CHAPTER 8
Drugs, Doctors and Power, Politics
The PA presidential candidate, Chief Gbolabo, arrived in his home at Ikeja, he drove straight to the end of the parking lot and walked into the large mansion which he shared with nobody. He had relocated his entire family to the UK just 4 months earlier when the polity had showed signs of heating up with the initial debate gathering about which political system to adopt in the new nation. His 27 year old daughter, a vivacious, intelligent and optimistic medical doctor, a Harvard University graduate and active member of the international group, medecins sans frontieres who had insisted on setting up a practice in Lagos had defied his orders and he had promptly seized her international passport after making sure she returned to the US. He had even gotten his friends at the Nigerian Medical Society to close down her small clinic in Ajegunle for some flimsy reason. He had that authority and he used it at will and very well. He had also used this authority to get Balogun’s driver to drug Balogun’s tea and head off to Ife while the poor old man slept when he should have gone to Lagos as a representative of the Olubadan in an important meeting. He had also used his authority to get around brilliant academics. Gbolabo had always been a brilliant man in School and an academic at heart. He often told his children that if he ever came back to the world, he will never go into politics but rather spend his time in the laboratory and in the library. He often followed his words by quoting to them from the Bible. Proverbs 28:20 which states that, “A faithful man shall abound with blessings: but he that maketh haste to be rich shall not be innocent.” He was the best student in chemistry and biology in secondary school. He had been a medical student for two years and out of youthful zest, overconfidence in his mastery of science and a sudden pathetic love for trouble, he delved into student politics and quickly rose to be the general secretary of the National Association of Nigerian Students at the cost of his grades and had to forego his medical ambitions when the school advised him to stick to a less demanding course. He had opted for anatomy, which he studied for a year and then biochemistry which he studied for another two and half years before graduating with a pass. It had seemed like his doom then. His colleagues who knew he would have been the best doctor among them jeered at him and he became the prime example of how potential and skill without discipline equalled doom. He had opened up a drug store from the remains of money looted while he was NANS general secretary and though business was good, there was no fulfilment and the profits could not cater for his lifestyle, only the old illiterate women called him doctor when he gave their grandchildren some tablets or an injection, even the children knew he was not a doctor. His injections made them uncomfortable for weeks.
Then the military rule of the 1990’s came and drug proliferation came with it. People made tablets out of any powder especially white chalk. Being a natural scientist, he knew the process of caking calcium trioxocarbonate(V), CaCO3, and after a few tutorials in Onitsha; he perfected it adding colours and sweeteners to some, especially the ones often required by grannies for their little ones and it worked like magic. It was scientifically black magic, a sure money-making ritual that produced instant results. He became a millionaire and re-invested his money into importation of original drugs, still out of his love for chemistry and biology. He then became sole marketer of foreign drugs in West Africa for some of the better known drug manufacturers in the world but it never occurred to him to invest in medical research in Africa or even start his own drug manufacturing company. His drug marketing business expanded to other parts of the continent and he used the name G Pharmaceuticals Ltd. G meant anything from Gbolabo to Global, it all depended on the country he was penetrating and its leaders. The doctors who knew him in school got envious of his success and often complained that the government didn’t pay them well though they were the highest paid professionals in Nigeria then. It was at this time Gbolabo got the ‘bingo’ idea, what if he renewed his political interest and becomes the government who paid these doctors and held the key to the demand and supply of drugs. The best ones and the worst ones though he hadn’t dealt in bad drugs for a couple of years especially since the massive National Agency for Food and Drugs Administration and Control clamp down on fake drug manufacturers that sent many of his unwary co-dealers to prison or bankruptcy. He renewed his interest in politics and in no time, he became a commissioner for health in Nigeria, then he became the senior special adviser to the president on health matters and he became the minister of health in Nigeria and then a senator. After which, Nigeria had broken up and he became a prominent Yoruba statesman. All the while he had taken interest in medical research within the borders of his homeland but he still never invested his money in this research because he knew most of these doctors and they were really not intelligent enough to do something worth his money. It was around this time that he heard of a radical innovation by a young man called Dr Agbabiaka who was a lecturer at the University of Ibadan. The man had given a lecture at the annual conference of the Nigerian Medical Society when Gbolabo was the Minister of Health titled “The Human Genome System: Natural and Cheapest Cure in Medical Science”. He had mentioned words and phrases like DNA sequencing, sequence analysis, sequence assembly, predictive genomics, sequence transcription, sequence translation. What had really struck the minister was that if truly the human DNA can be analysed and its sequence was coded and these codes could be predicted for all individuals and this Agbabiaka claims he is involved in a research that was translating the codes in a human DNA system into medically readable information. Then obviously, they’d have the person’s natural life played out before them and with constant monitoring of changes in the genetic mix, they could predict when the individual was going to fall sick, die and probably even alter the gene system of an individual directly to remove specific undesirable traits. A man could simply decide he wanted a particular trait removed from his lineage and if he had the right amount of money, it’d be done. They could understand the genetic bases of drug response and diseases and he had even mentioned the possibility of separating a compound which is uniquely coded to every individual and could hold the key to the treatment of any disease such an individual was bound to suffer in his lifetime. In other words, every human came to earth with his own tablet to fight cancer or HIV and he keeps the information in his DNA.
If that information can be extracted from every human, then the end has come to the pharmaceutical company’s profits since doctors would do it all in their labs. Gbolabo and Agbabiaka instantly became friends as Gbolabo had promised the young doctor that he was committing about 60% of the funds dedicated to medical research by the then federal government of Nigeria for the next three years into his research work if the results were going to profit G pharmaceuticals. Gbolabo had closely monitored Agbabiaka’s work at the University of Ibadan. Then the coup had taken place and Gbolabo was no longer in control of any federal resource but he had privately followed the work progress when everyone else at the NMS conference had forgotten the young doctor and his 9-year old research work. Now Gbolabo was a presidential aspirant in Yorubaland and two weeks ago, Dr Agbabiaka had published the results of his work in a closely-guarded and unreleased document. He kept about 100 copies in an undisclosed location after the completion of the work and had confided in Gbolabo as per the implications of releasing those papers. Gbolabo was shown the draft and it stated that Agbabiaka had worked on a sample of 30 humans, extracting a certain complex protein-based compound which basically had the same chemical structure at its core and had administered it in varying doses and quantities to certain disease cells obtained from each individual and it was a 100% successful cure. Agbabiaka had however refused to hand over the full documents stating that the research also provided some startling information on the possibility of rebuilding a ‘copy’ of a human being and infusing him with several special features by altering several strings in his genetic mix. This was like suggesting the possibility of cloning a long dead human and infusing the clone with superhuman powers b
y altering some of the things that made him human. In traditional Yoruba mythology, there have been certain humans who acquired superhuman powers and became revered as gods and deities. Ogun was born of a woman but he acquired superhuman skills with forging, metal working and supernatural fighting abilities. Sango was also born of a woman, he was even epileptic as a human but was known to release fire from his mouth when he spoke and strike lightning bolts at people who opposed him and he became the god of thunder. Now, a scientist and medical practitioner said he found the key to making that possible while also cheating death.
It made no sense to Gbolabo until he could see it practiced and he wanted to see it done. There had been arguments and counter-arguments between the two men on the moral implications of this research and Gbolabo had even suggested the possibility of ‘having leaders who would have control over their subjects’ mind’. That was too much for Dr Agbabiaka to hear and bear but at the height of despondency, an option had presented itself to him through Gbolabo’s aide and chief security personnel, a man called Badoo had been present at some of the discussions between the politician and the scientist. Badoo had been Gbolabo’s chief security personnel for 3years but unknown to Gbolabo, Badoo was not just an ex-military man dismissed from the Nigerian Air force after the coup, he was also a distinguished academic and an engineer trained at the Air Force Institute of Technology, he had moved up the academia and obtained a doctorate degree in advanced remote sensing in aerodynamic applications, the reason why he never missed a target. His real name was Dr Akintola Badu and he was just fondly called Badoo among his colleagues in the Nigerian Military and the name stuck. He had secretly suggested to Dr Agbabiaka that the latter should abscond with his family because his life was in danger. He had also told him to meet with a lecturer called Prof Sanmi Aluko, Badu’s mentor, friend and associate who had helped Badu make something out of his life when his parents got divorced when he was a teenager. It was Prof Aluko that assisted Badu with his admission into the Nigerian Military School where he obtained the full scholarship that got him to the institute of technology. Prof Sanmi Aluko was his elderly next door neighbour and seeing the potentials in the young Badu whose parents had gotten a divorce two years earlier and for a year, he didn’t attend school because his mother had said she couldn’t afford the fees while the estranged father simply refused to help, he offered him free private lessons for three months, feeding inclusive when his mother stayed out late, doing multiple jobs including cheap sex, when she needed its money.
Gbolabo had gotten no news or trace of Dr Agbabiaka’s whereabouts for 4 days now and he sent men to search his house and family. He had however learnt of the plan by Alhaji Kosoko to hold a meeting where he would state his political ambitions for the seat of the president under the flagship of PA, it sounded incredible but Gbolabo wanted to know the facts and he wanted to get it firsthand. He had been successful in doing that and had just returned from Alhaji Kosoko’s meeting without Kosoko’s knowledge. At this point, he entered into his sitting room and poured himself a half glass of Guinness and mixed it with a half glass of punch and downed the mixture in one huge gulp while looking at the 2-page draft Agbabiaka had left with him before absconding. He had been reading it before he went out and had left it on the settee. His mind now swirled from the effects of the drink. He remembered a lot of things at the same time but he focused on the sweet secretary of Kosoko and hoped she would call him on her way home.