After staying out of public glare following five decades of an enviable professional career and a stint as a political appointee, Professor Adenike Grange recently launched her memoirs in a way that could have suggested she never left the scene. Far from trying to make a point, her agenda centered around family, legacy and setting the record straight. The professor of Pediatrics, a woman of many firsts and former Health Minister reveals why In Pursuit of Excellence, Truth & Justice, is a project whose time has come.
For those who have read your book, it must be awe inspiring to have been around someone like you; only for them to discover you are just like anyone else…
In those days it was even more strange. You found yourself the only black girl among like twenty white men. Somehow, I did not feel self conscious at that time. I should have been. It was to the point that they would call us, “Nike and gentlemen”. The whole month of March is now dedicated to celebrating women. In those days, no one used to do that. In Nigeria, I am probably the third generation of privileged women. The second generation were my mentors. One of them I worked for, an obstetrician, Mrs Awoliyi. At that time, the consciousness to educate women was beginning and my father had a peculiar reason, because he was brought up by his mother. At that time, fathers were polygamists but my father did not joke with his female children to the extent that it made the boys jealous.
Our parents chose what was best for their children, not for themselves. He arranged a guardian for me in the UK, she was a widow. Women in developed countries especially in the UK then were just about to get out of the mould of domestic players, not necessarily of the professions. My guardian had a profession. She was a Salvation Army woman, ready to march on. Mrs Murray was a fantastic woman. We were lucky and she didn’t have any child. Also, God’s guidance. I went to a convent school.
Were you Catholic?
No, I was Methodist but at that time they did not discriminate. When I finally got home, I started looking back and wondering what it was that made me so resilient and focused. Two things; the fact that my father was like that and I got to know him like that. Secondly, we were God conscious. I chose friends that were more like me so they were more or less reinforcing the characteristics I had already acquired. Children’s friends are very important.
How were intertribal marriages in those days?
My father kept telling me that the only thing he would like to see was that the parents of that man loved me. Forget about the love of the man. His parents wooed my father. Many marriages break down because of third parties. You can say it was my mother in law that sustained the marriage. She came to me and said, “don’t forget that I am here, you can ask me to do anything”. Men were kind of confused. They wanted well read, professional women but wanted domesticated and submissive wives and the two cannot go together.
That was one of the reasons I started to write the book, to let people know how things were in those days and how we really need to do some balancing acts, otherwise things would fall apart. My husband and I were married for 49 years. Just before 50, he died. I didn’t know we would survive that long.
And then it came to the professional life. For women, it’s turbulent. You have to fight to realise your own goals, otherwise you will be passed over. You are now better off. My peers and I have been at the forefront of breaking the ceiling. I believe my grandchildren may not be able to manage. Their sense of identity is being questioned abroad. My granddaughter was here (in Nigeria). Everyone was so impressed. Money is not the end, there’s something else about working for your own country.
Don’t feel you can be loafing around. That is not in the character of our own family.
Did you ever have to shrink yourself for your husband in your career?
I went into my fellowship 10 years after I should have done. When we got back to Nigeria it coincided with the time when they were starting fellowships and because in Nigeria one could have help in the home, that was how I managed. I tried abroad. I was able to get a diploma which I got after 9 months because fellowship would have taken two years. By that time my husband’s father died. There was a lot of sacrifice. When it came to who was to continue to study, it was he.
We had to go to Malabo to bury his father. He said he couldn’t leave his mum, so we stayed there for another one and a half years. There, I discovered that this business of suppressing both personal and national development is inherent not only in Nigeria. In this Malabo, the leader has been there for over 30 years. They have oil. That place should have been somewhere like Monaco.
Why is it that it is the bad people that actually get the throne?
Is it that we are giving them the opportunity or a reflection of our own value system?
It was like that in Rwanda until this present ruler, although he’s still staying long. That problem is not whether we are democratic or not democratic. Many of these leaders don’t have that confidence and their self importance is derived from others loving them. But the sycophants don’t love them. Their value judgments are warped. “I am doing well because that fellow says I am doing well. Why does he say so? Because I give him what he wants”.
It’s not because of lack of formal education but lack of value judgment. That is why I wrote my book. Excellence—there was a village where I went with UNICEF. There was no water. I had to add advocacy to it. Why do I advocate for justice? There’s no premium on life.
When there’s an accident it’s very visual. Can we use that to try and jog their conscience?
I want to tell the common man that his life is precious. When there’s an accident it’s also a lesson for you, the leader, to know that no matter how much you have stashed away abroad thinking that when you are ill you can see a doctor over there; once you have an accident here, it’s gone. This was from the Anthony Joshua case. Development includes sacrifices.
How has life been as a retired widow?
Many a times I wish Jerry (Dr Jerry Grange) were still here to participate in post labour pleasantries. This is our time. That, I miss. I try not to dwell on that aspect. I am still aware, healthy and still have something to do. I try and live within my means and when I can’t, my children step in. One thing that’s helping is mobility and cognition.
What do you think of GenZ?
They are emotionally very retarded but when it comes to knowing how the world works, science and all that, they got it. I’m happy that my life has been spared till now to see the differences between five generations. You have to be open minded and if there’s any way at all that one can assist them to have a vision that is not so shortsighted, that is what we need to do.
Have we thought about the long term complications of AI? Their language is very different, especially the ones that are 15, 16. They want to behave like 20 year olds but at the time their brains have not advanced beyond 13.
What of the likeability factor? Is it important for women to have a personality to be successful?
It’s important for women to know that we have power to get other people not to like us simply by being smart. Even if you are smart, you need to be sensitive to other people’s reactions to your own power. We are much more efficient than men. We have that multitasking power. It’s emotional intelligence that does it for us.
Most women who are not in tune with their emotional intelligence behave like men. They are not able to accept that other people are doing better than them. I can tell my granddaughter, “so you know that? That’s more than I know”. You need to humble yourself.
We have a crisis in the health sector because of brain drain and negative care culture. What can we do about this?
When I was minister, I saw why we failed in the way that we have tried to organise the health system. The Federal will look after the teaching hospitals, the State will look after the secondary care general hospitals, private hospitals are looked after by private people and the Local Government looked after primary care. But when you look at the structure of governance, Federal wants to be in control of everything.
The State wants to be in control of the community, the Local Government. Tinubu comes and says, he wants to give Local Government their own money. He meant well but unfortunately, it’s too late because they don’t have capacity to spend that money wisely and deliver the goals of efficient, effective primary care. They don’t have the human resource and you cannot train for that. They don’t have the disposition, administrative expertise, education for the most part.
Someone like you, if you had a chance to either be governor or chairman of a Local Government, you would rather be governor. Local Government is much more important if you want to get things done. They are not looking at heads of local governments as technocrats. There is no accountability framework. Primary healthcare is something that should be done together with all stakeholders including the women, farmers. When they get them together they talk politics. Money makes it worse.
We can’t solve it unless that constitution is tackled. Even as minister of health, I wasn’t as clear as that. They don’t want the Local Government to do the right thing because they will become more popular and the people would revolt. It has to do with the legislators representing those areas coming there to give the support.
When I was minister I had a conference, chose some key administrative leaders like permanent secretaries. Chairmen sent their secretaries from local governments. We wanted a situation analysis. They knew that I was finding the solution to all the confusion in healthcare. I was appointed Health Minister but the Perm Sec was in charge. That was when they started working against me directly. Instead of worrying about what was happening on State level and Local Government, they wanted to give contracts, change furniture every three years.
As a paediatrician of repute, one has to ask you to wade in on the ongoing case involving the toddler of writer, Chimamanda Adichie
It’s such a horrific thing to have happened. It’s very difficult to be judgmental. A profession that is supposed to be at the apex of ethical handlers has failed. It’s still a mystery to me. A regulatory body has to look very deeply into it to make sure it doesn’t happen again and make sure there’s accountability. Communication between the professionals and the parents of the child was breached. The gaps have to be identified.
People seem to have moved on. Let me tell you, they just sentenced the doctor that operated on Obasanjo’s wife. It was followed up to the end. It is possible he made a mistake. She was a healthy woman just doing a liposuction. It might take a long time to find out what actually went wrong but it has to happen.
You ran into some trouble when you served in the Yar’Adua administration and it’s clear now that what helped you were your antecedents and reputation for integrity. What do you think about service to one’s country now?
If you go to serve, don’t expect things to be smooth running. You have to have your own warriors. It’s not a small thing to want to serve because you’re going upstream. There are a few people you can swim with. Identify them, flow with them.
In the earlier part of the 4th Republic, it seems that women were targeted with the proverbial banana peel. It seems to have affected the presence of women in the political space. They try to choose those who will not oppose them and when they do, they just sack them. If you are unable to, you have a short term there. It’s all a question of trying to navigate their system.
The reason I felt I could survive was because, first of all, my boss Professor Olikoye Ransom Kuti survived. If you want to know any minister who has been so straight, had nothing to do with corruption whatsoever, it was he. When we were both at LUTH I was the one looking after his patients when he was minister so it was that close. He was empathy personified. If he could survive, why not me?
And also, they looked for me. I took my case to Babangida who had been the one in power when Olikoye was minister. I said, “why do they want me out when you helped Olikoye to help us?” He smiled. He said it was more or less a sacrifice he had to make. He said before Olikoye took the job he had said to him, “I will not participate in any of these things”, but he found that it was still worthwhile to have him as minister of health because he wanted that sector to be better.
I said, “what am I supposed to do?” He said, “I will tell them all to stop talking about you in a derogatory manner”. Things started diffusing. He said he was sorry that what happened had happened. They are just using women as tokens.
When people heard you had written a book, they thought it would be something like Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala’s book, because she was of the same era and also got burnt. Okonjo-Iweala had a soft landing. She made sure that she was already global. I’m partially global but not financially independent of Nigeria. She has done that for herself, thank God. I’m very proud of her. She has become somebody nobody can drag back.
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