have been lots of those – that I have experienced, which will stick in my mind.

For example, I was stuck at Abuja airport for over 12 hours, waiting for a flight to Asaba. You could count the number of white people at the airport that day on the fingers….. actually, one finger would do. It was I.

I had various conversations (mainly about the joy of flights being cancelled or delayed), was asked politely a few times if I needed a cab and was bought breakfast by a very kind man for no other apparent reason than that’s what he wanted to do. In fact, I didn’t see him again after I had eaten.

When I did eventually arrive at Asaba aiport, I had that ‘wow’ feeling again. You need to see it, you really do. It’s a mightily impressive construction, which is a huge benefit for travellers and business in the region and will be even more so as it develops further.

My work had allowed me little opportunity to venture out of the state capital. That was until a few days ago.

I was taken to Onicha Olona, a village not far from Asaba, mainly to visit a quite remarkable hospital. It is where I met a quite remarkable man.

Dr. Anthony Okwunze runs the government hospital, which didn’t exist five years ago. I am told the governor, Dr. Emmanuel Uduaghan built the hospital one year into office, as part of his healthcare strategy for the state. It has made a huge difference to the lives of people, living in the area.

Expectant mothers no longer have to get to Asaba to deliver, malaria and diabetes patients receive treatment more or less on their own doorstep and the victims of the inevitable accidents involving those menacing motorcycles, the Okadas, are patched up by Dr. Okwunze’s team.

When I say ‘team’ I am not talking about a cast of thousands. You can count the number of staff on several fingers, but not too many.

So, Dr. Okwunze has to be a master of lots of different medical skills, from delivering babies by caesarean section to treating children with a whole list of illnesses. He lives on the hospital site and he never closes.

He is a quietly spoken, modest man. He is rightly proud of what has been achieved at his hospital. It’s not perfect, by any means. Water has to be drawn from a well; lighting comes from a generator, which is expensive to run and can’t always be guaranteed to be running when an emergency happens.  And really serious cases are sent to major hospitals in the state.

But that hasn’t stopped the hospital, making a real difference to the wellbeing of local people, and when the water supply is improved and the power problems are solved that ‘real difference’ will be multiplied many times.

As an example of a life- saving difference, I met a 103-year-old woman, who suffered a serious illness 18 months ago and wouldn’t be looking forward to her 104th birthday if it hadn’t been for the treatment she received at Dr. Okwunze’s hospital.

I was privileged to meet with the grand lady’s family at her home.  She has lived there all her life.  Everyone calls her ‘Mama.’

Onicha Olona is described as a village but it is a lot more than just a few houses. The main street is lined with all sorts of small shops, the odd bar and barbershop, a few mechanics, fiddling with a few Okadas, and inevitable place, selling replica football shirts.

The street is littered with goats and kids, just roaming about and apparently belonging to no-one in particular. Chickens wander here and there in that unconcerned way chickens have. I spot a pig latched to the back of an Okada. The pig did look a little more concerned than the chickens, understandably.

Small children with large water containers take the well trodden path to the nearest supply. Young women walk along the side of the road with unfeasibly large bundles of firewood balanced on their heads. All very rural, maybe a bit clichéd.

But there’s the hospital just down the road on the outskirts of town, primary schools nearby and two secondary schools. Just outside the village a huge leisure resort is being built. It is full of lodges, meeting and entertainment rooms and it will have a swimming pool and tennis courts soon. It is carved out of 100 hectares of bush and will be one of many places to be rewarded by the Asaba airport development.

People, who live in Onicha Olona, tell you that in their day there wasn’t even a basic road to the village. So, they had little choice but to be self- sufficient.

And Mama’s family took to self-sufficiency in an inspiring way. Numerous family members have become doctors, lawyers and engineers and have succeeded in many other professions. They live across the world, in Germany, the USA and Australia, among other places.  But most of them will be turning up for that 104th birthday party in Onicha Olona.

I was told that when they do, they will gather around Mama to listen to her stories. For people of her generation, there is still a firm tradition of oral history.  Very little, if anything, was written down. One of her sons, who is in his seventies, says he is still astonished by his mother’s tales and never tires of listening to them. I’d love to be part of her audience one day.

You persistently hear in the UK that families don’t function properly anymore. There are too many distractions for them to take time to simply stop and talk and, more importantly, sit and listen. From what I’ve seen, the opposite is true in the small part of Nigeria I’ve been to. I suspect it’s the case around the country

So, maybe, I have been lucky. I’m sure those people, who gave me their advice before I left the UK were well intended. But it has been far from my experience, I’m more than happy to say.

 

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Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija

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