Black, White, Bleak: An Anthology of Anger over UCH’s 100th Day Blackout

The University College Hospital, Ibadan has been in the dark for a hundred days. Nigeria is not at war. There hasn’t been a terrorist attack on the institution. It just so happens that there is a debt the Hospital cannot pay and one the Federal Government refuses to pay.

To ‘mark’ this nadir, the UIMSA Press has prepared a two-part series, detailing the situation within the walls of this once great institution. The second, below, is an anthology of selected entries from residents of the Alexander Brown Hall and UI students familiar with, and willing to express their state of mind for this centenary (Read the first here).

We want power restored. We are entitled to power being restored. Read on.

Wednesday Firefly, I Still Remember You – Olajiga Kehinde

I saw a firefly on Wednesday, the fifth. It was evening, and I was looking from the second floor of G Block, at the lights in the distance. The darkness enveloping ABH was absolute. But I expected nothing more, nothing else. It was already very familiar, the darkness and the gloom it carried along. 

In the corner of my eye, another light appeared on the balcony, sitting close to where I set my hands. The light weaved and bobbed weakly as if praying for mercy. It was a dot against the vast backdrop of nothingness. Once, it flickered and I thought that was it, that the darkness had won. But it hung on, trembling. 

That Wednesday was a whirlwind. I lazied around all day before football in the evening. I also looked forward to the protest on Friday. I already had my black shirt washed and set aside. 

I had a big glass jug where I once kept fireflies. It was once a blender, but it got burnt, and my brother and I retrofitted the transparent container for our fireflies. At first, we put the lid on and watched them buzz around. 

I remember the lights bouncing against the glass, almost like they were saying fiery hellos. But they were imprisoned. They were boxed up, and soon began to die. 

It’s been one hundred days since The Blackout. It almost sounds like a B-rated action movie sprinkled with horror. It’s almost hard to believe that there was a time when light spilled from every window, and the Quadrangle was illuminated with powerful bulbs and not flashlights of enthusiastic chess players. 

I still remember the first meeting when this all started, which was held on the volleyball court, and there were no places to sit. I still remember the anger on everyone’s faces as they walked about with unironed scrubs and empty buckets.

We stood in the heat with our voices raised. But days bled into weeks, then months. The fire dimmed. We got used to the creased scrubs, the absent showers, and the power that never returned. And then, this Friday, the protest that never was, a silence more deafening than any rally. 

I remember how the fireflies stayed even after we took off the lid. Bobbing against the glass, too exhausted or resigned to fly away. Their lights flickered weaker and weaker, until one day, they didn’t anymore. They had forgotten what freedom tasted like. Much like us. 

In their final flickers, I saw the reflection of our fading resolve, a slow surrender to the darkness we once promised to fight. We burned. We fought. We raged. And slowly, we’re giving in. 

But like that Wednesday firefly, there’s still hope even against the nothingness of despair. We have a protest lined up this week, don’t we? Do we? But I’ve stained my black shirt playing football. Again. 

And to close up this melancholy whatever-this-is with an uplighting song filled with nostalgia and almost-forgotten memories. Here’s Pluto (Still Remember You) by DJ Clock ft Beatenberg. 

I stand on the moon 

I don’t know what to do 

A distant planet 

I wish that it would pull you too

A sigh – Wisdom Salami

It’s a chain reaction. Four or five in the evening, the sighs start coming. Irrespective of how good your mood was by two or three, the sighs start coming. There is a scale of preference and a hierarchy of worries. You get back from Theatre by four pm. In your head, the possibility that someone will say there’s ward round by 8pm is shelved away, the day should not be painted any blacker than it will soon be. Here is where the real pain starts.

First, hunger needs must be eliminated from the playing board. You skipped breakfast. You’re hungry. You’ve been standing, walking, climbing, running all day. Here, “standing all day” is not a figure of speech. Getting “percussed”, consultant and resident strafing all the time, heavy fire all day long. You are truly and fully exhausted. Sigh. Still, despite all this, there’s no money, you can’t skip the stress of cooking. You start to plan, what can you cook as much as possible of in the least possible time. You get up, get your pot and keep feeling like you’re forgetting something. You get your bucket and step out, then the lightness hits you. No water.

No choice, you drop the pot, sigh, ready to spend your last card. You put on your phone and see the infinix logo. Phone dead. No transfer. No food. You sigh again. You get back in. You pick some sachet water. You’ll inform your roommate later. You’ll pay back some other time. Water is precious but you can’t kill yourself. You alchemize garri in your bowl. You give it time to swell maximally. You need all the fullness you can get. You are halfway through dinner plus lunch plus tomorrow’s breakfast. Your group mate bursts in. “Post op ward round”, he says. You sigh. Swallow the rest of your moisturized flakes with the hurry of a slave who hopes to die soon. You put the ward coat back on. The emptied garri bowl slips. Your coat is stained. You glance, sigh and look away with the resignation of one who knows he can change nothing. You walk in the rain with the placidity of a zombie. You hurt inside. You’re dead inside. The sun is setting. You wish for light, then laugh at the stupidity of that.

You get to the Accident and Emergency, your group mate hisses. It’s raining now. “What happened?” you ask. “Post op canceled, they said it’s tomorrow”. You’re boiling. You can’t rant. You can’t cry. You can’t die. You can’t quit. You sigh. You turn around and walk into pelting bullets of rain. “What are you doing? You dey craze? Why you dey enter rain, bobo yí?” Group mate asks. “My coat don stain. Water no dey. Make I use this God’s rain wash the stain and the pain away.” You both laugh. “Actually, my phone don die. I need to get back in time to use the remaining daylight to find my bed”. He offers his power bank. You refuse. He needs it too. You sigh. You get back. Lie down. You aren’t sleepy. It doesn’t matter. You stare at the ceiling, at the direction of the fluorescent lamp there. You wish for anything other than this. Even death might be cool. Sigh. Eventually you sleep. You wake up. It’s bright. Daylight. It’s Seven am. Ward round by 8. You need to get ready. No water. Another sigh. You rub, shine, dress and dash out. Another day. Soon we’ll all be dust in the ground. It won’t matter then. It’s day thirty five of the black out. 

Realm of Erebus – Victoria

Burn the midnight oil,” a phrase I first learned during my developmental years in primary school. I never thought there would come a time when those words would transcend idiomatic expression and become my lived reality. I burned candles at night when my lamp was low. The acrid fumes stung my lungs, my eyes ached from the flames, and my mind raced. Candles were prohibited in the hall, but I had no choice. I had to study. 

When Michelle Obama said, “There is no limit to what we, as women, can accomplish,” I doubt she envisioned me lifting 25-litre kegs up flights of stairs, muscles straining and breath ragged. These were the same kegs I filled early in the mornings at A Block, after having endured the torments of monstrous mosquitoes whose proboscises pierced even the thickest socks. 

Acquaintances from other schools often asked, “How did you survive without electricity?” Ever heard of the concept of resilience and adaptability? My fellow Brownites and I had to embody it. We sucked it up, finding water by any means necessary. I stood in queues late into the night despite having 6:30 am Neurosurgery ward rounds. We charged our devices in operating theatres or paid to charge them elsewhere. But when our endurance was stretched beyond its limit, we took to the streets, raising banners and demanding what is rightfully ours. It’s maddening to think that a whole goddamned teaching hospital serving the Nation could owe over 380 million naira in electricity bills. My time living through the blackout in Alexander Brown Hall felt as though I dwelled in the realm of Erebus. The ongoing MDCAN strike presents a bittersweet situation for medical and dental students. It has paused our medical training and delayed our graduation. On the other hand, many of us are now home, far from UCH and its halls of horror. No one should be made to bear the brunt of a failed system. One day, electricity will be restored to ABH/UCH and all I will have to worry about is getting my grades straight. But until then, I hope those responsible for turning UCH into the mess it is today burn in the cruelest part of Hell. 

god is Among Us – Mosinmiloluwa

Father, forgive me, for I have sinned. I had to have. How else would I explain your divine punishment? This dark tunnel, with which I cannot find any escape. I once believed that light was a covenant. A silent promise that in even the darkest hours, a spark of grace will find its way to me. But tonight, the corridors of the ground floor of G block have become an underworld reminiscent of Tartarus; a place where even the proud echoes of Olympus stay hushed. Every step I take reverberates like the sound of a funeral bell, almost as if the fates themselves have called my exile from celestial grace.

These hallways remind me of the journey of Orpheus into Hades, but my descent is not of love, for all that awaits me at the end of the hall is my hot, dark room. This has to be a punishment. One as relentless as the void that now constantly consumes me.

This is not just a blackout; it’s the heaven’s silence incarnate. god’s presence cannot be in this absence, and in this silence, every sound, every creak, becomes louder with the guilt they carry. This darkness is an unyielding reminder that we have strayed too far from the path of righteousness, as if the universe has inked it’s judgment upon the walls of this forsaken hall with no room for mercy. No one deserves this.

I reach my room. The darkness is both a mirror and a message: I am abandoned, forsaken not by chance but by a deliberate act of celestial justice. Nobody can penetrate this gloom, no flicker of light or shimmer of starlight.

As I get to my windows, which were once a portal to a comforting dance of window lights, I find only the inky blackness of a sky that has forgotten it’s duty to guide me. In that moment, I feel the irony of my plight. The world outside, once teeming with the promise of daybreak, now seems as desolate as the chamber of my own remorse. I am trapped in the tunnel for 3 (plus x) more years, a pilgrim lost on a path of retribution from which there is no return.

At last, standing in the heart of this oppressive gloom, I can no longer deny the truth: this blackout is not just the failure of man-made systems; it is the deliberate exile of the sacred. In my desolation, I realize with a final, shuddering clarity that the light; physical and divine, has been forsaken. There is no celestial fire to guide me through the shadows of medical school, no warm radiance to affirm that mercy still resides within the cosmos.

god is not here; he is not among us. He cannot be.

Prince of Darkness – Obluda

Everyone worshiped the dragon because he had given his authority to the beast. They worshiped the beast also, saying, “Who is like the beast? Who can fight against it?”—Revelations 13:4

Wind howled again through the desolate village square, and we the ants ran for cover. Ragnarok, the apocalypse, whatever you call it—is well afoot now, the 100th day of darkness just as dreary as the first. Days bleed into each other, an endless standing in line, a monotone sojourn through Asphodel. Night bleeds into night, a fruitless pursuit of life’s spark, a dreamless sleep and a dreamless wake.

Food hath no taste and liquor no potency in a world such as this, little serves to distract us from the quagmire that is our existence. Our studies drift even further from us, graduation days mere specks on the horizon. Alas, we are condemned to squander our 20s amidst this dysfunction, then toil and die for paltry pay when this is done. 

For how long will this trial last, how many more days must God test his people? Or must we battle this beast ourselves? Can we slay this monster in his absence?