Recently, he clocked 80 and red carpets appeared all over Lagos to celebrate him for his contributions to Lagos State and Nigeria in his chosen field of medicine and his vocation, politics. Amidst the celebrations, we requested an interview. It took place in his beautiful home at the GRA, Ikeja. In this interview, Dr. Finnih, politician, health advocate, administrator and a generous giver, maintains the lane of his medical profession, the main reason he got into politics. Excerpts.
At 80, you look so young. Has your profession in any way helped your ageing process?
I personally will say it is by the grace of God. No matter what the profession is, whatever sacrifices you make, whatever food you take, the fact remains that once you have the Grace of God, all things fall into place.
I will admit that anything you do has to be in moderation, what you eat, your alcohol intake etc. because it doesn’t only affect your brain but your body as well. The fact remains, just try to do everything in moderation and most importantly pray for the Grace of God to protect you in all that you’re looking to do.
You’ve been a medical practitioner since the 70s. What is your assessment of the Nigerian health sector If you have to measure it with WHO standards?
I want to add that I became a medical doctor in 1968. it’s been a long story and my political activities generally are limited to my thought to want things to get better. We have a lot of challenges in the medical field, particularly facilities, personnel, human resources and if you look through the records of those years, doctors were always on strike, confronting the government, particularly the military government, we found out that so many things were wrong, nobody was listening. We have not been able to solve a lot of problems, I can’t say of others state but in Lagos state things have improved drastically. Things are not where they should be In terms of when we talk about the standard of WHO, the standard of the Western World e.t.c
Apart from the issue of resources, there are issues of management, when we have a situation where we train about 500 Doctors in a year and after about 5 years, 60% of those trained have left the country, because they are not working under a situation or system that makes them happy. So, in all honesty, I am not talking about those issues now but talking about the equipment we use, the drugs and all that, because when you needs those things and they are not available, they start asking themselves why am I here? When they are not getting satisfaction, the doctors tend to move away and try something else.
What will be your advice to young medical doctors?
My advice is exactly what we set to do at my own time when I was the Secretary-General of the Nigeria Medical Association. We decided that we didn’t want to run away from here but resolved to make things better. Today we’ve got some respite. We cannot say it’s perfect because we have a lot of issues to resolve, for instance, the budget for health services is a joke. We tried to make sure that the government tried to do some things in line with international standards. We engaged the state and federal governments on the need to invest in health services. We moved around the country on advocacy visits to convince people that when the World health organization comes up with certificates that you need to do this, you need to make all this facilities available in the system.
That’s why those that can afford extra things leave the country, they go on health or medical tourism, they spend a lot of their money in those places, but the fact still remains that we need to stay here and continue to struggle to make things better, we need to convince the government to invest more in health services.
So there must be an emphatic effort to make things better, if we all pack our loads to Saudi Arabia and other countries we are not going to be very effective people and we are not fair to our country. We need to reorientate ourselves and the government also must encourage doctors.
As a medical practitioner who has achieved so much both in public and private sectors, one wonders, why Politics? What made you venture into politics?
I feel it’s natural if we look at why are there so many problems in the country, is it the government style, is it the politician or is it the people? The fact remains that we strive so hard in the medical field and in the process, we got dragged into politics at different levels.
I have told you of the efforts of the Nigerian Medical Association to improve the health sector, The more we engaged in this process, the more obvious it showed that it is a matter of resource allocation and government is the organ responsible for this. So we had to persuade governments and influence the decision-makers to pay more attention to the health of our people. I am still doing so till date, giving the health sector a voice in the decision making process in the party, the government and every forum where we are discussing the development of our people.
It is said that all politics is local. You are an influential leader in the Ikeja Federal Constituency in particular and Lagos State in general. What is your assessment of your member, House of Representatives, Hon. James Abiodun Faleke?
He has been doing a lot of things in terms of empowerment programmes, sponsorship, scholarship and all other things. But, of course, there must be challenges in any political setting and I think that is the crux of the matter.
It will not be fair to him to say that he has not done well, he has tried his very best and what people are saying is that maybe somebody else should be given a chance if he has done three terms already.
And again, the other argument is that if you’re in some other parts of the world you’ll find someone who has been in the senate, House of Representatives or whatever for 20, 30 years. I mean if you know how long President Biden had been a senator for almost 50 years before he became the president. That is why I say it is difficult to just throw in a yes or no answer. But he’s trying his best whether it is good enough for the people generally or not is another question entirely.
