The Hawking of Insecticide Treated Nets

The Hawking of Insecticide Treated Nets.

Sylva Nze Ifedigbo

No sight could be more bizarre than this. Young men hawking Parmanet branded mosquito insecticide treated nets in the traffic. My greatest regret was not having a camera on hand to capture this most worrying sight. What is this nation turning into?

The young man holding two blue coloured insecticides packs in each hand and about five more balanced on his head approached the window of the commuter bus. He peered into the bus with that “traffic jam sellers” look, rapidly scanning the bus for buyers. I sat by the window and I had my eyes at him. I couldn’t believe my eyes. He must have thought I was interested in his product so he held on a little longer, pushing his goods closer to my face in an obvious effort at advertisement.

“They don dey sell this one too?” was all I could say. The hawker hissed and moved off to the next car.

He wasn’t alone. There were so many others all hawking mosquito insecticide treated nets like they would do cold pure water and Gala. These nets are provided free to hospitals and health centers with the help of international donor agencies to be distributed free of charge to pregnant women and children as part of the much talked about “Roll back malaria scheme”.

Now, I don’t know how much of malaria we have succeeded to roll back in Nigeria or what figures the Ministry of health brandishes to show off as the success of the Roll Back Malaria scheme but I am convinced (and certainly we need no better proof) that that scheme is achieving nothing whatsoever with the nets intended to drive it now being hawked on our streets and in hold ups.

I feel particularly bad about this development. The truth is that many women and children who these nets are intended for don’t get to receive them at the hospitals. The maternal and childhood mortality rates as a result of malaria attacks continue to rise. We are far from meeting the millennium development goals especially in the areas of Childhood and Maternal mortality. Yet we find pleasure in ridiculing efforts even by foreigners to help us meet them.

What laughing stock we would be (we happen to be already) in the eyes of the international community when they find that instead of distributing the nets to mothers and children and mounting a massive campaign to encourage them use it, the nets find their way into the hands of hawkers. The fact that this is happening right here in Abuja the nations capital makes it even more interesting.

In the hands of hawkers, the nets first do not get to the target users and even worse, it ceases to be free. These nets were produced/procured with donor funds to help fight malaria which remains the highest killer in Africa. Ultimately, the aim is defeated. Why do we insist of making mockery of good intentions?

It is in this same way that subsidized drugs find their way into private pharmacy’s, books and materials meant for primary schools end up in bookshops, and public funds end up in private pockets. There has and continues to be reports of pupils being asked to pay fees in primary and junior secondary schools despite Governments continuous boast of offering free Basic Education.

The question here is, how did the nets get to the hawkers? And is it not criminal for free nets to be hawked freely on our roads?

We shall assume that the authority, in this case the ministry of health is not aware. We shall assume that their workers don’t travel on the roads and have not seen the hawkers. We shall also assume that the nets simply grew wings and flew out of the hospitals or that perhaps every needy mother and child in this country has gotten a net and perhaps there is a need to dispose of the rest of the nets by hawking it. We can assume a lot of things, but one thing should be clear to us all, the lives lost every day especially in our rural areas and urban slums following exposure to mosquito bites which can be prevented by the use of these nets shall be on all those who are looking the other way when the free nets are being hawked.

Sylva Nze Ifedigbo

nzeifedigbo@yahoo.com

THE DILEMMA OF BEING A VET IN NIGERIA

A while ago, when I was about rounding up my national service, a Diaspora friend of mine while asking what my plans were for the future had asked, “Do people really visit vets in Nigeria?” That question did so much in deepening my anxiety at that time and really summarizes the fate of many young graduates of Veterinary Medicine in Nigeria.

Veterinary Medicine is perhaps one of the least popular academic disciplines in the country. Before I got into the University, I really didn’t know people spent such time to learn how to raise and treat animals. 95 percent of my 118 size class in year one never filled in to study Vet. Medicine but took it up as a last option following the unavailability of the desired. Many of us nursed the ambition of changing over to our desired course (which was mainly Medicine or pharmacy) in the second year. Some succeeded, many did not.

Perhaps even more worrying was the fact that the course was itself a difficult business. If you studied in any of the Universities that had a vet school, you would appreciate what the life of a Vet student is.  The schedule is unimaginable. The course content is endless. The Volumes of notes is brain cracking. The lecturers are merciless. The exams are scary. The results bring so much despair.

It’s not unusual that vet students rank among the top over stayed students. I lost so many of my classmates to the embarrassing verdicts of Professional exams. From 118 at the beginning, just 47 of us finally took the oath and were inducted into the Profession up on graduation.

Vet students don’t have holidays. We are on campus all year round. We run a schedule that is same as that of our Human Medical colleagues. We do basically the same courses and more. We study the husbandry, medicine and surgery of at least seven species plus a comparative study of Humans. We are literarily made to develop a seventh sense to use in decoding our patients problems since they don’t talk. We pay as much as the Human Medical students for our studies. Our official course duration is six years just like them.  We use the prefix of “Dr” too.

But that’s as much as the similarities go. Right there on campus we begin to feel the stigmatization. You hear such derogatory terms as “Animal Doctor” and soon you are proud to be addressed as such. You try so much to put the negatives out of your mind and concentrate on the positives. Gradually you get to appreciate the fact that unlike your human Medicine colleagues you have no guaranteed life after graduation. You find proof of this in the number of your senior colleagues who return for their masters with the hope of joining the more lucrative academia. Chance meets with these senior colleagues tells tales that suggests that “all is not well”.

Upon graduation you head for the national youth service.  Friends, family and society now know you as a Doctor. With that name comes so much expectation.  While serving all you are thinking of is a job after the service. Hardly any job advert requests the services of Veterinary Doctors.  Who really employs Vets? You find yourself caught between joining your fellow corpers in applying for the available jobs mostly the banks or sticking with your profession. You feel strongly about the six years you spent to obtain the DVM and you don’t want to vie away.

Even when you decide to apply, you come to discover that employers in Nigeria hardly remember that people study Vet in this country. Drop down buttons for “qualification” never has space for vets. You will find B.sc, B.A, B.Engr, B.Agric, B.Ed, even B.Pharm and MBBS, but never DVM. This makes you begin to question yourself again about who you really are. Worst still, your fellow corpers don’t consider you as being on the same boat with them. They think the “Dr” in front of your name makes you immune to bothering about a job. They don’t seem to understand why you should be hustling for a job like them.

Once I turned up at the venue of a bank interview. I felt like an alien. When I got tired of answering the “Doc, wetin you dey find for here?” question, to which I responded that I only sauntered in to see a friend, I left the place. Honestly I had hoped to gate crash as I didn’t receive an invitation though I had applied.  I didn’t wait to see if gate crashers would be welcomed. I left sharp sharp.

Not to mention here that you are worlds apart from your Human Doctor corper friends. Having had the privilege of a one year Housemanship post graduation where they get very juicy pay, they throw car keys around when you are discussing with them.  While you jump okada’s and Buses, they Cruise around. You don’t stop wondering if it is not the same doctor that you are that they are too.

After service, Human Doctors get jobs more readily. At the very least a Private clinic takes them. These private clinics pay them appreciably well. But for the Vet it’s a whole different issue.  Who really employs vets? Private vets clinics are so few, most of them hardly satisfying their owners own financial needs. Adding hands to be paid is thus unwelcomed. Those that employ pay peanuts. Peanut is the word. I don’t know how else to describe working from 8.00am to 6.00pm daily (Saturdays inclusive) and receiving less than N30,000.00. Matter of fact there are very few (if any) vet clinics in Nigeria that pay their employed vets anything above N30,000.00. How do you reconcile that with the tough years of training and the high expectations of family and society given the “Dr” prefix?

The only lucrative options for young vets seem to be the academia and the civil service. Jobs from both of these sources however  are as scarce as water in a desert. In any case how many vets can be taken by them? There are only eight vet schools in Nigeria. How many vet lecturers retire in a year and how many new lecturers are taken? The civil service doesn’t take staff every other day. The result is that there is a backlog of vets who are unemployed, under employed or simply not doing something fulfilling.

Recently the Nigeria Police in its recruitment advertised spaces for Vets. I couldn’t see myself in a Police Uniform at whatever prize so I didn’t bother. In any case I hadn’t the N1000.00 for the scratch card. But classmates that did came back from the verification exercise with tales of meeting with other colleagues who graduated way before us. It simply meant that for all these years, they have not found anything good enough.  How sad for such a nobel profession.

Of course I know some people will bring up the issue of private practice. The existing private clinics like earlier mentioned are on a daily battle for survival. In any case establishing a private practice as a vet is a damn big step of faith. Unlike the Human medic who has a guaranteed clientele, the vet is thrown into a battle with the existing private outfits for the very few clients. Would you advise your son to go into that world of uncertainty?

Perhaps the other option left is livestock farming. People don’t often seem to remember that it takes so much money to start a farm and that there is great risk involved in running one. How many livestock farms are owned by vets? Do you need to be a vet to own a farm? Given, as a vet you have the training to be able to establish and run one effectively but then, it is not anywhere as easy as it sounds. I know many who have tried. Some even had the balls of taking loans. A good number didn’t come out of it with pleasant tales.

So the post graduation experience is not a pleasant one at all for the young vet. It’s not been pleasant for me nor for a host of my colleagues especially those of us who didn’t vie off or who tied and weren’t very successful. Unemployment is already a huge problem in the country but for the Vet it’s even more. Worse still you spent so much time in the university trying to graduate that you know little or nothing else outside Vet Medicine. Save for some of us who did other things (at the risk of flunking our professional exams) a host of my class mates know how to do nothing else. Some never heard of Hi5 or facebook until recently. Other began computer appreciation classes after graduation.

Studying vet feels like driving into a Close. You feel trapped in there. You feel tied to the six years wahalla and the name. Yet you are getting nothing out of it. Employers outside the profession are not eager to hire you. Either they feel they can’t pay you or they just feel you know absolutely nothing outside needles and syringes or dogs and meat.  Our people do not keep pets and simply kill any sick animal. They thus hardly have any need for a vet. No matter how optimistic you are in life, you begin to actually wonder why in the world you spent all those years studying this course.

I am done complaining. This is my signing out piece. The FCT minister had on my passing out from service announced an automatic employment for me and ten others who won the Honours award. I thought I had escaped the dilemma. Four months on and its now obvious the word “automatic” doesn’t have the same meaning in the dictionary of the FCT administration as is found in the English dictionary. Not the money, not the job has showed up. I am done waiting for them. At a proper time I will launch my attack against them. For now I am looking for other options. I am looking up.

Pitifully a whole lot of my colleagues are yet to come up to this level of thought.  They daily grapple with the challenge of answering a big name and being very small in the pocket. It’s not their fault. It’s the fault of the system. A system that judges you basically by what degree u hold. Veterinary Medicine no doubt is a great course, but sincerely in Nigeria it’s a hard knock life for Vets.

Sylva Nze Ifedigbo

Special Church Advert

Let me start by acknowledging the source of this picture. I first saw it on Sahara reporters, but it was from facebook where it is currently being circulated that I pulled it out. Guess this is what my mass communications roommate back in the university would describe as a candid shot. The photographer whether this picture was taken professionally or as leisure deserves credit and I so do give.
This picture tells a million tales. It summaries what religion has come to become in Nigeria. It is an indication that we have clearly plumbed the abyss of permissiveness. It’s a picture that shouldn’t just make us laugh but should make us hide our face in shame. It is a picture that shows that we now preoccupy ourselves in mocking God.

Writing on my blog and on this forum a while ago in a piece titled “Nigeria Men of God As Con-Artists (see www.nigeriavillagesquare.com/articles/sylva-nze-ifedigbo/77.html , nzesylva.wordpress.com/2008/06/24/nigerian-men-of-god-as-con-artists/- ) I had attempted to draw attention to the obvious negative trends in modern day Christianity especially as is now prevalent in our country. Then, I had sounded it as clear as I could that Christianity was now a business venture with prayers at a cash and carry basis. Not a few holier than thou fellows filled my e-mail with scathing attacks on what blasphemy I had indulged in by daring to speak ill of men of God.

In that piece, I pointed to the rich, super star celebrity men of God who wore shinny suits whose price tags read like telephone numbers in choice boutiques in London, spoke with a cultivated accent (preferably American), rode in classy tinted glass four wheel rides, bought private jets, established universities, and had all sort of marital scandals.

This group who went by names such as General Overseer, chief shepherd, founding Bishop and the likes sustained themselves and their high standard of living on the generosity of their congregation after cajoling them with sermons that tells them to part with more and more of their hard earned income in the form of tithes, seed sowing, donations and thanksgivings which was expected to win them more blessings from God. The God of riches.

Just like in every business line, there are the high players and the under dogs. The picture shows us a different group of men of God, the ones at the lower sections of the ladder. The ones who have to actually fix prices for their work. The ones who operate from batchers and shanties in the slum-like part of town, fighting their own poverty by taking advantage of their gullible poor congregation.

Here we see an advert board which is in itself a study in advertisement as a tool in business. The letterings and graphics are nothing to write home about. The spellings leave you wondering how the man of god gets to read the English bible. The message on the board produces a peppering sensation in your lower abdomen. You wind up asking yourself; have we gotten to this level?

It Is interesting to note that in “Holy Japhet Munistry (ministry)” there is a clear difference between “special prayers” and “ordinary prayers”. It also cost more to carry out “anointing” than “baptism”. Deliverance sessions are a very expensive exercise. Perhaps the man of god needs to prepare adequately for it and that might require buying some extra materials hence the extra cost. Generally shaa, Donations are happily received any time, any day. Every day is as stated “for Gods work”.

Need I say more?, the picture says it all. I only hope governor Fashola is taking note. These men of God, whether of the super star class or the likes of holy Japhet Munistry, should be paying tax on the revenue they generate.

Sylva Nze ifedigbo

I Need A Ghanaian Visa, Fast

I need a Ghanaian Visa urgently. Time is running out on me. Can anybody help? I must be in Ghana next month. I am eager to commit treason. Treason as defined by the PDP Deputy national Chairman Dr. Mohammed H. Bello. I want to join Nigerian opposition leaders to the Gold Coast to commit treason. Treason committed with the active connivance of the leader of the free world must feel good to commit. I need a Ghanaian visa fast.

Yes, I want to join forces with a “failed” presidential candidate, two former Speakers, a former Senate President and “a sprinkling of political hangers-on” plus the United States embassy in Nigeria to cause instability in Nigeria. No, not just instability, I want to generate a tsunami. A tsunami with a strength that is yet to be recorded in geography.

The tsunami shall leave no refugees in its wake. It shall blow across the land. To Wadata Plaza. To Aso Rock. To kebbi state. To the palatial mansion of one big mouthed Veterinary doctor. It shall blow roof tops away and bring down walls. It shall open the can of worms and then scatter the piles of papers used to seal dirty deals.

When the tsunami is done, we shall know why the Railway has remained comatose despite all the bla blaa black sheep Government has been singing about it. And wait, did I mention the Presidential panel on Customs shall also be on the Tsunamis flight path? When the tsunami is done, the chairman of the panel, the same talk talk vet doctor will remember where he kept the terms of reference for his assignment.

Did you not read that Siemens recently landed a new contract from the Federal Government? Siemens !, The same Siemens you know. I still have a copy of the daily with a shouting cover page headline indicating that Siemens had been black listed by the Federal Government a while ago. After a macabre dance of sulugede, Siemens is unblacklisted and is landing juicy contacts. Our talk talk Vet, the jack of all trade is also not far from the circumstances that led to the initial blacklisting. I hope my tsunami unfolds the mystery that Farida has failed to reveal.

Give me a Ghanaian visa let me go. I am so eager to destabilize this country. Surely Barack Obama should have the formular. Or perhaps Attah Mills will also play a role. Aha, Jerry Rowlings will not be far away. Who else has a better, tested and trusted way of destabilizing a country but Rowlings? I want to seat down to a glowing tutorial on country destabilization 101. I want to learn from the best.

Abeg I need this visa. Even one day outside this country will help my life expectancy. I need to breathe a different air. Air devoid of election rigging. I want to see light for twenty four hours. My laptop can remain full charged all day. Oh, Oh, Ghana, here I come. I heard I wouldn’t have to push and fight to enter a bus. I need a Ghanaian visa.

This is my dream trip. An experience of a life time. Nothing could be better? Anything that would destabilize this country is welcomed especially when the definition of the word ‘destabilize’ is as conceived by the reincarnation of Abacha’s Wada Nas. I sign up. Mohammed H. Bello thank you so much for exposing the plans of these failed members of the opposition. They wanted to have the booty alone. Now we all know. I am also going to Ghana. I just need a visa.

A REASON TO LAUGH

There are those things you remember doing some years back or events that occurred way back that makes you want to laugh your guts out. These are those things you remember now and you wonder; did I really do this?, did this happen?, How were things then? Etc
For example I remember the television we had when I was way younger. To be fair, the tv was big. I mean big. How did people get to carry those kinds of tv then sef?. Of all its size, it was black and white and wait for this, it had a wooden shelter. The shelter was like a wardrobe or should I say a cabinet with two hinged doors. At 4.oopm when the NTA began transmission (usually with a rendition of the national anthem) the tv door is unlocked. Much later (I can’t say when ‘cos I promptly went to bed after the Network news then) it was locked again. Among the special effects of the tv was its channel searching apparatus. It was a knob just by the screen. To get a channel, you turn the knob like you will while switching on a fan. Gee, it seems so laughable now with buttons and remote controls.
Remember all those childhood plays we used to play. We had this play in which me mimicked a family. The guys acted the role of father. The girls naturally act mothers. There is usually the cooking part, usually with sand and leaves. When it’s done. Its served and consumed via the neck. You just touch some of the food to your neck and then throw the rest away.
There was the war play. Any guy that did not do the “war start” needs to revisit his childhood. There are two teams. Just like in the war movies. You hide, seek out the opponent and make sure you shoot first. Check out the kinds of gun now…Sticks, clubs, broken pipes, paw-paw leaf stalk, name it. Perhaps the more interesting part of the play was the argument on who shot who first and who has refused to die.
Do you remember your favourite tv programes then? Tales by moonlight, Speakout, Sesame street, Super Ted, vultrone. Tom & Jerry are new skool. Jeez, I would do anything for a spider man comic book then.
Remember when we use to go to so much trouble to get the lyrics of a song. You get the cassette and armed with a radio, you play, write down, rewind, play again and write down. When you meet up in school, you needed to hold your own in the company of your guys. I think the last lyric I took pains to ‘download’ was Sisquo’s Unleash the dragon. Did I really get the lyrics right? Lol.
Think of what pains you went through to get a girls attention. Think of how you went to great pains just to get her wave or smile at you. Think of the first time you “chyked” a girl, how long it took you to muster the courage, how well you tried to memorize your lines, how you called her out to that tree shed to deliver your well rehearsed manifesto. Remember her drawing maps with her leg as you rattled away. Then what was the response?, “I will think about it”. Hahaha.
Remember what it was like before the coming of GSM. Then, maybe only one person had a NITEL land line in your street. Rare and far in between calls from distant relatives are received from that line. I remember neighbours coming over and sitting for hours waiting for a call in our small parlour. Yes, I was one of those who grew up with the privilege of having a land line at home.
The other alternative was the public phone booths. Those places were the center of frustration and comedy. Especially on campus. You arrive a phone booth on a hot afternoon and meet a queue. ten or eleven people are before you. Five are there is flesh and blood, while three are in spirit. They have either strolled off are the space had been secured for them by someone else pending their arrival. You wait patiently. The network is usually a mess. Connecting one line could be no mean task. It gets to the turn of one of those activity-chewing gum chewing-chicks and instead of making her call and giving way, she stands there, the phone handset held to her ear by her shoulder, flipping through a phone diary. Each call is to a darling or a sweetheart or to “baby”. She spends ages before she is done. All she had been doing was begging for money from one mugu to another. While her drama lasted, the kind of hisses and grunts you will be hearing from others waiting to take their turn is better imagined.
One that got me really laughing recently was my first birthday picture. Hey I advice after reading this piece that you go back and take another look at your first birthday picture. See all the effort put in to make you stake the picture. You might even be crying. See the table; minerals to either side and the cake in the middle. i wasn’t crying in mine though, but I was not interested in neither the cake no whoever the photographer in front was. I was looking away. I later showed my mum the pix and after a long laugh which got tears to her eyes she recalled with joy how the photographer had taken several shots before he could come up with that shot which was arguably the best.

Life is good jooh, especially when we look back and fond memories remind of where we have been. It presents you a reason to laugh. Whether your laugh comes as a result of the stupidity of the event or the humour content, either way you laugh and each time we laugh, somethinh happens to our physiology. I leave that part to psychologists to explain.

Sylva Nze ifedigbo.