The immediate past Lagos State governor, Babatunde Fashola, was on Wednesday, November 11, 2015 appointed the minister of power, works and housing. He could well have been named the minister of Infrastructure. Electricity, roads and housing rank among the most critical of infrastructure everywhere, but they are awfully in short supply in our country. By saddling him with the tremendous responsibility of making these key facilities available and in good condition throughout the nation, President Muhammadu Buhari has demonstrated stupendous confidence in Fashola which is difficult to match anywhere. No one doubts that the former governor will deliver the goods. He remains the most decorated state governor in Nigeria’s history, honoured by research groups and think-tanks across the globe for exemplary and far-sighted leadership. Commendations for him have also come from such critical international media as The Economist, Financial Times, CNN International, BBC, Time magazine as well as Daily Telegraph of London. His leadership has also attracted the attention of postgraduate students and researchers at such world-class institutions as the University of Liverpool.
Still, there is an important achievement which Fashola recorded as a governor but not quite acknowledged: the heroic and successful battle against the Ebola pandemic. The anti-Ebola war is now on the front burner for at least three major reasons. It was one of the considerations for bestowing on Fashola the globally prestigious Stephen J. Solarz Award on October 28, 2015, by the Belgium-based International Crisis Group at its 20th anniversary in New York. And it is now one year since the World Health Organisation (WHO) on October 24, 2014 certified Nigeria free of the Ebola virus which Patrick Sawyer, a Liberian national, had brought to our nation in July, leaving in its trail a harvest of deaths. What is more, Adaora Igonoh, one of the medical doctors who survived the Ebola attack at the First Consultants Medical Centre in Lagos, was delivered of a baby in far-away California in the first week of November 2015, without any trace of the dangerous disease in her system or that of her new baby.
The defunct federal administration of Goodluck Jonathan did go to great lengths to take credit for the Ebola fight, probably because of the impending general election. The administration did establish an effective communication network to sensitize and mobilize the public. But it did little beyond that. The high public officer who rolled up his sleeves and got cracking immediately, as could be expected of an effective leader in a crisis situation, was Fashola. He was abroad when Ebola broke out and he quickly cut short the trip and flew back home. Plunging straight into the heart of the matter, an isolation centre sprang up overnight at Mainland Hospital. The centre was complete with ambulances, doctors, nutritionists, pharmacists, nurses and other health providers. All Ebola victims, including the popular Dr Stella Adadevoh and Adaora Igonoh, were treated there. In a daring move reminiscent of the kind of leadership which Rudy Giuliani provided as New York City mayor in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001, Fashola visited the Ebola isolation centre facility in broad daylight with his closest aides to express solidarity with the victims and to assess the centre’s effectiveness firsthand. The centre worked so well that the majority of victims treated there survived; even the wife of a doctor from Anambra State who contracted the virus while treating an Ebola patient secretly in a hotel in Port Harcourt was sent all the way from Rivers State for treatment there.
Meanwhile, President Jonathan’s minister of health, Onyebuchi Chukwu, a professor of medicine, kept away from the isolation centre. He even kept away from First Consultants Hospital. Worse, he did not give even a kobo to the hospital, which lost over N400 million to Ebola, despite the fact that the Federal Government set aside a whopping N1.9 billion to fight the Ebola scourge. In contrast, Fashola called out top officials of the state government on September 18, 2014 to receive all five Ebola survivors, including Drs Igonoh, Morris Ibeawuchi and Akiniyi Fadipe, who came with Kelechi Enemuo, widow of the Port Harcourt-based doctor, and Dennis Echelonu, widower of nurse Justina Echelonu Obioma who contracted the disease on her first day at work while treating Sawyer, the Liberian index case. Fashola received the survivors in public to show solidarity with them and also assist to end their social stigmatization.
Even when First Consultants had been certified completely free of Ebola, patients and even business partners like suppliers still kept their distance. To cause patients and others to return to this foremost health facility in the country, Fashola visited First Consultants Hospital on September 20, 2014, in full public glare and promised to help defray the enormous cost it incurred when it was closed down, with its equipment discarded for fear of contamination. On December 2, 2014, he donated N50m to the hospital and N26m to individual Ebola victims, including the wife of the Port Harcourt-based doctor from Anambra State who had nothing to do with Lagos State other than she was rushed to the Ebola isolation centre at Mainland Hospital in Lagos for investigation and possible treatment immediately the husband died of the virus in Rivers State.
Though the founder of the First Consultants Medical Centre, Dr Benjamin Ohiaeri, is from Orlu in Imo State and the overwhelming majority of the Ebola victims are from the South-East, all five state governments in the region and Igbo organizations like Ohanaeze have completely ignored them to this day. Not even a word of praise to the hospital and its staff for battling heroically to stop the spread of the virus in Nigeria. As already stated above, the then minister of health, Onyebuchi Chukwu from Ebonyi State, neither visited the place nor gave the members a kobo from the N1.8bn which the Jonathan government set aside to combat Ebola. This development is reminiscent of how South-East governments and Igbo organizations have utterly ignored Josephine Ugwu, a cleaner who found about N12m cash at Murtala Mohammed International Airport in Ikeja earlier this year and promptly returned it to the owner. On the contrary, Fashola honoured Ms Ugwu as a role model and caused the Lagos State House of Assembly to hold a special session in her honour. Of course, she received an undisclosed amount from the state.
Quite remarkably, the international community, as represented by the International Crisis Group, recognises it was Fashola, and not the Jonathan administration, that ended the Ebola pandemic in Nigeria. Indeed, October 1, 2014, Fashola in his Independence anniversary speech mentioned one by one over 30 citizens and institutions, including First Consultants, who led the battle against Ebola. In fighting the Ebola war, he did display acute crisis management skills and generosity of heart; he, in addition, took considerable risks to his life. As the scripture says, “There is no love greater than the fact that a man could lay down his life for the benefit of his people” (John 15:13). It is the kind of leadership Chinua Achebe would describe as leadership by personal example, which is the hallmark of successful societies.
With the likes of Fashola now at the centre, Nigeria may well be about to change.
C. Don Adinuba
