By Kayode Ketefe
She carried a heavy load of
assorted junks on her unshaven head. Her attire was a dazzling spectacle of
colour riot. She donned a buba top of Ankara over an old woolen
skirt that was held in place by an improvised "belt" of rope procured
from the ancient forest. The entire medley combination were not only torn in
many places but also overlaid with dirty smelly rags. A red bow tie on her neck
was facing backward!
With a white canvass shoe
in one leg and a brown rubber slipper in another, Folake (not real name)
quickened her zig zag pace on the tarmac of the major expressway as she hummed
some incoherent songs to herself with unfathomable happiness.
She was in a hurry in a
desperate bid to arrive at her destination on time – A destination that is, of
course, nowhere! for Folake is a mentally-challenged person. She is one
of those persons our callous societies have abandoned to their fate; those that
have been sentenced, through no fault of theirs, to a boring, stressful, and
terrible existence of eternal aimless street roaming till death
calls.
A proverb in local parlance
summarises the attitude of our people to this category of humanity.
"Were dun wo, ko see bi l'omo!" meaning "It is a fairly
entertaining pastime to watch a madman and his antics on the street but to have
such being as a child is a depressing calamity!" what an
insensitive attitude! These are human beings like us suffering from
vicissitudes that no one is really immune to, but to majority of
the people, they are just objects of laughter, taunts and amusement.
Sadistic callousness apart,
we need to combat a lot of ignorance on this subject too. Many people still
believe that mental diseases are afflictions of gods through demons possessions
rather than just a neurological disorder. Thus, some people think helping mad
people would constitute an affront to the incensed deity who is meting out just
punishment to erring mortals.
Well, it diminishes our
common humanity to have mad men and women prowling our roads naked or in
subhuman conditions in 21st century. It speaks volume of the kind of
leaders we have in Nigeria. Most of our leaders see these people and shrug with
callous indifference.
It has been rightly said
that the best way to determine the level of civilisation of any group of
persons is to look at the conditions of their under-privileged class. What is
the population of the economically deprived? Are there many beggars on the
country’s streets? What about the physically and mentally-challenged? These are
some of the pertinent questions in assessing the level of civilisation of a
nation.
Folake is a human being
like you and me and there is no reason why her condition should be permanent if
given adequate medical treatment. She can still contribute her quota to
national development. But cured or not, can't these people, for goodness
sake, be taken into asylums to be tended and treated like human beings? An
infinitesimal fraction of the public money stolen by our politicians could
build hundreds of befitting asylums and equip them too.
Any nation that allows
fellow compatriots, nay any human being, to be roaming naked on its streets on
account of mental illness, is not civilised.
Let us shift the attention
to other category of people – the physically-challenged. There are some parts
of the world where those without hands or legs, paraplegic, the dwarfs the
visually impaired, etc still live life to maximum, almost to
the same degree with their more fortunate counterparts. But in Nigeria if you
are unfortunate to be afflicted with any such handicap, it is like your entire
life has collapsed!
In this part of the world,
the moment a person becomes physically disabled in whatever form, he/she is
assumed to have landed another profession, for the next expectation from the
society is for the person to become a beggar! Thus all our major cities
collectively boast of thousand of beggars prowling all over like confused
armies of ants. Many of these so-called beggars are very mentally sound and
intelligent people who only need minimum intervention in form of empowerment to
become productive members of the society.
But in a country where even
non-challenged educated young people are seen as a burden and neglected by the
government, what do you expect the plight of the challenged people to be?
On the institutional level,
how many companies and establishments have facilities that are conducive and
adapted for physically-challenged persons? In some other countries there
are structures all over the place that recognise the special needs of the
challenged peoples.
This has little to do
with a country being developed or otherwise, it is just a question of
recognition of the needs to cater for others and its concomitant strategic
adequate planning and policy mainstreaming.
Unfortunately, currently
there are no incorporations of programmes for persons with disabilities in
virtually all the Federal Government's planning and projections like
Transformation agenda, Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) or Vision 20:20:20.
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