Tunde Chris Odediran
For Vwaere Diaso, August 1, 2023, was just another day at the hospital as she edged closer to completing her housemanship.
Two more weeks and she may have lived but it was the day of her departure from the land of the living.
The young medical doctor did what she risked every day by using a defective elevator at the General Hospital in Odan, Lagos Island, which finally gave up and gave her up to death.
Nigerians have been agitated, as usual, and the authorities are responding in a typical manner to another failure of the Nigerian system.
In the end, Nigerians will have their say, the government will have its way, nothing will change and we will wait for another disaster to strike. That is the Nigerian way.
Vwaere’s unfortunate accident is especially moving.
The young woman had spent six years and millions of naira training to be a doctor at the expensive private Babcock University in Ogun State.
Two weeks to the completion of her training, Nigeria happened to her.
Two tragic failures occured in a sequence.
First, an elevator that was known to be derelict because of improper maintenance, became unhinged.
Secondly, the young woman could not be provided emergency evacuation and treatment in the hospital where she worked.
For more than an hour, the deceased could not be removed from the collapsed machine, as she cried for life with moving urgency.
It is sad that she died regardless. By the time she was rescued, treatment was too late.
When a system is too broken, it has severe implications for those who depend on it. You do not suddenly intervene and correct a systemic issue.
That is what happened in Odan, where the Nigerian story played out.
The accident had to happen to someone, Vwaere or other, for there to be attention.
WhatsApp groups were lit up with annoyance at the death of the young doctor.
Who would not be dismayed by the plucking of such a promising flower at the time of flourishing?
When a system is too broken, it has severe implications for those who depend on it. You do not suddenly intervene and correct a systemic issue
Some colleagues of the deceased at the Lagos Island General Hospital immediately embarked on a protest, while a candlelight procession was organised by Lagos State Chapter of the Nigeria Medical Association (NMA).
It didn’t stop there.
The Lagos State Chapter of the Nigeria Medical Association (NMA) directed all doctors in the three government hospitals on the island to go on a strike, as it announced a five-day mourning while demanding an unbiased investigation into the incident.
Playing to the gallery, the Lagos State Government moved to calm nerves.
The State Governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, was so sorry about what he called a mechanical failure of the elevator, promising to carry out an investigation.
In a follow-up, the general manager of the Lagos State Infrastructure and Asset Management Agency (LASIAMA), Adenike Adekanbi, the agency responsible for the maintenance of the elevator, was suspended from duties while the installation and maintenance contractors were said to be under police investigation.
But we have seen the authorities firing on all cylinders when it is too late before. We shouldn’t be fooled.
Every time there is a fatal disaster, often resulting from the failure of regulation or administration, the government instinctively reacts knee jerk to fool us about its seriousness.
Our governments at any level are not serious. They have never placed much value on safety or human life. But they know how to pay the game to which Nigerians lap like a dog.
For several years, buildings have been collapsing all over Lagos, Abuja and other parts of Nigeria.
Those buildings have government-approved plans and building permits and are inspected.
But the inspections are hardly ever done with the purpose of keeping lives safe.
We saw it in the collapse of the 360 Degrees building on Gerard Road, Ikoyi, Lagos State, in 2022, when Femi Odubona perished in his own construction along with 46 others.
In that case, a building design with obvious errors was approved by state officials, leading to a structural failure.
As in the case of the death in the elevator, the collapse resulted from negligence by agencies responsible for approval and supervision.
When investigations are carried out, they become a dead end. Inquiries are a waste of tax payers’ money.
Recently, it took an investigation by a journalist to potential save Nigeria from another air disaster.
The Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), suspended Max Air Boeing 737 aircraft from operation over safety concerns last month.
Until a reporter, Tunde Hundeyin, wrote an article titled, “Passenger Alert: Nigeria is About to Record Another Air Disaster,” the NCAA did not act on the looming danger.
Nigeria is on an autopilot and many things that could fail have not, thankfully. Call it grace or miracle.
If everything that could go wrong really goes wrong, there would be disasters like the one that consumed Vwaere Diaso frequently.
Every day, Nigerians are exposed to incalculable risks at home, on the road and at work.
Many of the structures that comprise our electrical, water, transportation and building infrastructure are death traps.
For a buck, public officials will look the other way instead of ensuring public safety.
A lot of infrastructure that have been paid for are either of inferior quality or neglected.
Nigerians have died as a result of simple negligence in such phenomena as pot holes on the road, lack of street signs, absence of warning at construction sites or derelict equipment in a government hospital.
I have seen water drip from the ceiling into buckets on the floor at the Murtala Mohammed Airport and the airport thrown into total darkness due to power failure.
This is the culture that breeds the Vwaere situation. We must all be concerned and act before things get worse.
We cannot be okay with ignoring incidents but be lit up when accidents occur. Accidents will occur and when they do, we should not be shocked.
In our society, we pay no attention to little details, neither do we care when things are falling apart.
It is not in our culture to want perfection, but it is in us to shed tears when danger mature into disaster.
Getting angry when it is too late is not a solution.
The solution is being less tolerant of patterns of neglect in the operation of infrastructure.
Our public officials are not going to change their behaviour anytime soon, when they are mostly driven by their pockets. We must assume that they do not care
We need the broken window approach where all of us have zero tolerance for even little malfunction of facilities that we share.
Ordinary Nigerians need to stop acting like chickens with the head cut off whenever there is an avoidable accident.
We lack the staying attention to follow through to get results. Our focus lasts only for that little moment.
We can stop these accidents if we all become the chief regulators of our facilities. If you see something that is broken, make a loud noise before it gets worse.
Take responsibility. Take pictures, record videos, write to the media, take to social media.
There must be no approval for poor services.
We cannot fail to call those responsible for service delivery to task when systems are failing and expect good service.
Good citizens will challenge those in authority and that is everybody’s job.
The right time to make a noise is before things go wrong. Incidents that are near-misses must be made very important to avoid accidents.
Our public officials are not going to change their behaviour anytime soon, when they are mostly driven by their pockets. We must assume that they do not care.
That is why there will be more accidents like the one that killed Vwaere Diaso, unless citizens begin to act strongly and intentionally.
