Growing up as kids, we all are entitled to dream of what to become later in life. Some dreams come true; some don’t come to pass. Others come around to mock us later in life. Parents are also at liberty to dream for their kids. Some parents want their children to become highly respected professionals like medical doctors or lawyers.
Unlike nowadays, no one in my time dreamt of becoming a pastor, a university teacher or a soldier. Ever heard of the saying ‘as poor as a church rat’? The poverty level in those days was synonymous with pastors. But today, ladies are falling over themselves to hook pastors, not to speak of bishops, arch-bishops, general overseers, etc. Most of them even seduce these men of God because some of them are ranked among the richest men under the sun.
Until the Obasanjo administration came to better the lot of university teachers, most of them were living from hand to mouth. Worn-out shoes, unkempt hair, and unattractive outward appearances were the hallmarks of a very bookish academic.
I remember some dons of the University of Jos who were using their jalopies to shunt between Jos and Bauchi doing kabukabu during lecture free hours to augment their incomes in the 70s. Today, university teachers dress like celebrities and own flashy cars.
Many parents must have regretted not marrying their daughters to soldiers. When military coups were fashionable in the late 60s through to the 90s, many women, who married soldiers, became first ladies when their spouses became military heads of state and governors.
In my own case, no parent dreamt for me. My old man was a fish monger in Kumasi, Ghana, where I was born. My mum ran a big provisions store. So big that my siblings and I could not run it down with our rapacious siege! Our targets were biscuits, sweets, sardines, corned beef and condensed milk. The empty tins were hauled into the ceiling of the store to conceal our activities.
A number of factors influence our decisions in life: environments, friendships, exposures, and experiences, among others. My first ambition was to become a hunter. I had this predatory instinct as a kid. I was always with my catapults of various makes, preying on lizards. It was after I perfected my skills as a neighbourhood lizard hunter (not for food) that I graduated to the forest to hunt for bushmeat. The day I brought down my first game, an unusually hefty bird, the neighbourhood celebrated me in the community where I lived with my mum.
When I was brought to Nigeria to continue my primary education at the Bode Ijaiye Baptist Day School, Abeokuta, my focus changed. First, I captained the school’s first XI in my final year. If it were now, I would have dreamt of making a career in soccer. Second, I organised some of my classmates and re-enacted the Robin Hood movie. I was the star actor and my efforts won me prizes: a bucket, a blanket and five shillings. Some parents showered me with cash gifts which I shared with my fellow actors. Then, I thought of taking to acting as a career.
My elder sister was married to a medical doctor. So, I took interest in his medical books whenever I was on holidays. Somehow, my main focus was on the voluminous textbooks on obstetrics and gynaecology. I would pore over the graphic diagrams showing details of women’s reproductive system. One day, my sister caught me reading one of the books. She misread my intention and warned me not to be a bad boy, and that I should not indulge in feasting on what she described as adult’s publications. I managed to outsmart her and held on to my dream of becoming a medical doctor. Then, I said to myself: “One day, she would see me with a stethoscope wrapped around my neck with women swarming around my consulting room like ants on sugar in search of solutions to their genealogical ordeals.”
It was after my secondary education that journalism surfaced from nowhere and stole all the other dreams I had! About the same time, the urge to study Fine Art was also very strong. In fact, I had been offered admission at the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, to pursue a diploma programme. The dream to become a fine artist was hatched in the above-mentioned community where I was a local kid hunter. The landlord of the house where we lived had a running battle with me because I had adorned his building with all manner of graffiti crafted with charcoal and chalks.
Earlier in the week, I read about a quack doctor who was arrested by men of the Department of State Services in Adamawa state after successfully practising for over five years. The fake medic named Ibrahim Mustapha was said to have gained employment into the Adamawa State Health Management Board with forged credentials and executed 500 surgeries, recording only 15 deaths. That was a feat for a crooked surgeon! Even well-trained surgeons would turn green with envy. For, as he claimed, he tutored some qualified doctors on the ‘right thing’ to do. What if Mustapha had been a trained medic?!
Within the same period, another quack medic, Rafiu Naheem (30), who holds a secondary school certificate and operated his unregistered clinic in a one-bedroom mud apartment, was nabbed in Osun state. Before nemesis blew a whistle on him, the quack had treated unsuspecting patients of different ailments, placing some of them on admission. Among his patrons were abortionists. It was not reported if any abortion patients died under his knife.
Even though journalism robbed me of the other dreams, I never lost touch with medicine. I read virtually every medical book/journal in my brother-in-law’s library in those days that could qualify me as a doctor. During one of my visits to Akure, Ondo state, in the mid 90s, I went to a restaurant housed by the secretariat of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) for lunch. Please, note that I did not go there with a talisman to eat free food. Regular readers of this column would remember how I employed a charm to eat free food. But it failed me! I was fortunate not to have been handed over to the police. The babalawo who conned me of my leopard skin cap and gave me the charm had shown up by chance. And it turned out that he was the spouse of the owner of the eatery where I went to test the charm. So, that was how I escaped justice. The charm was to enable me get all I desired in life upon asking anybody. If the talisman had worked, my next target was the Central Bank in Lagos. In my infantile reasoning, I told myself that I would order the governor to load at least three bullion vans with mints and he would just say ‘Yes, Sir!’ And I would become a kid billionaire overnight.
As I relaxed after loading my tummy with pounded yam and bushmeat, bathed with egusi soup, a medical issue cropped up in our discussion at the restaurant. The owner of the Akure eatery was so impressed with my analyses of the health challenge that she could not help asking whether I was a medical doctor.
If I had been a failure as a journalist, perhaps, I would have disappeared into one remote village to set up a clinic. With Google as my chief consultant, I would have been able to handle any medical issues… including surgery! This is allowed. Some years back, my wife and I took our son to see a medical doctor in a mission-run hospital in Jos. To our greatest surprise, a specialist doctor, an Indian or Pakistani, after listening to our submission, heaved into the open a medical book as huge as the Complete Works of Shakespeare and began to pore through for the diagnosis of the boy’s ailment!
Just imagine a Dr. Clem taking medicare to the grassroots. I would have made mega bucks before nemesis could search me out as a counterfeit as it did to ‘Surgeon’ Mustapha and ‘Dr.’ Naheem!
