After Brexit & The Election Of Trump: What’s At Stake For Nigerians Abroad? By Simi Nwogugu

First of all, who is Simi Nwogugu? She is an executive coach and the founder & CEO of HOD Consulting, a diversity consulting firm that helps clients retain and advance multicultural women. She has over twelve years of finance and strategy consulting experience with various organizations including Goldman Sachs and MTV Networks. She has also successfully launched and led two organizations, including 2Hats Network LLC and Junior Achievement of Nigeria, which will celebrate its 10th anniversary in 2009. For more on her biography, click here

Last month, my 5-year-old daughter fell off the monkey bars at her school and broke her wrist. I was told by our family doctor to take her to what he believed to be one of the best private hospitals for orthopaedic emergencies in Lagos. An x-ray at the hospital confirmed that it was a full fracture at the wrist with the bone almost entirely displaced so the orthopaedic doctor called in the orthopaedic technician who set the bone and applied the cast, while my brave daughter tried not to scream in pain. They advised us to stay the night to manage the pain, and after a harrowing night, during which she received painkillers every 2-3 hours, we were discharged with an instruction to come back in three days so the doctor could check the swelling. We did, and he declared that she was healing fine and he would do another x-ray in two weeks to determine if the cast should come off or if we should wait one more week. We went home and I was glad that she seemed to be back to her old self and ready to go back to school (though not to the monkey bars!)

Two weeks after the incident, and a couple of days before we were due to go back to the hospital for the second x-ray, my husband’s friend, a Nigerian orthopaedic surgeon in the United States, came into town and asked to take a look at my daughter’s wrist. My husband took her to see him that morning and called me enraged because the x-ray showed that the fractured bone was still displaced and the parts still touching had begun to fuse together. I tried to stay calm as I listened to our options – we could either leave as is because she would still have about 80% use of her wrist though she would not have full motion and may not be able to do intense gymnastics OR he could operate on it that night because he was due back in the States the next day. Of course, as fellow Nigerians, you know which option I went for – who was I stop my daughter from becoming an Olympic gymnast someday?

It took another 12 hours from that 8:30am appointment before we got the go-ahead to bring my daughter in for the surgery because the doctor had insisted on finding the one anesthesiologist he trusted in Lagos to work on cases involving children. They finally wheeled her into surgery at 10pm, where they proceeded to separate and reset the bone, put a pin to hold it in place and apply a much firmer cast. By the time they brought her out of surgery at 11pm, still sleeping but breathing on her own with an occasional whimper, I had sung every praise and worship song I knew, instructed every angel in heaven to guide the doctor’s hands and paced the entire hospital until my feet and lower back hurt. The doctor showed me a new set of x-rays they had done to make sure the bone was properly aligned and was surprised when I told him the first doctor hadn’t done that. He gave instructions on how to take care of the cast and promised to return in three weeks to remove the pin and assess the wrist.

I tell this story to illustrate two things – one, that our country’s healthcare system is so compromised that even people who can afford to pay for the best healthcare services often cannot get them locally, and two, there are good Nigerian doctors who come back often to contribute what they can to propping up a system that might collapse totally without their support. This is not only true for healthcare but for education and many other services that Nigerians living abroad take for granted everyday. So, when I am in a setting where people start denigrating Nigerians living abroad, I often jump to their defense because really how many people are willing to put their children’s education and health at risk when there are better options elsewhere? In fact, to be perfectly honest, there are several moments within the past seven years we have been back in Nigeria that I have begged my husband to let us move back to the States, especially since I still run my executive coaching business in New York, because life is just so much easier and my business so much more profitable to maintain in New York than in Lagos. However, several events within the past few months have made me refocus my energy on Nigeria.

continue @ http://www.exlinklodge.com/2016/11/after-brexit-election-of-trump-whats-at.html

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