I believe that I am not alone in feeling distressed about the situation of healthcare in Nigeria. Everywhere you look, the   problems stare you in the face. In the public health care space, you face poor infrastructure, old or inoperative equipment and generally poor attitude. Even skill and competency levels are often suspect. If you have taken a seriously ill patient to our public health facilities – be they primary, secondary or tertiary institutions, you will have known that many more people are healed by faith in Nigeria than by medical care.

Ordinarily there should be so much going for Nigeria’s economy. Production of crude oil at about 2 million barrels per day at a good price of about 70 dollars per barrel is yielding good foreign exchange for the Nation, helping to boost foreign reserves which today stand at about 47.25 Billion dollars. Inflation has continued to decline steadily over several months coming to the current level of 11.4% as the CBN and its MPC retain monetary policy index at a tight stance.

I have been in the United States of America attending family events and attempting a vacation. Before I left Nigeria,I was really downcast with the turn of events in the country, especially the show of shame happening in the political circles: rumours of planned decamping, mass decamping and some des-camping; threats of impeachment and attempted impeachments in the midst of worsening insecurity and growing poverty.

Those who are familiar with how madness begins to manifest in a person, will tell you that no man becomes mad in just one day. Madness follows a sequence. Of course psychiatrists and those who work in the mental health area can easily notice when a patient goes through the stages or sequence. But for the ordinary folks like us, we also some times notice this sequence   more so when the subject is closely related to us. Signs of mental illness may start with the subject being unusually moody which could represent depression or in some cases the subject may become unusually aggressive and hyperactive called hyperactive disorder.

SO very often, we pray for something and sometimes when the prayer is answered, a new problem emerges, that of managing the outcome. The problem is sometimes exaggerated when God decides to ‘embarrass’ you and give you more than you asked for or were expecting. There was this story of an Okada driver who had been praying for a child for seven years and eventually his wife became pregnant.