In the past few years I have hung my pen, abandoned wordsmithing and sat around in keen observance of what my beloved Nigeria is becoming. My immobility of action has not been deliberate but forced upon me by despondency. However, after learning that my friend, senior and fellow kingsman Dr. Afolabi Mabogunje, ‘Mabogs’, ‘General’ died in hospital from horrendous wounds due to a ‘five-hour delay’ at the teaching hospital I am consumed with utter grief.
Mabogs was a few years my senior at King’s College, Lagos, in the same House, Panes and became a Prefect in the tradition of his older cousin the legendary ’Gboyega Mabogunje and followed by his younger cousin ’Sola as an Assistant Prefect. I was later reunited with Afolabi in the 1990s in England through the auspices of the Overseas Fellowship of Nigerian Christians before he relocated to Nigeria.
Today I stand even more petrified to discover that he might have survived the attack if he had been promptly operated on at the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital, Ikeja.
According to reports from Punch Newspaper of Sunday September 19 2021, I quote:
“Our correspondent had reported that the deceased, fondly called Mabogs and General, was stabbed by some hoodlums around Shodex area, Anthony, along Ikorodu Road, while he was waiting for his co-cyclists about 5am on Thursday, September 9, 2021.
The assailants, said to be on a motorcycle, robbed him of his phone and left him for dead but he reportedly struggled to ride the bicycle to a nearby bank where a good Samaritan helped him to call his wife who picked him up at the scene.
He was said to have been taken to the Gbagada General Hospital and was later referred to LASUTH where he underwent a surgery. He reportedly went into a coma post-surgery and died on Wednesday.”
“We finally got into the theatre about 1pm and then there was an outage. We waited for about five minutes before power was restored and it went off again. The surgery eventually started about 1.30pm for a man who sustained injuries at 5am and got to LASUTH at 8am. That was the delay that changed the story. If he had got blood within 30 minutes he got to LASUTH perhaps he would have survived.”
In the face of this report and the state of the present Nigeria I am forced to abandon all constraints and draw from the British Neil Kinnock’s warning of a few years ago about the re-emergence of Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister and issue this chilling write up.
I warn you that in today’s Nigeria you will find unavoidable pain if hospital treatment or its efficacy is conditioned on whether the doctors are on strike or not. I warn you that there will be more ignorance in the land where talents and wits are wasted, because learning has become a privilege and not a right.
I warn you that more poverty will be abound – when the naira slips in value and salaries are whittled away by a government that would not pay in an economy that cannot pay.
I warn you that you will be left out in the cold when prices of utilities, food items continue to rise uncontrollably.
I warn you not to expect work when many cannot spend, and more will be unable to earn. When they do not earn, they do not spend. When they do not spend, work dies.
I warn you in the face of continued insecurity not to venture, drive or cycle on the streets alone in the day or after dark or you will be mauled, robbed and left for dead.
I warn you that you will be left quiet and immobilised when the curfew of fear and the gibbet of unemployment continues to consume us.
I warn you that you will become home-bond if fares and transport bills continue to rise and kill leisure and lock you up.
If Nigeria continues to stumble on this trajectory then –
I warn you not to be ordinary;
I warn you not to be young;
I warn you not to fall ill or be injured;
I warn you not to get old; and
I warn you not to remain.
Adieu my brother Mabogs, may your passage to the better life not be in vain for those of us left behind and may my hysterical warnings pass unfulfilled.
Olu Ojedokun
