Vanguard, MONDAY, DECEMBER 24, 2012—45
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T the middle of last month, the week-long 18th congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) ended with a beginning of the process of leadership transition that would culminate with the emergence of a new president at the meeting of the supreme organ of state power, the National People’s Congress next March. The party congress that began on the 8th of November and culminated with the emergence of 7-member collegiate leadership of the standing committee of the politburo also confirmed the election of Vice President Xi Jinping as the General Secretary of the party, a position that made him first among equals of his other six colleagues in the standing committee, in similar fashion to the British Prime Minister, who leads his other colleagues in the cabinet by virtue of his leadership of the party. The politburo of the communist party actually consists of 25 members but the standing committee or executive committee consists of seven member collegiate leadership with the General Secretary at the core. To become the president of the country, the Secretary General of the party would have to be confirmed by the Supreme organ of the state, the National People’s Congress. The 25 member politburo, from where the 7member standing committee
emerges is actually elected from the two-hundred-plus member of the central party committee who were in turn elected by the over 2000 delegates elected through rigorous process from the party lowest level of village committees across the whole country. Contrary to distortion, China has the most rigorous process of leadership recruitment, in which money, special interest groups or media manipulation play no role at all. What the western media pundits call opaque method of leadership emergence in China is actually a rigorous and serious process, devoid of media blitz, political brinkmanship, theatrics and grandstanding in which, ordinarily, vested interests set the agenda and completely marginalise the popular voices of ordinary citizens. However, while the Chinese leadership was the first to admit the need for political reform to deepen the socialist democracy with Chinese characteristics, it has however, made clear that a western style liberal democracy is not definitely an option. Against the plethora of western media speculation that the communist party of China is riddled with factions and the 18th Congress of the party may not hold at all, or if it holds, would be over whelmed by infighting, the weeklong party congress held in absolute decorum and comradely conviviality as many reports noted. Having witnessed their prediction of acrimonious party congress
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fall on its face, the same media pundits are claiming the congress went without incident because it was a hollow ritual in which everything was previously rehearsed and played out as earlier arranged.
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t the 18th congress of the communist Party, the leadership, both the outgoing and the incoming spoke strongly and openly about the scourge of corruption and the ominous dangers it portend both for the party and the society. There is almost no known western party conference in which the leadership of the party has taken as much public soul-searching as the Chinese communist party and come down heavily on its ranks with a strong warning of imminent collapse if the cankerworm of corruption and other vices are not rooted out. How a party that could courageously interrogate itself in the open before a worldwide public could be
Nigeria's health woes: Any panacea? BY EMMANUEL ONWUBIKO
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OES anyone still remember one of the reasons adduced by the dark goggled, gun-wielding soldiers for truncating Nigeria’s attempt at democracy in 1982? Then military General Sani Abacha who announced the ouster of the democratically elected civilian government of Alhaji Shehu Shagari in 1982 among others, adduced the total failure of the health sector as reason for military intervened. In his radio/television broadcast heralding the infamous come back of the Khaki boys into politics of administering the country, General Abacha (late) accused the then widely incompetent civilian administration of President Shehu Shagari of rendering public health institutions prostrate as they had become mere consulting clinics. The bad news however is that in 1999 when the military decided to embrace their rightly constitutional role of defending the territorial integrity of the nation and thus subjecting themselves to the democratic ethos as stipulated in the grund norm, the state of public health sector was further diminished and almost nearly destroyed by the same military who ousted the democratic government over the same reason of running down health institutions. It was said that the military regime of General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida (rtd) even proceeded to enact a decree allowing medical workers in public hospitals to go into private practice thus further bastardising the standard of health services rendered to the poor Nigerians since medical doctors and pharmacists paid by tax payers found ways of establishing their private health centres whereby diverting rich clients and are even said to be in the habit of diverting public pharmaceutical products
for sale to their rich private hospital clients even as the standard of services rendered in public hospitals further nosedived. To quote Chinua Achebe, this was: 'when the rain began to beat us in our public healh services in Nigeria'. In the twilight of his military contraption called government, General Babangida appointed a well respected medical practitioner, Dr. Olukoye Ransome-Kuti as health minister and this medical revolutionary was said to have worked round the clock to revive primary health care services that have become moribund but very little success attended these heroic effort no thanks to the diminishing regime of professional discipline in public health sector. Is it then right to blame the proliferation of private hospitals for the sharp decline witnessed in the public health services today? Your guess is as good as mine since I like most people believe that it was morally reprehensible to allow publicly paid medical workers to run their own private clinics. This tendency gave rise to the widespread indiscipline and total lack of commitment on their part to fulfill their obligations to poor and disadvantaged seekers of health services who are the people of Nigeria and the real owners of the sovereignty of Nigeria. Health ministry officials especially those in charge of public procurement have embraced corruption as their stock in trade as against the public good. The other fundamental cause of collapse of the public health sector is corruption, lack of transparency and accountability in the utilisation of scarce public fund voted for the introduction of state of the art health facilities across the country. Nigeria’s public health infrastructure has collapsed so much so that the few available private hospitals are grossly insufficient to
referred as secretive, authoritarian and undemocratic can only make sense if one contextualises the heavily ideological bias of western media reporting. Having gone through the revolutionary storms, including the destructive inferno of the Cultural Revolution, the China’s evolving political process has berthed with more or less a political tradition or culture of seamless leadership transition at all levels. With the current emergence of the 5th generation of party and military leadership, due also to assume state leadership in due course, China has obviously matured in the critical sector of political succession, the bane of political and social crises in still many parts of the world. The question that could be relevantly asked in most of Africa with regards to the new leadership in China is whether anything untoward can happen to the already flourishing Sino-African relation which has seen trade between the two sides advancing to almost 200 billion U.S dollars, with China as Africa’s largest trading partner. China in the past ten years or more have established political consultative mechanism with several Africans states through which Beijing co-ordinate action on crucial international issues with its African States partners. The bilateral consultative mechanism through which China engages the Africa states have also been reinforced and broadened by the process of the forum on China-Africa cooperation, FOCAC, an institutional mechanism formally inaugurated in 2000. More than ten years after, the FOCAC process has become one of the world’s most dynamic
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BY CHARLES ONUNAIJU
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China new leadership and Africa
The new leadership in China would ostensibly seize the momentum of the current Sino-Africa relation, energise it, and focus it for more concrete and beneficial engagement
It was morally reprehensible to allow publicly paid medical workers to run their own private clinics; this tendency gave rise to the widespread indiscipline and total lack of commitment on their part
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cater for the growing number of people in search of better health services. This decline in the standard of health services obtainable locally has created a new kind of problem simply identified as health tourism whereby rich Nigerians travel out to countries like Egypt; Germany; India and the United States of America to seek for solution to their diverse health challenges.
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igeria is said to be losing billions of foreign currency through these ever expansive lifestyles of seeking for better health care outside of our shores. I will return to the all important problem of health tourism and its implication on the general economy of Nigeria and the state of health care services for the millions of other less endowed citizens without the resources or means to join the ever growing number of rich Nigerians seeking for foreign health services brought about by their proximity to the corridors of political power. Chinua Achebe in his latest book, There was a Country: A personal history of Biafra, also lambasted African dictators for ruining their local health care and exposing their citizens to untimely and avoidable death. Achebe who was fatally wounded in a road accident had to relocate to the United States of America so as to be able to get the kind of standard health care that was able to save his life. In this widely acclaimed book, Achebe
mechanism for international cooperation. With China,s steady march to the core of contemporary global relation, the new leadership would certainly deepen cooperation with Africa. Unlike the West, China do not see Africa as a major humanitarian concern in which their leaders are more involved ostensibly for charity work, after they have left office as former U.S president Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and even George W. Bush are involved. China has a clear cut African policy in which Beijing and Africa is engaged in wide range of issues of mutual interest. Africa is not Beijing’s turf for security surveillance or a humanitarian disaster zone, fit only for elaborate compassionate rhetoric, but a serious actor engaged in a mutually productive partnership. The new leadership in China would ostensibly seize the momentum of the current SinoAfrica relation, energise it, and focus it for more concrete and beneficial engagement. Having highlighted his desire since he became the general secretary of the party for a deep communion between the Chinese people and the party, Mr. Xi Jinping would most likely deepen co-operation between China and Africa, taking it beyond the inter-state relation, to building a community of Chinese and Africa peoples common interests. The 18th congress of the communist party of China has elaborated a dynamic vision in which it will steer China in the next five years and extrapolating from this vision, Africa’s cooperation with Beijing would receive a massive boost. *Mr. Onunaiju, a journalist, wrote from Abuja.
was full of praises for Dr. Nelson Mandela for showing good example as a leader who truly embraced selfless service while in office. Achebe drew a corollary with the late Togolese leader Mr. Gnassimgbe Eyadema who spent nearly four decades in office but could'nt build a single specialist health care institution in his home country which resulted in his death while being flown abroad for medical attention after he suffered heart attack. Achebe wrote thus; “…Eyadema had died from a heart attack even as he was about to be flown to Europe for treatment. If Eyadema stayed that long because he was good, why was there no hospital in Togo to attend to his condition”. Corruption is the answer if you ask me. In South Africa, the 96 year old Nelson Mandela was driven to a South African military hospital where he was reported to have undergone successful surgery. South African political and business elite attend to their health care services inside South Africa because previous administrations laid solid foundation for functional, workable and standard public health care services. But in Nigeria, a sitting President Umaru Musa Yar’adua was surreptitiously flown abroad for medical attention without the slightest knowledge of his then Vice President. While the medical challenge of then President Yar’adua persisted, reports in the media stated that several medical delegations from Germany visited the Presidential Villa to offer him specialise treatment which is said not to be available in Nigeria because of the run down public health care services. One year after coming into office, President Jonathan’s wife Mrs. Patience was said to have been flown to Germany for medical attention. Continues tomorrow on page.18 *Mr. Onwubiko, a social critic, wrote from Lagos.