 Ni sezodana, aqati sezimingiame kemaizでした, hiu mikuporishachucklesa. Wana kuboka ni yaile Willy agata Afrika na koncha. Aaaandue NPrdisku! Kaka zag legya leku Furykika undocumented na NZaze Aminimizi karaku ngемu Nulin veliku signals maikira Foho LastangGo Hidi fende om niya lia batwa Ehne kusi n Novtheo Kutun kaulta BIw sono 14 okwa u shock yTRlka Jaipa Another debutant, Tolu, tells us about the stereotypes surrounding the emotions and mental health of men. And finally, Uchei is stating clearly that no means no. As always, your panelists are here to share ideas aimed at provoking thoughts with no holds bad. Stay with us. Benefits of COVID-19 Allow me to be cynical. COVID-19 is one of the best things to have happened to Nigeria in a long time. Why? It proved to us that as a people we can have the ear of a political elite. It told us that we can improve the health sector in a matter of weeks. It reassured us that the quality of service that public health facilities provide abroad can actually be available locally in Nigeria. At least a lot of people hail the COVID-19 center in Yaba. But I have two questions that are like us to ponder on. One, how were we able to set up such number of health centers within a short time? Rockefeller Foundation spends enormously on the health sector as does other health care financiers in the USA. According to a research data which I stumbled online, in 2003, research and development expenditures were approximately $95 billion. With $40 billion coming from public sector and $55 billion coming from the private sources. In 2016, the research and development spending by pharmaceutical companies in the USA was estimated to be around $59 billion. I bet you get the picture. We survived COVID-19 not because government did the job, but because government had the unsolicited support of private sector thanks to KACOVID and other partners. Globally, health sector is not strictly government business. Why do we dump everything at the doorstep of federal government in Nigeria? In the USA, ownership of the health center system or healthcare system is mainly in private hands. Though federal, states, counties, city governments and all other governments have facilities. As of 2018, there were over 5,500 registered hospitals in the United States. Over 4,000 are described as community hospitals. Nigeria can never excel if we continue to dump everything at the doorstep of the federal government. We want to be like America, but we are not ready to do what pertains in America. Hold your local and state governments accountable. Get the private sector involved. Secondly, why did the government respond quickly? The government responded quickly because we became a threat to their continuous existence of survival. They all have the domestic helps and junior staff. Their families couldn't live indoors all day. Nobody was excluded, we were all vulnerable. So the only solution was to keep you and I safe for them to remain safe. If the elite had the option of traveling abroad, very few health facilities, if any, would have been built during this period. Now let's juxtapose this by elections. As with COVID-19, government focuses on the population that is relevant to their continuous existence and the sustenance of their quality of life. They know the middle class and what's of the elites do not have a say because they won't vote. So all they do is allow thugs, man the roads and the parks, fund travel expenses of their store wards and provide coverage for the touts that are used. The moment you begin to vote, you will become priority and like COVID-19, all your needs, roads, schools, security will be provided not because they care about you but because they need you in order to remain comfortably in power. That is absolutely correct. That is absolutely correct. I want to speak about the private sector. I'm a firm believer that the private sector will drive development in our country. Even look at statistics, 70-80% of jobs are created by the private sector. SMAs and even the GDP of the nation, the place of huge role in that. However, we cannot absorb government of responsibilities. They must create a thriving environment and enabling environment to do business. Check the ease of doing business in Nigeria. The indices are so low, you have taxation to deal with, you have poor access or low access to capital, you have very little government support or infrastructure. So as a private entity, as a private sector organization, you first of all fix things that government should have fixed first. I think the agitation of the people is that can you, the federal government, do your own duty first of all, create that enabling environment and it's easy for the private sector to then come in and do the rest or take it up from there. But you have a very valid point that when they start to believe that the middle class, they can win elections with the middle class, then they'll start to pay attention to some of the things that actually impact us. Yeah, that's true, that's true. Okay, I totally agree with you. That sounds very interesting. When I hear middle class, though, I started cringing a little. Was that the whole conversation? Yeah, it's okay. Because again, what's the percentage of the middle class compared to who you call lower than the middle class? Right. What you're saying is basically, if I'm going to sum up your, it's saying who won't die. I mean, nobody wants to die. And I feel very, importantly that the more you have, the less you want to die. Yeah, of course. What has happened is, they've gone from saying, from self-preservation, to the fact that if these people also do not live, then we cannot live. I think it was at all that I said that, if the child of the poor man did not kill you, did not kill one yesterday, if it's not welfare tomorrow, he'll eat you. Basically, I think that's what happened. So it's almost like a reverse engineer. Let's allow these people to live because we want to live. But again, if you look at the difference between how much was raised, and how much was spent, then you start to ask yourself, are we really being responsible with the funds? That's the first thing. The other thing then also is, post COVID, then what? So set up all these health sensors to deal with COVID. Then after COVID, what happens? Are we, what do we start to treat? Are we who love it? What do you think? You have a valid point, but look at it also in this sense. As much as you had everything set up, you had specific hospitals who were charging triple, double, quadruple of what you're going to get. The same abuse. Exactly. Oxygen were being used in those hospitals. So even though you think, yes, they set up all these things, the facilities that were really required to provide the health care was not really available. So a lot of high death rates there. Oxygen was cast everywhere. Yet in certain hospitals who were charging millions, who needed to pay a certain deposit, were having access to all these things. I'm going to do a quick response. I mean, add up to what you guys have said, but I think we have comfort from Abuja. Comfort, in your view. I think for me the tragedy was the fact that even new hospitals were built. I thought that anybody with vision at that point, knowing that we already had a crisis in the health care system, would rather use the funds at that time to improve upon the health care system at that time and then expand. So you could have had, you could go to, let's say, Amadu Bello University Teaching Hospital and have a section that was clearly dedicated to COVID. But then the whole hospital would have been able to partake from the funds that came in. And this is what is going to keep on being our problem. This crisis of leadership, this lack of vision, lack of focus, lack of understanding. And as one of the panellists said, judicious use of finances. I mean, this is not our money. People gathered money, gave you, at least you would use it with some sense. And I like the cynicism, what has come out of COVID because the truth about it is that nothing has changed. Money came in, people used it, spent it. I mean, we struggled to reach 3,000 deaths in the whole, I mean, as much as they struggled to give us numbers that we were dying and going to be decimated by this time. So all this money was needed. Okay, faith, God, the universe, science, something, we shall keep those numbers down. So I think they ought to be ashamed of themselves at this point. And I think like you rightly said, right? And that's one thing and that's one thing we've been grappling with for a long time, which is why I wrote this piece that listen, all this thing comes back to the government and how the government feels us. But I'd like us to look at the Rockefeller Foundation bit. Now, we know we have issues in our healthcare system. What will it cost? I don't want to use dangote. It's doing too many things. There are so many other companies around. So let's say, but let's use a dangote. Let's use a dangote definitely, yes. Now, if it comes up and says, okay, federal medical center, Bayofa or Abuja or Lagos, anywhere, I'm going to take up the salary or not even salary. I'm going to give some freebies to some doctors. Additional, whatever, maybe some allowances every month. So doctors that work between this time and this time, this is what they get. So in addition to whatever the government is giving to them, all what our doctors need are motivation. I was in the clinic two days ago with my just to get immunization for my child and there was a nurse there and the senior nurse got angry, where is this nurse going to? She's coming and joining me because they were already on the staff. Then another person came on and said, sorry, she's going to do circumcision. So a nurse that's supposed to be attending to kids who came for immunization had to leave that post to quickly go attend to circumcise whatever, but we still have a lot of doctors who would not have left Nigeria if they could get well paid. So we know government has failed and I think it's that time we come to that reality that our government has failed. But what can we now do to favor ourselves, not the government now, just to make sure that the health is getting better. But you see, when it comes to health, we can talk on and on. On and on, yeah. But anyway, let's go to the next bed. But before that, I'd like to say, please continue to wash your hands, wear a mask, stay safe, practice social distancing and up next is comforts. Stay tuned.