On October 12, it will be one month since Afrobeat singer, Ilerioluwa Oladimeji Aloba, popularly referred to as Mohbad, died. His death appears to be the most controversial that Nigeria has witnessed, especially in the music industry.
We do not write often about death, because we really do not love to see people say goodbye in their prime.
But in the death of Mohbad are lessons for everyone to learn.
Interestingly, the police are solving the mysteries, focusing everyone’s mind on the auxiliary nurse in the story. Police gave her name as Ms Feyisayo Ogedengbe.
What we have now come to know is that carelessness could be the reason the rising star fell off like a shooting star.
Indeed, his death brings us to the reality in Nigeria, with a few lessons you can learn.
In death, Mohbad had risen from nowhere to number 46 on streaming platform, Spotify (1).
This phenomenal rise talks about the power of music and controversy mixed together.
Globally, empathy poured in for the young man whose cause of death was at the time a mystery to many.
Now, people are casting aspersions on him, after it became clear that self-medication was prime in the cause of death.
That rise is gradually dropping and as of today, he is not in top 50 streams on same platform.
Here, we will identify two most important things to take away from Mohbad’s death.
Let me digress.
The Government’s Role In Death Of Mohbad
A few years ago, I was in Ugbedomagwu, a community in Kogi State, and I visited the health centre there.
In that place, the decadence in Nigeria’s health sector starred at me endlessly. It became a torment, as I slept that night in a community cut out from the rest of the world.
It was an abandoned building with nothing but a working freezer inside the locked building.
The solar energy panel on the roof was powering the freezer, keeping every medication (expired and still valid) in it ready for use, but the building was nothing near what could provide health service to the community.
I was shocked to find that it has been so for a long time.
Ugbedomagwu is a community that is about 2-hours-30-minutes away from Lokoja, the capital of Kogi State. That distance, however, is as a result of the bad road.
I said it is a community cut of from the rest of the world at the time because it was without mobile network.
The few days I spent there were like living in the past for me, a Lagos boy.
That terrible state of the health centre, had resulted in death of pregnant women who have had to travel for at least 45 minutes on a bike to get to the nearest medical centre.
Mindset And Norm
The women in the community told me people gave birth on the road to the maternity.
The health sector in Nigeria is in a terrible state, making cost of Medicare so high for many to afford.
Indeed, many will say Mohbad should be rich enough to access a private hospital or even a government hospital in Lagos.
But there is the place of habit and mindset in everything we do.
He is someone from a lowly background, with his parents not having so much to go to hospitals for treatment whenever anyone falls ill.
As a result, he may have grown with the mindset of getting treated by anyone who identifies herself/himself as a nurse.
When the nurse was called in on September 12, this must be what played out in his mind. He was not aware it was the day of his death.
Sadly, there is an angle that many are not looking at.
Really, if the government had provided good healthcare service to all Nigerians no matter your status, he would have grown up visiting the hospital whenever he was ill.
Unfortunately, people in government rudely embezzle funds set aside to improve our health sector.
The wife of President Buhari had raised an alarm over the poor state of an Abuja hospital.
These sharp practices leave Nigerians with government hospitals that are not able to cater to the number of persons visiting them.
Some offer services like they are doing you a favour.
Those who sweep the system clean have enough money to go abroad for treatment while Nigerians are at the mercy of auxiliary nurses.
Self-Medication And Trouble
An adage in Delta State where I come from says that “in moonlight play, when a person shows you a place to hide, you will endeavour to think through and make sure you hide in a place that no one will find you” (“Ezo’nye Ogbe, ozozie onwe”).
For Mohbad, it was a case of following the norm and not thinking through. Self-medication is evil in all its ways.
From time-to-time, I hear campaigns that speak against self-medication and many in Nigeria hear it too.
However, people still jump on it, running to pharmacies to get drugs to treat ailments like they are doctors.
They diagnose themselves and treat the ailment. Unfortunately, doctors do not speak about these things loud enough.
There is a place for diagnosis and there is a place for treating the right thing.
Also, there is a place for professionalism. If you throw yourself to an auxiliary nurse to treat you, you throw yourself in the hands of death for a ‘ten-ten play’.
From findings, police said there was a reaction coming from the combination of three different intravenous medications.
This led to the death of the rising star whose songs we now hear at every bar, salon and everywhere music is played.
Mohbad Death: A Time To Rethink Healthcare
Specifically, this event should be a time for those in government to apologise to Nigerians, rethink Nigeria’s health sector and improve the healthcare service. It should become more affordable and accessible to all.
Those who do not have money, the government should cater to their cost with impeccable service delivered to all.
After all, that is why people pay tax to bear the burden that the lowly are not able to bear.
There should be proper training and retraining of nurses and healthcare workers to ensure they offer good customer service at all time.
We have heard how much healthcare workers were paid in other countries during the pandemic and even now.
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What is the government doing to raise the salaries of those in this sector to make it as attractive as possible. We believe this drive should even draw the attention good Nigerian doctors abroad.
Instead the reverse is the case, with our best hands leaving in large numbers.
There is a long way to go, but the government must begin with a step towards improving the sector.
On your part as an individual, you must say no to self-medication.
You see, our education system is in a bad state and you cannot give what you don’t have.
The nurses and doctors coming from these institutions have had to do extra work to become as knowledgeable as they should be.
Those who rely on what they get from our institutions end up with poor performance, making errors here and there.
It is time to sit up and face the reality, no one knows who will fall victim of this embezzlements. It pushes us behind, chasing the shadows of those we had at some point offered soap to bath.
If you like this article, please, share it with your friends and loved ones to help them make the right choice whenever they are ill.
See video of the hospital in Ugbedomagwu