SONALA OLUMHENSE FROM PUNCH
Many years ago, as I left Rhode Island, United States, after participating in the first Chinua Achebe Colloquium at Brown University, I walked through the New York-bound train. One of the few seats available was in the last car. I took it and found myself sitting opposite a smiling white woman.
Now deceased, I was meeting the remarkable Prof. Jean Herskovits. She held a D. Phil. in African History from Oxford University and wielded a teaching and research record as long as your arm. Of greater interest, to me, was her extensive knowledge of Nigeria and Nigerian leaderships since the First Republic.
One of her projects in Nigeria had been the TY Danjuma Foundation, on the board of which she served, and for which she travelled to Nigeria frequently.
Last Monday in Benin City, that foundation inaugurated the Merry Ehanire Mother and Child Hospital, a top-of the line facility aimed at providing healthcare services for mothers and children.
I warmly commend Lt. Gen. TY Danjuma (retd.) and his wife, former Senator Daisy Danjuma, for their persistent commitment to elevating the society around them. This is demonstrated nationwide in the organisations and causes they support through their philanthropy.
Around the world, charitable giving empowers individuals and civil society organisations to accomplish important objectives in communities and demographics that governments are unable or unwilling to reach.
The irony is that without foreign philanthropists, Nigerian civil society would almost be inexistent: throttled to death by the combination of ruthless governments and officials, and the unwillingness of Nigerians who have more than they need to spare a thought for those who simply need a little help.
This is where the Danjumas have proved to be cut from a different cloth. Where they could be building mansions abroad and buying private jets or yachts, or burying their wealth in the ground, they are investing in people and communities, most of whom they do not know, and making sure that those enterprises work.
In Merry Ehanire Mother and Child Hospital, for instance, they have built a facility that their own family can also use, rather than travel to hospitals of lesser quality abroad. They have plugged into the universal cry for improved maternal and child health worldwide, which is a key issue in the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations.
Some 11 years ago, Nigeria was a key player in Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon’s Every Woman, Every Child, which was launched in 2010. In 2009 and 2010, African countries had launched the African Union’s Campaign for Accelerated Reduction of Maternal Mortality, with Nigeria launching in October 2009.
Among others, in October 2012 Mr. (Goodluck) Jonathan pledged a four-year, $33.4m investment to prevent at least a million deaths of Nigerian women and children by 2015. He said he felt the pain personally because he was the lone male survivor of his mother’s nine children, seven of them having died as infants. I supported his efforts.
Nobody, including Mr. Jonathan, appears to care what became of those federal intentions nor of the continuing challenge of maternal mortality in Nigeria, one of the world’s worst. Health was of no particular concern to his successor, Muhammadu Buhari, who inaugurated the fake Central Hospital in Benin City in 2016, among others. So fake that two years later, the local PDP was inviting Buhari back to see the “scam” of which he had been a part, as the hospital had not taken off. So fake that, in 2022, the Godwin Obaseki government announced that it was being “repositioned” because of its “decay.”
The Danjumas provide a spark of hope that in private enterprise and philanthropy – Nigeria’s vast kleptocracy and haphazard governance permitting – we may discover the path to a brighter day. Elsewhere, philanthropists continue to drive communities forward, and in doing so, also help governments. In his lifetime, Warren Buffet has given away over $46bn. This year alone, MacKenzie Scott has already given $2.15bn; in the two previous years, the fledgling philanthropist had surprised over 700 groups with over $8.6bn in support grants.
