You all graduated together from Medical School in Ibadan in 1978 and scattered thenceforth to the four winds to pursue your careers and live your different lives.
The gathering this Sunday evening in the restaurant of Sheraton Hotel, Ikeja was meant to be one of work and fun rolled together. You had put together a tidy sum of money and handed it over to your alma mater – the College of Medicine. The incumbent Provost of the College would be coming to give account of what had been done with the money and provide a general heads-up about the progress of the College.
As you arrived at the venue, you observed that ‘IFA’ – the Minister of Health, was already there, his fila rakishly pulled to one side as he conversed genially. The Shoks-es were there too, Prof and Prof. The Provost of the Medical School sat close to the Minister.
You chose a seat next to Baky – a gynaecologist who had travelled from the USA to be part of the evening. As you shared red wine, he assured you he was delighted to be back home, if only for a few days
Looking round at the all too familiar faces of people you had known for almost half a century, some of whom you had not seen in several decades, it struck you that many were thinner or thicker in their frames, and some of the men now wore a mane of grey or had gone bald. Remarkably, in every one of them you realized you could easily discern the young man or woman you knew in Ibadan. ‘IFA’ walked with a slight right-to-left swagger, as if to underscore his authority. But you remembered the swagger, and he had it long before the authority. Shoks – Mr., the Neurosurgeon, spoke with the clipped precise tone that made him a person to watch even from your first Anatomy class. Yetty – proprietor of the first properly constituted ‘Halfway House’ for the reintegration of the long-term mentally ill in Nigeria, was dressed in a beautiful gown. She arrived late and swept in with the grand entrance which everybody remembered from the Ibadan lecture theatres.
And ‘Laiwowe’ – Professor of Paediatrics and Provost of the Ilorin University College of Medicine, came in late, too, carrying a black bag. He announced he had been stuck on the Lagos-Ibadan expressway and had despaired of ever arriving before the end of the party. Laiwowe, as a student, always arrived late to lectures, carrying heavy textbooks that he presumably had been reading all night.
The Provost of the College rose to give his speech.
College of Medicine Ibadan was now the second-ranked College of Medicine in sub-Saharan Africa, after Makerere, he announced to his audience, who immediately set out clapping. Makerere had an edge only because it was old and very savvy in information technology. There was no College of Medicine in Nigeria breathing down Ibadan’s neck, he explained, though Nsukka was not too far behind. To get past Makerere and get back to being first in Africa was an imperative. To achieve it, Ibadan had to raise its game by enhancing the reach and depth of its internet activity. The money donated by the class of ’78 was already being deployed to upgrade the College’s web-presence, increase its interactivity, and expand its capabilities to include Human Resources Management. In effect, a paperless culture was on the way in Ibadan, to help take the Medical School back to glory. Different alumni class sets were chipping in in different areas, but the ’78 set were pitching in in a sensitive spot that would have immediate and major impact.
It was his duty, though, the Provost announced with some diffidence, to tell the class they would need to come up with a little more money to complete the project.
There were sounds indicating a general agreement, and there was more clapping. Baky offered to set the ball rolling by chipping in a thousand dollars. Others indicated their readiness to add more to what they had already given.
The work part of the meeting done, conversation continued back and forth on matters serious and banal.
‘Madame Shoks’ – Professor of Haematology and a past President of Ibadan College of Medicine Alumni Association (ICOMAA) worldwide suggested the class should give her a ‘long service medal’, especially in the light of the fact that if the other Shoks had not distracted her in class in medical school, she might have had more distinctions in her examinations. They had been a popular class couple in Ibadan – the Shoks-es, and they were still jolly good fellows, forty years after Medical School.
R-JOLAD – whose nickname was also the name of his famous hospital in Gbagada, sat benignly in a corner. He had developed a model of private medical practice to serve the masses, where patients did not have to break the bank to get prompt and good quality care.He had been rewarded with fame and heavy public patronage. There was some whispering you heard somewhere of some big-money entity wanting to buy him out. You observed lightly to him that he had become increasingly occupied with religious matters in his offerings which you saw in the social media recently. He smiled wryly and threw up his hands in a gesture that seemed to say, ‘Shouldn’t we all be?’.
In another corner, Oshinson was making an announcement to the people sitting close to him.
‘I’ve retired now- I’m no longer practising Medicine’
He was an obstetrician who had spent a few months working for government in Ayinke House after specializing and practising in England. He then joined up with friends to set up a ritzy mother and child private practice on Victoria Island. The brand has grown to become an icon in the Lagos environment.
You smiled as you reasoned that after a long holiday and a sea cruise and whatever else he decided to indulge himself and his wife with, he would soon get tired of being ‘retired’ and get back to catching babies and tending mothers.
As the evening wound to a close, you could see there was a great concern about the general state of healthcare in Nigeria. Of course, you were all driven by an urge to help Ibadan. There was an unabashed acceptance of that reality. But the real concern was about how to join hands to improve healthcare and health outcomes for Nigerians at large.
Would there be a fiftieth-year reunion for this Ibadan class in ten years, you asked yourself? And if there was, would everyone here be present? The decade of life from 60 to 70 years, where most in the crowd were located, was notorious for being fraught with life-threatening hazards.
But it was time to celebrate and not to worry, you reflected, as you joined the rest to huddle together for a group photograph.
Femi Olugbile
