A reporter’s chronicle of Professor Ahidjo’s vision to build the biggest Hospital in Nigeria

Sam Kayode

Everyone has a right to dream. So if the Chief Medical Director (CMD) of the University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital (UMTH) Professor Ahmed Ahidjo’s long term dream is to turn the hospital to a first class institution with the largest number of bed spaces, in a country where little regard is given to the health sector, then a large chunk of his dreams have come to fruition. And this many observers make bold to say concerns the ongoing rehabilitation of dilapidated structures and building of new ones going on in the hospital community. Equally, former visitors to the previous massive single German replicated building facility would now actually say thank God the hospital has been transformed into the reality of this century. The entire world has been driven by dreams so why not the managers of the health sector of Nigeria. This is because dreams rule the world of progress today. Without dreams there would be no progress in the polity of those who refer themselves as developed world. Without dreams, life in the third world will be worse than oblivious. Robert Kennedy, Eleanor Roosevelt, Walt Disney, Harriet Tubman, Mohamed Ali, Mike Tyson, John Lennon, Ralph Emerson, Martin Luther King and Mohandas Gandhi were all dreamers at one time or the other of their lives before achieving anything admirers call meaningful today.

When the late Rev Martin Luther King made his dream speech during the march on Washington for jobs and freedom in August 1963, he never lived to see his dream come to fruition. Those who felt ‘rights activist’ King was too ambitious, had to sniff life out of him because he was “going too far” according to sources and if care is not taken the Baptist minister’s “dream” may come true too soon. If it does, like that of Joseph in the bible, how will the haters respect a black man like Barack Obama who had made it to the White House? To his killers, change from institutionalized servitude to freedom is not an option in this life. It took one bold proactive man like King to even dream about the foundation of change in that society and it’s beginning to materialize. Change is the most permanent phenomenon in all spheres of life even here in Nigeria. And it is one of the phenomenal reasons for the very existence of Professor Ahmed Ahijo who is almost spiritually tied to the hospital as he confessed during the recent celebration of 40 years of the facility.

This is why lots of dignitaries gathered recently at the University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital (UMTH) to see the “changes” brought about by the present management team led by Professor Ahmed Ahidjo for themselves and to celebrate the landmarks of achievements planted in the facility.

Transition from the one building complex system to institutes, complexes and centres equipped for the next 40 years of service

Indeed, there is no harm in dreaming, it is dreams that give rise to visions. If the old men will dream and the young men will see visions, God himself will be glorified that humanity would be the better for it as is the case of the UMTH which is now spiced with several new structures to enhance efficiency in the treatment of patients in north east Nigeria and beyond.

It has taken the proactive nature of an alumni turned CMD Prof Ahidjo to design and start new structures in the facility to create space for desperately needed expansion. This is because he saw it all from the beginning, when the foundations of the departments were being hatched till this day that the “institute, Centre and Complex system” is now a reality. No wonder we have ” 150 bed trauma centre” completed by his dexterity, The 1000 seats auditorium and conference centre built by Professor Babagana Zulum, the new GOPD/NHIS/Retainership complex, ” Physical Rehabilitation Centre,” built in collaboration with the Red Cross, “Burns Centre” built and donated to the Umth by the North East Development Commission (NEDC), “85 bed Kidney Centre” , “Radiotherapy and Cancer Centre” “150 bed Zainab Shamsuna Child and Adolescent Institute” and many others.

Professor Ahidjo is a visionary who has spent so much time transforming some of his dreams into fruition that even those who never thought anything good can come out of this facility are astonished at the speed with which he converts his dreams to reality.

Impeccable sources told metrowatchxtra that the CMD is so dogged that even when everyone in the finance department knows that there is no money for another new dream, the CMD goes on to utilize his political goodwill in high places to get what he wants done as it was in the completion of the notorious trauma centre. The trauma centre became “notorious” because it took several years after its pronouncements by the same Federal Government before it came to fruition.This facility is the major tertiary hospital in Borno and there was need to hurry up to get it done because so many people were loosing their lives to dastardly improvised explosive devises (IED) explosions from suicide bombers with no trauma centre to take them in. While the orthopedic ward was jam packed to the brim with both military and civil patients.

As a matter of fact, in one of my casual strolls round the facility towards the Old GOPD point during those desperate years of Professor Bashir Tahir’s reign as Chair of the Medical Advisory Committee (CMAC), I found out that some patients had to be given makeshift foams on the floor while their treatment started before they are transferred to the orthopedic centre where Dr Dapkana and his team will fix them up. Happily enough the CMAC himself will not move an inch during his ward rounds if the nurses do not get a space to fix up such squatting patients. There was a desperate need for more bed spaces and a trauma centre where such patients could enter the theatre almost immediately after certain protocols have been established. I became so worried myself about the Abuja politics, and the delay in the delivery of the project that I had to ask the minister Professor Adewole during one of his visits to the state to see things for himself and end up in the government house when he was going to give the hospital its trauma facility. From the reaction on his face, he was obviously miffed at my question and looked at Professor Bashir with a strong enquiry of who is this one? The then CMAC smiled and said, he is a journalist and one of our friends. I am sure my question left a strong impression on him before he left in 2019. After that encounter, I wondered how the CMD Ahidjo got along with the man because he was busy fighting his unions through out his tenure that it became obvious he will not be returned because of his inability to understand that union leaders are no longer students who can be bossed around like he used to when he was the Vice Chancellor of the University of Ibadan. All said and done, the media he seemingly despised so much made all the noise about the trauma centre for several years but nothing happened until Ahidjo came with his political dexterity and the building was delivered on a platter of gold and commissioned by President Mohammed Buhari in 2020. The CMD however told me exclusively about some of his moves which included shattering some red tapes to ensure that humanity does not continue to suffer at this part of the country. Professor Ahmed Ahidjo is really a genius like most lefties of his generation and his political dexterity while understanding the laws of the power game of those people upstairs in the supervising ministry of health is a case study for the future.

Coping with long term embarrassing challenges in the hospital

The recent celebration however of forty years of the UMTH by Professor Ahidjo and his team was a clear indicator that the facility has come of age and there was need to begin to plan for the next 40 years. And this must be done by facing obvious embarrassing challenges like hiccups in electricity supply and the rest. I mean taking each one as they come. Life in his own speciality which is interventional radiology would be miserable without steady electricity and computerization of the entire facility if he finishes his second term. Imagine going back to his office after his second term and having to open the windows for fresh air if the cooling facilities are not working. That is why he is working double hard now to fix the fixable.

After the on going new structures and electricity supply, then the right equipments to last for at least the next decade and up to date professionals by way of training and retraining is very paramount.
40 years has passed and the UMTH is still standing. Serving humanity as was pronounced on the day of its ceremonial opening by the late Alhaji Shehu Shagari on 23rd July 1983. So many waters have literally passed under the bridge and so many professionals have passed through the narrow corridors of the hospital and have retired. My mind goes to the American trained Professor Emeritus Babatunji Omotara who is the father of Environmental Epidemiology. Many have also left since the insurgency started in 2009 while many others stayed back. From the day the government started building a specialist hospital on the site until the day the federal government took over and completed it as a one stop shop teaching hospital, its been excellence of the highest standards expected in a third world country.The first patient was really admitted on 18th February, 1982. Although so much still needs to be done to ensure that the level of dilapidation over the years is reduced to a tolerable level. Much is also expected from management about training of certain scarce personnel as soon as all the structures are completed.

Nipping the challenges in the bud

Just before Professor Mala Sandabe took over as the CMAC, I had hinted the then CMAC Professor Bashir that the medical records people were busy bullying sick patients and thereby destroying the standards of the hospital. He vowed to do something about it and he really did start by making so many moves to correct the wrongs.
I went on another day this time as a patient for treatment and I saw the way one of the medical records people was shouting at a pregnant woman upstairs at the Obstetrics and gynaecology (O and G) department. I felt really sad that the medical records staff was doing it as if it’s her right to shout before patients will conform to her directives even if she was an illiterate as they always presume. This was because she was obviously untrained and to her shouting was normal in a hospital which should compete with a library for silence. How do you ask a pregnant woman in her third trimester if you were responsible for her pregnancy? Who makes such wicked statements in a hospital? I ended up in the office of Prof Sandabe and told him the exact location of where I saw the wrong doing and he promised to correct it. Apart from some of these expected excesses, the hospital has been absorbing so many categories of patients ranging from cases that should have gone to the primary and secondary hospitals before referrals. But I don’t blame them, what do you expect in a hospital like Umaru Shehu where Governor Babagana Zulum has done so much to lift the standard so that cleaners will no longer be allowed sometimes to do small stitches on people in the case of lack of personnel. That is why everyone goes to TH as the facility is referred to in maiduguri. Yet they still tug on like the giant they are in the region even finding time for certain forms of researches as was mentioned by the CMD during the news conference to herald the flag off of activities to mark 40 years. Right now, they are looking into the prevalence of kidney challenges in Borno as a whole. And we expect the result to be out very soon.

Before The unbundling of the single one stop shop hospital structure

A lot of history has been recorded with my binocular during the first tenure of the CMD but I took special attention of the old structure built by COSTAIN construction company where Emeritus Professor Umaru Shehu occupies the second floor like a colossus that he is. He was not my focus when Prof Ahidjo took over the management of the facility. I actually wanted to see Professor Babatunji Omotara, now retired too after 40 years of training medical practitioners. So I climbed up the two storey building, sat in his old moderate office and we had our first chat on cholera. He responded briskly because the disease was killing lots of people at the Muna garage axis of maiduguri and I needed to add the perception of community medicine in my report to sound more professional with my sources. He stood up and asked me to please allow him a minute to ease himself and returned to our discussion on how to stem the tide of the spread of cholera which had gone out of hand and killing people daily. I expected him to use a private facility just within his office to suit his status as a Professor. But he took a bunch of keys and headed to a shared facility outside his office. That to me was strange and needed correction. It occured to me that something really had to be done to make these academics a bit more comfortable than some of them are now. A senior Professor of such a high status must have his convenience and kitchenette so that he can function very well without too much distractions. It should not be optional in case he did not demand for it. Returning downstairs, i discovered the building was leaking due to heavy rains. It leaked on the ground floor which used to house the CMD’s before now. Sources allege that the leakage was from a tank upstairs instead. Whatever it was needed correction.
The newly promoted consultants without offices walked on the water into their MDCAN office to hang out while waiting for their calls. Its obviously an old building even though not yet expired from my findings at the works department. But something had to be done to correct so many wear and tear that had occurred over the years because it will surely become obsolete one day and expire. That is when such buildings should be pulled down due to old age if known contemporary technology must be applied. But to preempt that time, one could understand that the CMD who was born into a family whose father was a builder in Maiduguri, can easily see through these weak structures and is creating a plan B for almost all of them before they hit about 100 years and expire and must go one day.

Many other problems needs attention in the hospital. Problems like finance has bedeviled the facility and forced the CMD to begin to hunt for plan B’s and C’s to keep the hospital community going. He actually stressed the issue of finance as a major problem affecting the management of the hospital during a news conference to announce the flag off of activities of 40 years of the hospital. To Ahidjo, “if finance is settled, we would have cash to do a lot of things including lighting up the new facilities scattered around the compound.”

Perhaps due to serial disappointments from the Yola electricity company, the CMD has gone beyond the level of complete reliance on diesel for generation of electricity. Most of the facility has backup electricity due to solar panel supplies which is relatively cheap due to the abundant sun in the savanna. What ever foundation was set by the first indigenous CMD Prof Suleiman Lagundoye 1984-85 needs a lot of fine tuning by the first CMD to think of a futuristic plan to absorb the endless expansion brought about by modern medicine. These new structures have increased the beds in the facility beyond imagination making it the largest hospital in the country today by way of capacity to admit and treat.

The 40 years celebration proper

The celebration proper was quite elaborate. It was handled by a committee which was chaired by Professor Shehu Liberty of the department of Public Administration, with members like Professor Danjuma Gambo of the Mass Communications department all of University of Maiduguri (UNIMAID).

It started with Friday prayers on the 14th of July, and extended to Sunday 23rd July. A special church program was held on Sunday 16th July followed by a press conference held at the conference room of the hospital’s administrative block the following day. Other highlights of the celebration included, a walk round the giant old hospital structure led by the CMD and management team and several union leaders including the association of resident doctors, pharmaceutical society of Nigeria PSN, consultants and their MDCAN colleagues, the nurses who are the largest union on ground and some of the gentlemen of the media. Touching on social responsibilities, a medical and surgical outreach was held in kaleri and Gwange wards in the city of Maiduguri and surgical outreach at the new trauma center of the hospital.

There was also a day for career guidance at the Zulum auditorium and conference center for young people. That was followed by two public lectures in the same hall were former President of the Nigerian Labour Congress NLC Ayuba Wabba and former CMD Professor idris Mohammed gave the anniversary lectures. Wabba wanted unity among all the players in the sector in a long lecture but that is for another day.

They also had the commissioning of the child and adolescent centre and the foundation laying ceremony of some legacy projects by vice president Kashim Shettima. This was followed by a dinner and award night at the multi purpose hall of the government house Maiduguri. Several individuals were given special prices for their contributions in making the facility stand till this day in spite of the lingering torment of the insurgent Boko Haram at their backyard. I would have written a book if I continued the sequence seen by my binocular over the last four years in this facility. I will be running the highlights of the lectures separately at the fullness of time. Those treaties released from the two lecturers really need special handling especially that of Comrade Wabba who called for unity among warring professionals within the health sector.

ends.