‘144 Nigerian women die daily’

“Imagine a plane crash in Nigeria everyday, carrying only pregnant women. Would we stand by and do nothing? But this is precisely the case — death through pregnancy and child birth has almost become invisible,” Sandra Obiago, director of a local lobby group, Communicating for Change, said. Activists premiered three short but hard-hitting Nollywood films […]

“Imagine a plane crash in Nigeria everyday, carrying only pregnant women. Would we stand by and do nothing? But this is precisely the case — death through pregnancy and child birth has almost become invisible,” Sandra Obiago, director of a local lobby group, Communicating for Change, said.

Activists premiered three short but hard-hitting Nollywood films to push for an urgent change in attitude and provision of adequate healthcare services to avoid pregnancy-related problems. The films take a provocative look at the deadly crisis in sub-Saharan Africa’s second largest economy and the world’s eight largest oil exporter, where some 70 percent of the 150 million people live on less than a dollar a day.

In one of the films, a man whose wife has a complicated labour, wastes time insisting that no male doctor will attend to her. By the time he is convinced there is no female doctor around and agrees to emergency caesarian section by a man, there is power outage the moment she is taken to theatre, and the hospital generator is out of order.

“It’s a failure of governance, we must make our leaders accountable to make sure they provide the infrastructure,” said a civil and human rights activist Yemisi Ransome-Kuti.

Nigerians have become permissive of corrupt leadership.

“Until we begin to look at reforms in the electoral systems so that we get correct leaders … we will be in this Catch 22 situation forever,” she said.

Nollywood director Teco Benson said Nigeria’s famous film industry provided the most effective tool in the fight for change especially in cultural and religious beliefs that have helped worsen the crisis.