Ike Ekweremadu: Our Children, Our Achilles Heels

By Femi Kusa

johnolufemikusa@gmail.com

olufemikusa@omail.ai

If wishes were horses, Ike Ekweremadu, his wife, Beatrice, and their doctor, Obinna, Obeta, would be home from London by now, their daughter, Sonia, in tow or left in the hospital. Either genuinely or in eye or lip service, many Nigerians led by former president Olusegun Obasanjo knelt before His Lordship Jeremy Johnson, begging that he has mercy on a “Christian” and “First Offender” Ekweremadu, a lawyer and Deputy Senate President of the 9th Nigerian Senate.

But Mr. Justice Johnson sent Ekweremadu, 60, to prison for nine years and six months, Beatrice, 56, to four years and six months, and Obeta, 50, for 10 years. He cleared Sonia, 25.

The Ekweremadus tricked a 21-year-old Lagos Street trader into London, promising employment on 7000 Pounds Sterling for domestic services. Their intent was to discreetly harvest one of his kidneys as a replacement for Sonia’s damaged kidney in an 80,000 pounds sterling surgery at the Royal Free Hospital. Obeta, a resident of the United Kingdom, introduced the young man to the hospital as a kidney donor. The Ekweremadus ran into trouble when the surgeons discovered the so-called donor did not know why he was in the hospital. In the United Kingdom, as in Nigeria and the rest of the civilized world, that is a grievous crime!

Many Nigerians are nailing the Ekweremadus. Many others sympathize with them, not because they do not know they committed a crime. They look at the matter from the softer side of life as a temptation before which the Ekweremadu buckled as parents desperate to save the life of their dying daughter. While not being judgemental, this column cannot agree with Obasanjo that Ekweremadu is a “Christianly” first offender. Ekweremadu has a record of back-door ways and means. A man’s behavior, his propensity, is inseparable from him, like his shadow.

In 2015, Ekweremadu connived with Senator Bukola Saraki to undeservedly become Deputy Senate President and, thereby, deprive the ruling party of control in the 9th Nigerian Senate. Of the immorality called politics, this column commented at that time in an article titled WHATEVER IS FALSE WILL INEVITABLY COLLAPSE. That misdeed collapsed in 2019 with the ouster of Bukola Saraki, Ekweremadu’s “principal-in-crime”; not only from the Senate but also from the mainstream politics of his home and power base, Kwara State. In 2023, Ekweremadu’s penchant for backdoor deals would land him, his wife, and his Nigerian doctor contractor in London in jail.

If Ekweremadu is as straightforward as Obasanjo told Mr. Justice Johnson, he would not have traveled on the route he trod. He has the money and the influence to shop around the world for more than one kidney for Sonia. An 80,000 pounds Sterling (N46.6 million) surgery is not what a poor man can think of, nor is a 7000 pounds sterling (N4 million) offer for the domestic services of a 21-year-old who pushes his wears in wheelbarrows in the Lagos Street trade. So, why would they remove the roof from a poor man’s house to roof their own palatial home? Do they not have other children who have healthy kidneys? Who wishes to part with one of two kidneys? What if the spare and only kidney fails?

While I do not and will never support criminality, my heart softened somewhat towards the Ekweremadus when I remembered the Yoruba proverb that ENI OGUN KO DE BA LO N PE ARA RE L’OKUNRIN (It is the man on whose doorstep there is no war who calls himself a man). I am not exonerating the Ekweremadus of crime. What I am saying is that what we vehemently condemn in other persons may be inherent in us. How many people do not remove the roofs on other people’s houses to roof theirs? It is all about hacking other people down and out to make ourselves happy. It is all about breaking the command of the Almighty Creator that we are free to enjoy all the bounties he has placed in his wonderful creation for our benefit and enjoyment, provided that we do not hurt or make someone else unhappy while we do so. 

Are there no women who, desirous of having their own children strike the settled homes of other women? Are there no men who no longer respect the wedding ring on a woman’s finger? Is the rate of child motherhood not escalating? How many lives does a politician destroy to acquire power? What of the Accountant General who destroys the treasury to make himself and his family happy and impoverish the nation?

ACHILLES HEEL

I tried to see the travails of the Ekweremadus differently…as a parent. The children of nowadays are the Achilles’ heels of their parents. Many children have become gods and goddesses to their parents. The first of the 10 Christian commandments, says: THOU SHALL HAVE NO OTHER gods BUT ME.  The Bible says Jesus told Christians to remove their right eyes if they make them commit sin. But children have become gods and goddesses, the Achilles heel which makes their parents unable to think and act straight.

Many of today’s children or parents have not heard about the Achilles heel. It is the weakest point in everyone’s life. Achilles was a valiant Greek soldier in those days of wars with Troy. In Greek mythology, the father of Achilles was a formidable king, and his mother an immortal nymph. She tried to make him, too, immortal. She held him by the heel and dipped his body into a river of immortality which made all his body but the heel by which she held him immortal. Thus, the heel became the weakest point in ACHILLES’ body. Achilles reportedly died of a poisoned arrow that struck his heel or ruptured the tibial artery.

CHILDREN

As the Achilles’ heel of their parents, many parents cannot sleep well or think straight when they think about the sagging lives of their children. Butterflies fly in their tummies. Goose pimples grow on their skin. Their hearts sink. They are nervous, hypertensive, and even become depressed! How many parents can stand upright, their leg unyielding, when they behold their children dying, and there seems to be nothing they can do about it? Such parents may end up desperate like the Ekweremadus, uprooting someone else’s roof to roof their own house!

The World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Royal College of Surgeons in the United Kingdom warned decades ago that a generation of children who were the Achilles heel of their parents was already upon us. The Royal College of Surgeons even prophesied that many of today’s children would not survive their parents. In the 1990s, the WHO advised member states to legally limit fat, sugar, salt, and chemicals in foods. Many countries turned deaf ears. The WHO said many studies conclusively revealed that many degenerative diseases, including diabetes, liver, kidney disease, and cancer, had origins in these food components. One transnational soft drink company reduced the sugar content of its product. The drink, being addictive, tasted so different that the consumers noticed the change without being told. They switched over to the substitute drink. As the rival company began to gain the upper hand in the market, the repentant or complying company threw caution to the wind and returned to the market, re-invigorated.

At that time, I was the Editor of the Guardian newspaper. As a health enthusiast, I easily saw correlations between emergent health profiles and the changing Nigerian diet, especially among young persons. I tried to make the Guardian investigate this assumption. But I gave up when I discovered that the study could be elaborate and that we did not have the funding and manpower capacity for it.

I reflected on my youth and found I was as guilty as the young ones of that time. Journalism almost damaged my health in the 1970s. In every newsroom, you are likely to find a poster on the wall that announces… THIS IS A MAD HOUSE.  What would you say of Theo Ola, the bulky News Editor of the Daily Times then? He was angrily waiting for your copy and watching his wristwatch or the wall clock. If you came late, he could abuse your mother, yes, your mother! Could you blame him? If the paper went late and money was lost, he could be fired. If you challenged him of abusing your mother, he could pull his top dress, clenching his huge fists, and come for you. If you were intelligent, you will flee! When the madness of the newsroom was over, Chief Theo Ola could seek you out, calm your nerves and invite you to the new canteen, down the road off Kakawa Street, home at that time of the Daily Times.

The new canteen taught me to drink beer and to eat meat pies. Where was the time to leisurely sit before a meal?  Even now, conditioned by the hurly-burly of those days, I still eat my meals in record time, seeing everyone else at the table as slow coaches! That’s not good for my health, I know. I am not alone. Nduka Irabor, News Editor of The Guardian, went to a nearby canteen one day before work peaked. He met Wole Agunbiade and Niyi Obaremi. He had lunch with them and bought each of them a bottle of beer. He finished his meal and his beer and returned to the newsroom before them. When they arrived, queries were waiting on their desks for “delaying production”.

One gentleman tried to get close to me because he and my wife were classmates in a master’s degree class at the University of Lagos (He would later become a commissioner in his state). He wrote an unintelligible report for Nduka Irabor, who called him “an illiterate”. Embarrassed, he rushed to my office to complain. I calmly explained to him this had nothing to do with degrees but profession! Did he not feel the heat the day Jullyette Ukabiala, one of our star reporters, came late to the newsroom long after I had angrily closed the cover page, ready to be beaten the next day by The Punch or The Concord? I tore her copy to shreds and threw them at her, threatening to fling the telephone box at her if she did not quickly evacuate herself from my presence.

In the newsroom, editors are like military officers at war in the unending battle against deadlines. Here was Jullyette, the young woman we all called queen, a nickname given to her by Lade Bonuola, our boss. She went to Ladbone as we call Bonuola but returned empty-handed. What would a general do? Fight a war all alone without able officers? Would Bonuola produce a good quality newspaper all by himself? Could I if I put down Irabor? I was humbled, though, when Jullyette came to my office the next day and narrated her experiences to me over the past month. Our Defence Correspondent, who would later go on study leave to study for a higher degree in strategic studies at Kingston College, had terrible encounters with the Chinese army and even fainted in a taxi that was bringing her to the office. The driver detoured to a clinic where she got some respite before heading for the office. I sprang to my feet and sent someone to 118 Ogunlana Drive, Surulere, Lagos, and another to Papa Johnson, Brig. Mobolaji Johnson’s father, on Olonode Street, Ebute Meta. Both men sold apple cider vinegar (ACV) which defeats the Chinese army. Happily, Jullyette knew her Editor was under newsroom pressure, and was a loving, playing Editor.

DIGRESSION

Turns and twists are inevitable comic relief in matters this serious…children of this generation not surviving their parents. I could have been gone long before now but for that High Grace which linked me at the age of 27 to the knowledge of the physical body being a priceless gift from God to enable the human spirit to fulfill the purpose of their earthly existence. I lived in Shomolu with my grandmother and worked on Kakawa Street. I couldn’t drink Shomolu water, well water. For every meal, I drank two bottles of popular soft drinks. Each bottle had about seven cubes of sugar. In the office, I ate sandwiches or meat pies washed down with beer or soda. At parties, I went for big bottles of stout beer and wished to develop muscles. WATE-ON had not helped much. I tried Eggovin. To half a glass of this egg-based drink, I added one tin of peak milk, some cubes of sugar, and one raw egg.

My abdomen was bloated. I could hardly breathe. One slice of bread ballooned my abdomen to my back in search of more space. I knew I was dying. Two of my cousins (Tokunbo Otusajo and Sunmisola Oshidipe) died about then. I thought I was next in line. I couldn’t tell my father. My mother was gone when I was nine. My grandmother took me to her husband in the village. He led me to a female herbalist. She gave herbs that were to be cooked with a type of fish. I was to talk to no one before I ate it at cock crow, and the person to cook it was to talk to no one, including me. After I ate the meal, without cleaning my mouth before, a taboo for me in those days, my nurse, who was one of the wives of BABA ALAJO SHOMOLU, brought me a breakfast of pap and peppered stew. I was afraid to eat it. The doctors had said I had “wind”. Would I bloat up again and possibly die? I tried the meal…and was shocked that nothing happened. For lunch, she brought rice, and “swallow” for dinner. I rejoiced.

Youth service in Uyo and Calabar brought me knowledge of creation and the God-willed creation that died for the body in health and healing in sickness. When I married in 1983, my wife and I decided never to cook with MSG (monosodium glutamate) although her bosom childhood friend was one of the chief marketers. We knocked off bread, milk, sugar, margarine, and butter. Herb teas replaced processed teas. We ate beef for a while. We knew that egg like milk, was loaded with chemicals and hormones, and toxins from animals denied their God-given freedom to range. No one has ever cooked noodles in our cooking pots. My nostrils know the aroma, but my tongue has never tasted them. I brought up my children under this dietary regimen. For their milk, Mrs. Margaret Adu brought us 48 bottles of soya every week. They had a bottle each before breakfast and another before dinner. Mrs. Adu was such an expert at homemade soya milk, you wouldn’t know you were drinking soya. Boarding school and the exercise of free will in adult life however changed these children. Unpleasant experiences of the detours make them, like prodigal children, hunger for their robust childhood beginnings. Even at 73, I have not stopped being a diet “headmaster” of a parent. My health still experiences vestiges of the carelessness and misadventures of youth, which I long to protect young ones against.

SONIA

I pray Sonia receives all the help she needs. Guilt feelings over the plight of her parents may compound her problems and theirs. Tragedies such as this bring families together. She should live to make them happy because they went down to make her live. I employ her case as an index of the health misfortunes or impending health calamities of many young persons who may not survive their parents. Many such children consume too much junk food. There is a 15-year-old somewhere in the Fagba area of Lagos who is battling cancer of the blood! Young persons in their twenties or thirties are dying of colon cancer.

Last year, a mother extracted a worm from the breast wound of a girl barely 15. This worm survived in saline solution for over three days! A girl in youth service tested positive for nephritis and kidney cysts, exactly what killed her father. Many young women take oral thrush and vaginal candidiasis with kid gloves, unknown to them that they are signals of burgeoning candida colonies in their bodies caused by sugar overload. Sonia’s diet may have contributed to her kidney challenge. There is hardly a LIFE FORCE in junk food. It is loaded instead with free radicals, toxins, chemicals, heavy metals, etc. It has no minerals, vitamins, antioxidants, proteins, etc. It is a load of carbohydrates without chromium and an invitation to diabetes. It makes the assaulted organs grow weak and die in installments That is why many young people hooked on sugar and junk food may become brain-fogged, hyperactive, and scatter brains. They may bloat up, suggesting that the heart and the kidneys are becoming weak. The intestine is often damaged. In fact, the Royal College of Surgeons said…DEATH BEGINS SLOWLY BUT SURELY IN THE INTESTINE. Every parent should discourage junk food at home and should never tire of focusing on the family, however old and independent the children may be on THE CREATION DIET, the diet The Creator gave to mankind to nurture their bodies in health and to nurse it in sickness.

FEMI KUSA was at various times Editor; Director of Publication/ Editor-in-Chief of THE GUARDIAN NEWSPAPER; Editorial Director/ Editor-in-Chief of THE COMET NEWSPAPER. Currently, he keeps a Thursday Column on Alternative Medicine in the NATION NEWSPAPER.

Some of his health columns may be found on www.olufemikusa.com and in MIDIUM a digital platform for writers. He is active also on Facebook @ John OLUFEMI KUSA.

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