When the announcement was made on Monday (September 6) of the constitution of a presidential committee on Health Sector Reform which would develop and implement a reform programme, what first hit me was the membership. The people nominated to serve on a body most times indicate how serious the nominator is about the task at hand.
Apart from Vice President Yemi Osinbajo (SAN) who chairs the committee, the choice of Governor Ifeanyi Okowa of Delta State and Prof. Ibrahim Abubakar of the University College, London’s Institute for Global Health, and many other professionals in the sector, including a traditional ruler, indicated that the government means business.
Okowa, a leader of the opposition party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), is a medical doctor and hospital administrator before he came into public service as commissioner for health, later Secretary to Delta State Government, Senator, and now a second-term governor. His inclusion in this committee and that of other professionals as well as administrators means that President Muhammadu Buhari is determined to seek a solution to the intractable problems besetting the sector and preventing Nigerians from enjoying access to efficient healthcare delivery.
It is expected that the recommendations from this committee will proffer long time solutions to the dearth of necessary facilities and the collapse of the existing ones in public hospitals, frequent and prolonged strikes by doctors protesting poor welfare and inadequate equipment, medical tourism by privileged Nigerians, the President inclusive, brain drain syndrome which is seeing the best Nigerians relocating abroad and increasing unethical practices by health workers at home.
However, while one commends this initiative by the President, it is hoped that the recommendations or report of the committee will not be allowed to join similar reports on the shelves, gathering dust. This committee has been given six months to complete its work. What this means is that its report will be ready in early March 2022, 14 months to the end of the tenure of the present administration. To make an impact, the administration will have to commence immediate implementation of the recommendations.
However, the crux of this write-up is that a similar bi-partisan, all-inclusive committee of knowledgeable people across the board needs to be constituted immediately to help the government tackle the growing security crisis threatening to tear the nation apart.
One will be saying the obvious to note that the greatest problem that confronts Nigeria, her government, and people today is insecurity. The security crises seem to be getting worse by the day. The gallant men of the military, police and other agencies have been stretched thin, overwhelmed, and overburdened. One must at this point praise those officers and men on the various frontlines and they sure deserve the regular prayers of all Nigerians.
Yet, with all the determined efforts of the security agents, the criminals have become ubiquitous, undeterred, and determined as they continued to assail the homes, farms, workplaces, social centres as well as worship places. They have even become so bold that they recently invaded a military institution. From the insurgents who concentrated in the North-east, they have mutated into kidnappers that ravage the whole of the North and other parts of the country demanding and collecting ransom with gusto, bandits, cattle rustlers, highway robbers, drug traffickers, and other obnoxious actors.
In other parts of the country, ritual killing and cultism are the forms of security menace that confront the people. Yes, some of these crimes are indeed fall-outs of the southward trend of the economy. After all, it is true that while government economists work data and dish out statistics that show some marginal growth, the standard of living of the people have continued to deteriorate and many more millions of people lose their job or fall below the global acceptable condition of living every year.
Still, if the government does not decisively deal with the security problems and restore peace, sanity, and stability, the economy cannot grow. It is trite to say that new investment flow into an environment that it considers safe enough to thrive and yield good dividends. The security problem is creating famine and aiding unplanned rural-urban migration. This is because farmers cannot go to farms without being kidnapped and ridiculous ransom being demanded.
In some parts of the North, according to a recent report published by the Daily Trust newspaper, bandits effectively control the villages and towns, setting out barbaric rules and enforcing them. With the return to the Hobbesian state of nature in these areas of the country, those farmers who could afford relocation to the cities like Abuja, Lagos, and some parts of the South that are considered relatively safe have moved. Such relatively ‘safe cities’ now receive thousands of new residents daily. This unplanned migration on its own has implications and potentials for future disaster.
What is needed is that the government must also devise means of sourcing strategies, advice, and solutions to these security problems from within and outside its ranks. It is still believed that, like the health committee where knowledgeable people in government, the opposition, traditional institutions, professionals, academia, labour leaders, and the private sector have been brought together to develop an actionable plan for immediate implementation by the government, the security crisis deserves a similar move ‘Now, Now and Now’.
I am convinced that if President Buhari discards personal considerations and sets up a committee consisting of individuals who have governed the country either as elected president or heads of state, present and serving security chiefs, present and servicing heads of the parliament, traditional rulers with security experience, Nigerians with international experience in security issues, IT experts of Nigerian origin and even, experienced serving and retired judicial officers, we can have workable solutions that will end the security crises without delay.
Incidentally, this is not the first time this suggestion is being made to President Buhari. Former President Olusegun Obasanjo and former Senate President, Dr. Abubakar Bukola Saraki, among others have canvassed the same ideas.
The body of experts and experienced individuals need not have more than a month or two to develop a multi-dimensional plan that the government can actualise in ending the security problems. This is a measure that ought to have been adopted two or more years ago. The government should have resorted to this method since it realised that it under-estimated the depth and nature of the security problems while in opposition and confronted with reality, the matter is now going beyond control.
President Muhammadu Buhari should know that he has less than 15 months to effectively function and tackle the problem of insecurity. If he does not act on time and the politics of 2023 gets fully on stream, there would be a serious distraction. More importantly, the security crisis has the potential for derailing the transition from his administration to the successor government.
If the President fails to act on time or he decides to continue to adopt the same methods that have only aggravated and escalated the situation since 2015, then the insecurity would permanently define his administration, eclipse his legacies, tar his record as a General and glowingly pave his path to perfidy and ignominy.
The President has a little more time to act and work on the security crisis. We expect more decisive measures than these meetings, press briefings, and ‘charging of the commanders’. The criminals are getting bolder. The state requires some ingenious methods and thinking out of the box to decapitate and neutralize them.
*Olaniyonu writes from Abuja.
