Hurdles, Splinters and Snags: The political economy of grassroots mobilisation in the fight against cancer, by Dr Ali Tikau Adamu (Ph.D Stanford)

International Development Consultant
Guest Speaker’s Address At The Maiden Award Event Of Neptune Network Nigeria Limited, Held On Wednesday, The 16th Of March, 2022, At The Ladi Kwali Hall, Sheraton Hotel, Abuja, Nigeria.

There she is, lying in the hospital bed. Like an incubus, the forecast time of her
death has come. She is surrounded by her closest loved ones. A dowager in the
throes of death, pitifully now unaware of her surroundings. Her lips move in faint
prayers on the final journeying to her Creator. Some of her visitors know that the
time has come; others don’t. She had finally come to hospital only after traditional
(herbal, spiritual) medicine had failed her.
Rural mobilisers need to be aware of certain serious impediments to their tasks.
And, the existence of Herbal medicine is one such. In pre-industrial society, most
herbalists are wont to scoff at disease __even cancer. They ought, of course, to
spook at it. But then, magori wasa kanka da fari (self-praise is the prestidigitator’s
refrain).

Hospital comes in as a last resort, often too late, since the disease has ineluctably
reached finality. So far, modern medicine has achieved much in prolonging the lives of cancer patients. Chemotherapy and drugs are the main means at the disposal of doctors, their ultimate deus ex machina.

In the current post-Covid-19 world, the benevolence of Artificial Intelligence is set
to crack the secret processes of modern medicine. It is now set to render banal
of 2 4
__ if run-of-the-mill __treatments of terminal ailments hitherto the exclusive
preserve of esoteric hospitals around the globe. Artificial Intelligence is already
facilitating precision medicine, while doctors, according to Newsweek, (April 26,
2019) are already upbeat about their future ability to personalise cancer treatment
with tremendous successes. Through experimentations involving a patient’s and
the cancer cells, they could soon churn out well, which drug to treat what specific
cancer with consummate exactitude.

Based in the United States, Mayo Clinic, Massachusetts General Hospital,
Stanford Medical Center ___ name them, are already experimenting with
treatment administration on patients far away overseas.

But then, enter Big Pharma. There is, what I will love to call “The Big Pharma-
Industrial-Complex.” Pacific or pugnacious, factual or fictional, conspiracy theories
abound today about a perceived underhandedness in the global drug
manufacturing business. World giant drug makers, including Johnson & Johnson,
Roche, Pfizer, Novartis GlaxoSmithkline, name them ___are all alleged to
preposterously hold humanity in thrall to their products. They are believed to
conspiratorially suppress all new inventions of cures to all terminal diseases:
cancer, diabetes, hypertension, etc. They buy up such inventions, own the patents
and lock away the ideas from further use. This way, their own products, which do
not cure, but only treat and ameliorate, continue to dominate the market. Well,
sounds like the stuff of tabloid tattle. Such a blatant hurt on consumers ought to
grate on the conscience of Big Pharma. Cancer drugs, after all, are extraordinarily
expensive — more so than most others.
To be sure, the rural, Third World, lady patient dies from delay in earlier scientific
treatment. But cancer deaths in the industrialised states are, however tangentially, attributable to the alleged suppression of actual cure by Big Pharma. Otherwise certain cancer victims ___ namely, journalists ___ of the profession whose event
of 3 4 we are marking today, might have been cured to live longer. And they were legion:
Stewart Alsop, (died, U.S.1974), Kermit Lansner, U.S. 2000) Peter Jennings (U.S.,
2005), Gary Burgess (U.K. 2022,) and several others.

The world is still uncertain what lessons Big Pharma will derive from Covid-19.
Will the pandemic stir greater compunction in them? Will they now begin to
produce cancer cures rather than just treatments. Your guess is as good as mine
___ only time will tell.

Finally, mobilisers must be aware of another important factor. This factor is,
namely, trust in Government. Grassroots mobilisation succeeds most if people do trust and are endeared to government because of past fulfilled promises. In pre-oil boom Nigeria, for example, rural cattle herders were eager to pay the annual jangali (cattle tax).

Demonstrably convinced, they rightly perceived the tax money to be the source of
the free vaccines administered on their animals. I recall when, during my
childhood, Fulani cattle herders craved to pay such tax ahead of time; my father
persuaded them to tarry a while.
Today, infant mortality rate in Nigeria surges and ebbs in lockstep with the
seasons. Urban cemeteries feature expansion in the number of infant graves in
the rainy season due to mosquitoes. If government maintains obvious solicitude
for the people, popular trust will be there. If, for example, the authorities
consistently fumigate urban centres, the rampant infant mortality due to malaria
would drastically ebb. Consequently, other health campaigns by government,
including anti-cancer, will be more widely accepted.

Today’s lecture provides a basis of both practical and theoretical forms for certain
conclusions.

Firstly, winning public trust by government is golden, if popular mobilisation for or
against anything, including cancer, is to succeed. Secondly, a firm grasp of the
of 4 4 relationship between herbal medicines and the grassroots is an essential tool for
anti-cancer social mobilisation. And, thirdly, so, too, are the urgent deconstruction
and grasp of the alleged role of Big Pharma in the intriguing political economy
featuring mankind’s (futile?) wriggle from the scourge of cancer.

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