TBHI is an advocacy group with an objective of reducing neonatal mortality with special ocus on Preemies. The initiative was inspired by her daughter who was born at 25 weeks. Petra was one of the strong voices that started rallying support for President Buhari long before the cause was popular. She is a force to be reckoned with and one of I AM NIGERIA #Gamechangers2015.
-Who’s Petra Onyegbule?
Petra is a Nigerian, of Kogi extraction and a very passionate Nigerian.
-How does it feel to be a voice for the voiceless? Is it fun or frustrating?
It’s very very frustrating because of one reason, ignorance. The people that you are a voice for don’t understand why you do the things you do. Sometimes there’s a misconception on your motive and when people start casting aspersion on your motive, it can be very demoralizing because you know you sacrifice a lot and you give up all of you and you go the extra mile because you are thinking of people who are not as privileged as you are. The same people see you as one of those people who are against them and it can be very frustrating.
-You gave a moving and inspiring speech at TedxGarki this year about Preemies, what is it all about and who inspired it?
The inspiration was and still my daughter; she is the reason why I am very passionate about Nigeria. My daughter was born at 25 weeks and she was really small and sickly but for the dedication of the staff of National Hospital Abuja and the fact that we had resources at our disposal to easily meet with the demands perhaps she wouldn’t be alive today.
The truth is that not everybody can be as fortunate as she is and I think it’s a misnomer in a country where people have to pray for luck for children to be able to live. People should have access to quality health care; children should be given the right to live.
Nigeria signed up for millennium development goals and this is 2015, other countries have moved on to sustainable development goals but we are far from achieving the millennium development goals. And I tell people that “unless and until we reduce neonatal and infant and child mortality rate mothers will continue to die.” This in my opinion is unacceptable.
-How best can we address this issue, is it through policy or advocacy?
There’s no one approach to this problem. Health care is a continuum; there are different stages of involvement of parents, government, healthcare providers and the society at large. Yes, you need advocacy and policies to solve this crisis and not just the policy promulgation but more enforcement. We have many beautiful policies in Nigeria but we have to ensure the right enforcement.
-Isn’t that where people like you come in?
Again it isn’t just about the government, it’s also about people being watchdogs and insisting that government does its part. You need proper engagement at all levels.
-I presume that led to the establishment of Tiny Beating Hearts. What’s your organization’ objective and how far so far?
After I gave birth to my daughter, she was in Neonatal Intensive Care Unit of the National Hospital and the first few days were very edgy. Any telephone was call scary. So after a while I realized that it was going to go either of two ways; either she survives or she doesn’t. Before then I would go to Google, always checking out how babies born at 25 weeks survived and then I would see millions and millions of results and then they were all from developed countries.
And I said it’s not possible that I’m the only one who has given birth to a premature baby and why are Nigerians not telling their stories? When you tell your story you inspire hope in somebody that her baby can pull through. So I said to myself “I’m going to break this thing, whether my baby survives or not I will tell the story to let people know that they are baby like this that are born every day.” In fact from my research I discovered that Nigeria has one of the highest numbers of premature babies in Sub-Saharan Africa and some of these babies actually survive and we don’t share the stories.
Tiny Beating Heart is all about raising awareness for this issue. If I knew the things that I know now even if my baby had come premature perhaps she would have come at a later date when her organs would have developed more and I would have been more proactive about her size. Prematurity comes with a lot complications and one needs to be proactive and take charge of the situations even as healthcare workers do.
So we raise the awareness and then we advocate for people who don’t know what prematurity is really about for them to get a bit more empathetic to the plight of both babies and mothers. The road is very traumatic and the advocacy at this stage is for more of society to join hands to end this scourge.
-You were one of the people who insisted that the 2015 Presidential election was either Buhari or Buhari, even when it was an unpopular call. And you took your campaign from Facebook to the streets and places of worship why did you all of that?
Again it comes down to my daughter Ruby. I was sharing with a friend on one of our trips that not everybody is Petra and not every child is going to be Ruby. So what happens to the millions of babies that are born to the non-Petras; that are born to parents that are not educated and without recourses to take care of these babies? How many babies can you really say “please Facebook friends, the parents of this baby born in this hospital do not have the money to care of their baby?”
So for everybody to have the opportunity to get some of these basic things, we had to do what we have to do. I had to say this thing doesn’t end on Facebook, we had to go to the streets and make people to understand that it’s not about Dr. Goodluck Jonathan as a person but it’s about the fact that he supervises a very profligate system, he supervises a system where everything just went and that it was not sustainable in the long run and the earlier we kicked him out, the better for us.
Some of us saw this thing very early and the call began as far back as late 2012 to say look it has to be this person because of his antecedent. And it’s very important for a leader’s body language not to tolerate impunity that in itself was the reason why I said it was either Buhari or Buhari.
-Speaking of Impunity, we all know what Politicians are capable of. How are you sure President Buhari will not bend?
Life is all about risk taking and risks have to be calculated. Am I sure he will not bend? As at today, I’m 90% sure and think that’s high enough. President Buhari will not bend, because you don’t learn to be left handed at old age.
-Elections are over and politicians have started politicking, are you disappointed with the signals we are getting so far?
Yes and no. No because I expected some of them, yes because I thought that the PDP had given this warning enough. During the electioneering process, people said APC was going to crumble; people said the APC was a collection of strange bird fellows, I expected that APC should have said we would do whatever it takes to proof these people wrong but they’ve shown that they were all about just getting power.
They didn’t go further to think of how to manage the success and how to ensure a balance of interest because there are many interests in the APC and unfortunately they are not aligned towards the same cause from what we have seen so far. Yes I’m a bit disappointed but again am a realist, I didn’t expect it would be rosy all through.
-Don’t you think the president being the head of the party should weigh into this crisis?
On the NASS issues I’ll apportion 70% blame to the APC and 30% to the president. When he said he was not interested in who emerges, I thought that was a politically correct thing to say. But if you say that kind of thing you have to follow through. The message I got was if your party is interested in something and you say you’re not interested, it means you are standing aloof from the party’ position and you really don’t care and that got me disappointed because you cannot stand aloof.
If people had stood aloof during the campaigns, perhaps we won’t be where we are today. You can’t stand aloof and even if you think it’s a good thing for the three arms of government to have its independent, I think experience and wisdom should be used to get all factions together. And being the head of the party not particularly in position but also in age, I expected he should have been able to get all these groups together behind scene and suggest a viable option.
That’s why I said I blame the APC because they had two months to get their acts together as far as NASS leadership was concerned. They probably went to sleep and took some people for granted and I blame the president for staying back and showing lack of concern.
-Mrs Onyegbule, we are days into the 1st 100 days and nothing is happening. Are we or are we not gradually easing back into the old experience?
I have a very different view on ministerial appointment. I don’t think countries run because there are ministers, I think countries run because there are systems and I don’t think there’s nothing going on, I actually think a lot is going on. I see that a lot is going on. Before now there were fuel queues around the country and the queues have disappeared without any Minister of Petroleum.
So what exactly are we talking about?
We have technocrats, we have Permanent Secretaries and people seemed to forget that this man is an old man. So, he’s coming with wisdom of age, his experience and antecedents in the past to governance. What we may term as slow may actually be wisdom and wisdom is mostly slow because you want to consider and reconsider but it’s almost always right. I think Nigeria needs structuring, who needs 36 Ministers from 36 States? What we should expect from the president is to get the right people into the right places.
-How confident are you in this President?
If I wasn’t confident I wouldn’t do all that I did. The sacrifices were enormous and not just financially but otherwise. Every Saturday I was awake early to get the campaign bus from Victoria Island and go all through to Oshodi to pick my crew members. After that we will go talking to people, if I wasn’t confident in the fact that Buhari will do it I wouldn’t waste my time.
-You once said on your Facebook Page that if your boss, PMB does not perform after 4years you’ll throw him out, do you still hold that view?
Of course. That is one thing with working with your conviction, you don’t owe anybody any loyalty, you only owe your conscience loyalty. For the fact that I worked on my own terms we will throw him out if he does not perform. We didn’t bring PMB because we love his face, we brought him in to fix the things that are bad and if he does otherwise we will push him out.
-As a game changer, if you had the chance to advise the president on a national emergency. What would that be and how can we possibly address it?
I think it’s wicked for any woman to want to bring life into this world and for the woman to die while doing that. I also think it’s very wicked of society to make that woman go through pregnancy for 9 months or 5 months in my own case and then you have that baby and through the agony you lose the baby and there is no system to support you.
If there’s any emergency of which there is like power which affects us all, I will pick health. People should be able to go into hospitals with an assurance of quality healthcare.
One way to do that is to ensure that whoever will take a position in his cabinet never should use private hospitals, never to Jet out of the country on Medical Tourism, unless it’s proven that our hospitals cannot handle the issues. We can’t be paying you and you’ll be using our money to buy services outside, it doesn’t make sense.
-Petra Onyegbule, one last word to describe Nigeria.
Nigeria is a potentially great country and I love the fact that we are very malleable. And anybody who is not a Nigerian should at least live in Nigeria for sometimes to see the beauty that Nigeria is.
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