Chief Medical Director (CMD) of Abia State University Teaching Hospital (ABSUTH), Aba, Dr John Chikezie, said the vision of his management team to reposition the apex health institution lies in putting in best practices in line with the aspirations of the Alex Otti-led administration’s new Abia project.
In an interview with OGBONNAYA NDUKWE in Aba, the former Abia State Commissioner for Health recalled the problems that led to the de-accreditation of the institution, by the Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria (MDCN) and the sufferings that led staff to turn to commercial keke riders to feed their families. He said it was only an unappreciative workforce that will forget too soon, not to key in, to make ABSUTH move towards achieving what it was established for.
Sometime in February this year, your institution resumed its outstanding scholar lecture series, after a long absence. During the session, you said the programme, was aimed at rejuvenating the vibrancy associated with the teaching hospital and its mother institution, ABSU. What exactly are you looking forward to do to achieve this vision?
I think every vision in life becomes simplified when the visioner is under a principal with a vision, also. It’s very easy to define having a vision or a mission statement, when working with a leader like Gov Alex Otti. It makes one’s job simple. It will not be tenable, seeing, or one cannot imagine the complications of having a visionless leader. We are here in the institution having workers reporting daily on duty presently, because they are being paid their approved salaries as at when due. How could it have been if they were not paid, one would ask? As the head, I wouldn’t have been able to, in fact, it would be difficult to evolve the level of discipline we have now. No matter what you do, if you refuse to pay your workers, you don’t need to expect the best from any of them.
Let us veer from the health sector and look at road construction. Someone recently asked, so this is doable? That is on seeing what the government is doing presently. What we are seeing today, yet we’ve not recorded one year of the new administration. Many roads have been built. There was a time when this place was not accessible. I mean this our hospital (ABSUTH). So, the mission and vision have been simplified in the sense that we must know where our principal is going, what he is doing. Of course, one must know that if he is not moving in the same direction and pace, he’ll get derailed. So, we saw that the governor’s direction means well for all of us and had to cue in there.
What effects did de-accrediting your institution’s courses have in its overall existence and what are you doing to recover what was lost during the period?
For us in the health sector, we know the accreditation was lost. Now, we’ve gotten it back. We know that the total healthcare and wellbeing of Abians mean a lot to the governor. So, we have no other job than to help get the best of what he expects, using us as stakeholders in the project. That’s what I can say is our vision, presently. However, one thing is this: I want to see the workforce return fully to taking responsibility and being seriously involved. We must understand that we are “called to service.” The beauty and joy of life is when one uses it to do the right things, which is to serve humanity and helping the sick. When one is healthy, perhaps he or she may not understand the problems being faced by the sick.
It is therefore, a privilege that God places one in a position to assist the critically sick, who doesn’t know whether he’ll survive, but have got the opportunity of being in one’s care. My vision, is to have a workforce that’ll understand that they are accountable to the people and to God. If we can get that done, for God’s sake, we would have come on track. I give you an example. In those days, teachers that taught us had their greatest desire that was to see their pupils and students doing well in their chosen fields. Likening it to us here, our greatest desire is to ensure that people that enter our environment to access healthcare should get it right. We’ll get the best for them and all would be happy for it at the long run. Government, on its part, will start feeling happy that the right thing is being done here. What we are looking forward to is having a committed and dedicated workforce now that the government has recommenced fulfilling its obligations of providing our needs.
Your staff may have been depleted, first due to the past situation in which they were owed for two and a half years …?
Let me tell you, government can bring in infrastructure, but if we are not committed towards utilising the facilities for the benefit of the people, then the dream would have failed. We need dedicated workers to utilise the facilities to achieve results. Let me tell you what has happened in ABSUTH because human memory is very short and can forget easily. People failed to realise that there were days, one will come to work and see only about four staff on duty. We saw it happen that some of our staff became keke riders (commercial tricycle operators), in order to feed their families. Many of our consultants, doctors, nurses, left because they were not paid and most of them have families to take care of. But we are happy that situation has started changing.
Though it is still early to begin assessing your activities on return from the hard days, are we looking up once again, to ABSUTH, as a referral tertiary institution of repute or will that come later?
The will of the government to establish a hospital like this, leads to having solved half of the problems we are having in the health sector, especially in areas of referral cases being taken to other parts of the country and abroad. There was a time an institution like the University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital, was relatively unknown until it got equipped with infrastructures and personnel to give good quality services, which it is known for now. People get rebellious when those that engaged them refuse to pay them after rendering service. Going on strike is a form of rebellion. A worker goes on strike, rebellion, when his employer fails in his responsibility, fails to understand and agree with his being human, having a family to look after. This is bad especially when the person imposing the hardship on him is not affected by the condition, not living the same way.
Yes, there was time residents of Aba, where we are located, trooped to Umuahia, the state capital, to obtain healthcare from the federal government-owned Federal Medical Centre (FMC), there. The reason was because they couldn’t access healthcare services here at ABSUTH. However, it has reversed. Confidence has returned. I do believe that to reach a centre of excellence does not evolve in a day, or one week. It follows a track of government will, support and then gradually, people will begin to understand and get confident that they will be taken adequate care of health wise, in our hands. Once the right thing is done at the upper level, the policy level, then other aspects will come in. That’s where I see Gov Otti excelling. If you come to the South-East now, a lot of people are seeing Abia as a centre of Igbo confidence, because there is a heightened kind of planning and execution of projects. It’s the common man, including all of us in the society, that tell people, this is good or not good. In governance, what the common man is expecting is not even much.
The greedy ones are not among the common people. If a worker expects his salary at the end of the month, has he expected much? Has his boss gone out of the way to do the unthinkable? So, back to the question, one day, we will get there if in less than a year we are getting back on track. We lost a lot of our specialists, nurses through the “japa” syndrome, but there are still people that are not so desperate of leaving the country. I’ve seen people that refused to travel abroad. That kind of people would be frustrated when not being paid. So, I do believe God that if in less than a year, we have been able to build up new confidence, by the time we do it in the coming years, having all that we need in place, then we would have succeeded.