The Emir of Kano, Muhammadu Sanusi II, betrayed his usually strong personality in Lagos, when he shed tears openly over the death of a child in his palace.
At the United Nations meeting to reach Sustainable Development Goals, he recalled how the child died just because the mother could not afford a five-dollar worth health care.
Linking this to the equality that pervades Nigeria, he said the mother of the sick child had walked into his palace, about 200m from a children’s hospital in the community, to requestsupport.
But in the process of waiting for her turn to ask for money to buy a drug which costs less than the $5 for her baby, the boy died.
At this point, the Emir could not hold his emotion again.
“And how much was this? It was less than five dollars. This is what happens every day in this country. Children die because their parents cannot afford five dollars, that a mother will watch her child die because she does not have five dollars,” he said.
