When Darkness Fell on UCH Ibadan

This is not an extreme retelling. The blackout in UCH was just that terrible.

I type this from the floor of a changing room. With me are four other students; with me in person, as there are a host of others, spiritually present in the five extension boxes that crisscross in a sad imitation of an anastomosis. Twenty-four minutes after I began charging, the generator powering the theatre goes off, and now I must change my location. There has been no power for six days. Surgeries are on hold. Patients are dying. And in the best teaching hospital in Nigeria, it is just another Saturday.

Four days ago, a professor told a section of my class that they could not compete with students at Harvard University. He said it was down to knowledge and how we are not reading well enough, or even at all. I agree with him on the extent to which some of us read. After all, I fall into the ‘Duncan category’ (The Duncan line is a term that means 50, so-called after an urban legend of a medical student called Duncan who always got grades within the range of 50 and subsequently graduated. In Nigerian medical schools, there are only three grades; fail (score below 50), pass (score 50 and above), and distinction (score at least 70 in most schools; 80 in the University of Ibadan)). But I disagree that we, Duncanians, are the majority. Our results bear me witness. Students would read so much better if we didn’t face such hellish conditions; like me, now typing in a semi-abandoned ward in the east segment of Nigeria’s foremost medical institution. This school admits the supposed nation’s smartest—highly driven boys and girls from the 99th percentile of the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME), West African Examinations Council, National Examination Council, A’ levels, and any valid qualifying examination in the country. If thereafter, the majority appear to be losing their verve, then it isn’t a result of laziness. There has to be more.