Dr. Godwin Maduka, an aspirant for the PDP ticket for the November governorship poll in Anambra state, is a triple professor of pain management, surgery and anaesthesia. He bares his mind on the state of Medicare in Nigeria and his plans for Anambra state if elected as the next governor of the State. MYKE UZENDU was there for The AUTHORITY.
What are your plans in the area of security, education and industrialization?
Security is something that I’ve been dealing with for the past 30 years. As a governor, I will work together with the federal agency. I will even welcome consultation from around the world to take a firm hold of this insecurity. I will also work with the federal government because insecurity can manifest from instability of income. We need to consult with the youths after all, I don’t see an elderly man carrying gun and shooting somebody.
On education, you guys know that I’m a product of education. If you offer the society education, you produce giants, you produce professors. you produce economists, doctors, lawyers, even Reverends, you produce all kinds of people.
Education is the key to health, education is key to wealth, education is key to stability, education is key to tolerance, education is the key to the well being of a society. You know that all my life is either being educated, or educating people around the globe. So the samething I’ve done overseas, that’s what I’m going to do here.
I am educating people from all over the world; as a triple professor of pain management, surgery and anaesthesia, and leader in critical care, and neuromodulation. You do know that education is of paramount importance, and I’ve already said that Anambra will be the leader of education in Nigeria, under my watch. There will be a campus, not a university, campus, in every local government, you bring education to the kitchen and make it affordable.
You do know that I’m a pharmacist. I believe that most of the medication being imported is either adulterated or ineffective.
People are dying, they are taking the anti malaria medication, they still have malaria. You wonder why people have complications on malaria while they are still taking the medications. People have simple infections that should clear in three days, but it takes them almost two weeks to clear. That’s because the quantity of effective medication as I learned in pharmacy is very low. So under my watch, we will be producing locally assembled generic medication of every entity and illness in Anambra state. That’s industrialization, industrialization in terms of healthcare and pharmaceuticals. Sophisticated problem requires sophisticated thinking.
Would you support a regional network on security for South East.?
Everybody knows that I’m not receiving intelligence report. So I wouldn’t know what is involved in that. You know, something made them to get together to do that, on assumption of the governorship of Anambra state, I will look through that.
Onitsha has been a bee hive of fake drugs. How would you tackle the menace as a governor?
As a pharmacist, in my administration, fake drugs, you can kiss it bye because I know how to check for the efficacy of medication. There will be a random check, a lab will be set up. There will be war on that because it is somebody else you are killing if you sell fake drugs.
There’ll be a lot of undercover agents, they’ll come to buy medication and they will bring it to us and we’ll analyze it in the lab. If we find out that that drug is fake, you’ll be closed down and if you keep operating you become a criminal.
You can’t just say somebody has a fake drug without finding it out. We can come in there and you bring all your medication. Once you recognize that there is a watch dog, you’re going to give us the ones that haven’t been diluted, right?. But if we send people to go to targeted places, we’ll find out, we close you down.
By the end of my administration, whether first or second, we will be producing our own drug, which will be difficult to adulterate.
As a governor will you be going to London or the United States for medical treatment or vacation?
You know about that famous 17 floors I built in Anambra state, in Umuchukwu in Orumba local government. The purpose of it is to reverse medical tourism.
You are not really a country until you can heal yourself, feed yourself, become self sufficient, then you can call yourself a country. If you depend for everything on the Western world, or another continent, how do you call yourself a country? One of my motivation to come and run for the governor is to be able to use one particular area to reduce medical tourism and brain drain in medicine.
We are not investing in health, people set up shops, there’s no stringent regulation in here. In America just on little move that is in the wrong direction, you’ll answer to the law. But over here, there is laxity.
If somebody has a disease and provision having been made for that disease, there’s no patriotism in dying and living. Meaning that if you can’t find the help in our country to save you, and you have family and people dependent on you, you will even buy airbuss to take you to London.
(Cuts in) Even when the doctors are on strike and you are going to be treated by Nigerians doctors abroad. Is it fair?
We are beginning to change medical tourism. That’s why I’m back here in this soil. I wasn’t just coming here and being the governor, it is to use this avenue to change how to help our future generation, my children, your children.
Nigeria must wake up. Part of not waking up is in choosing people that have little or nothing to offer but empty words and we keep choosing them.
So it’s not fair to make Nigerians leave the soil but they are leaving not because they want to leave but because we make them to leave. We are blessed with resources. We need to start thinking home.
It is no fair when you can make changes in the healthcare industry in this country and it falls into your hand and you don’t do anything about it. And then when a bad illness strikes you, then you want to go over there. My brother it is not fair.
Ndigbo need justice, equity and fairness, not Biafra, say Gov Uzodimma
The Governor of Imo State, Hope Uzodinma, has emphasized that what Ndigbo needs at this moment is equity, justice and fairness in the Nigerian project and no Biafra as being canvassed in some quarters
Uzodinma, who hosted meeting of South East governors ahead of the unveiling of the Ebubeagu Security outfit from the region, on Sunday, April 11, 2021, in Owerri, also debunked security agencies claim of laxity on his government in the recent attacks on the Owerri Custodial Centre and the state Police Command by gunmen.
He said, “Following Monday’s attacks in Owerri and the preceding ones in various parts of the South-East, many people have come up with varying degrees of theories concerning the motive of the attackers and its consequences on our people. The most ridiculous of these theories is the one that posits that Igbo no longer want to be part of Nigeria hence their belligerence and predilection for war and violence.
“Nothing can be further from the truth. Perhaps that is the intendment of these merchants of violence across Igboland. But that is a wicked and malicious conspiracy theory, concocted by enemies of Ndigbo. Let us therefore in one voice declare here and now that the South-East is not at war with the federal government. If anything, we are on the same page in not only condemning terrorism anywhere in Nigeria but in fighting the same with all the arsenals at our behest.
“Like I have propounded time after time, Igbos are not at war with anyone neither is anyone at war with Ndigbo. The fact of the matter is that Igbos are the highest stakeholders in Nigeria. In most cities in Nigeria outside Igboland, our people constitute the second-largest in population, after the indigenes of the state. Our people have more stakes in real estate in virtually all the major cities in the country. Our people control the commanding heights of commerce all over the country. So who has more stakes in Nigeria than the Igbo? As I said at a different forum recently, no sane man will urinate into a well he and his family drink from. I know for sure that Igbos are wise enough to know that.
“What Ndigbo wants is justice, equity and fairness. A Nigeria that provides a level playing ground for all citizens. That is what we want, not Biafra. And we believe we can get what we want through constructive and tenacious engagement with fellow Nationals and relevant institutions, not by violence or war. Igbos have seen war, not in storybooks or in movies but real war. No right-thinking Igbo, who experienced the excruciating and devastating effects of the civil war on Igboland and our people, will vote for another war. The young and inexperienced may zealously want to beat the drumbeat of war, but it is our duty, as their parents and elders to talk them out of it.
“Those creating the erroneous impression that Igbos want to leave Nigeria are either naive or mischievous. Igbos need Nigeria just like Nigeria and Nigerians need Igbo”
