Eric Dumo
Bose Tetede was worn out by the time she
arrived home that evening. A hectic four-hour trek to and fro her home
in Imule, a small agrarian community with over 3000 residents in Ipokia
Local Government Area of Ogun State, and Itaope, a border town in
neighbouring Republic of Benin, had taken its toll on her. The sound of
her heavy breathing summarises the agonising experience.
Tetede had left home at about 7:00am
last Monday in search of help for her sick twins – Taiwo, a boy and
Kehinde, a girl. The toddlers had been struck by malaria and so needed
urgent attention to get back to their old, playful selves. With one
child strapped to her back and another carried over her shoulder, the
young mother pounded the bumpy, dusty countryside roads for more than
two hours before finally arriving in the Beninese town where her
children were attended to promptly and given drugs at the cost of N4000.
But enduring another two-hour trek back to Imule under the torrid sun
with the weight of the ailing twins resting on her frail frame was more
than Tetede could bear. On the evening our correspondent came across
her, she could barely move her body.
“I feel like a trailer just ran over
me,” she managed to utter before using her left hand to gently wipe off a
stream of sweat that had gathered on her face. “I set out for Itaope in
Benin around 7:00am with my children after we could not get proper
attention at Iropo. I trekked for more than two hours carrying the
children before arriving Itaope. After they were treated, I managed to
rest for one hour before bringing them back home through another
two-hour walk under the sun. The pain I feel all over my body is
indescribable but I had to do this to save the lives of my children,”
she said before sinking her entire body weight into a wooden bench.
Like Tetede, many residents of Imule,
Madoga, Ilagbe, Kajoola, Osooro and several nearby settlements all under
Ipokia Local Government Area, a community bordering Benin Republic and
with a population of 150, 000 people according to the 2006 census, have
learnt to endure such energy-sapping walks to save their lives and that
of their loved ones in periods of emergencies. Since the health centre
in Iropo, which serves over five towns with a combined population of
over 10, 000 people, crumbled, residents have been forced to look for
viable alternatives elsewhere – the search of which has come at a heavy
price at times.
“Several of our women on the verge of
delivery have died while being rushed to hospital in Benin Republic and
Ifonyintedo,” Adeyemi Tetede, a local chief and head of Imule community,
told Saturday PUNCH. “In fact these days, many of the women
are now delivered of their babies at home through the help of
traditional birth attendants. If you try to take any of them to Iropo
where we have the only functional hospital around this entire axis, you
will hardly get the needed attention because of the number of people who
visit and the shortage of staff and facilities there. It is a very big
problem we are facing here,” he said.
Established over 30 years ago, the
Ipokia Local Government Health Clinic, Iropo, today betrays any
semblance of a life-saving medical facility. Manned by only two members
of staff – a young nurse and a middle-aged doctor, the hospital apart
from lacking basic items required to deliver quality healthcare to the
hundreds of low-income-earning residents who throng it every month for
solution, does not have enough drugs to treat minor cases like malaria
and typhoid – the two most prevalent ailments in the area. To make
matters worse, the hospital boasts of only one bed to treat a population
size of over 10, 000 people – young and old – who rely on it for their
medical needs. The facility does not have a toilet and bathroom, forcing
patients who visit to defecate in polythene bags and bathe in the open,
under a tree behind the hospital. Newly nursing mothers who wish to be
cleaned by the hospital staff must have a relation to go in search of
water as the facility does not have a functional tap. The only well
providing water for the hospital has since run dry and has been
converted to a dump where feaces of patients who defecate in polythene
bags are littered. On occasions where there are so many newly delivered
mothers around, each is allowed to rest on the hospital’s only bed for a
few minutes before giving way to another woman and her baby. At times,
when the entire place is ‘jam-packed’, the women are sent back home to
take care of themselves almost immediately after they had been delivered
of their babies. For patients who visit this hospital and the two staff
on ground to attend to their needs, it is a helpless situation – one
whose elastic can stretch no further.
“Attending to the hundreds of patients
who visit this place from over five communities and several settlements
in this local government has been very stressful,” the nurse at the
hospital, Hannah Oke, confessed. “Sometimes when there are so many cases
for us to handle especially women on the verge of delivery, we advise
them to go to other hospitals outside the locality. In fact, as a result
of this situation, many women now give birth at home.
“Apart from shortage of staff and lack
of basic infrastructure like toilet, bathroom and water, electricity is
also another major problem we face here. If a woman is to be delivered
of a baby in the night, we rely only on torch to attend to her as the
hospital does not have a generator of its own.
“We are pleading with government to
quickly intervene in our situation so that we can provide the people of
this area with good health care and save many lives in the process,” she
said.
The unavailability of electricity supply
has made communication with the outside world for many of the
communities in this region very difficult. Mobile phones are gathered
once in two days to be charged at N100 each in Ifonyintedo, about 15
kilometers away. Even at that, mobile communications network in the area
is erratic and largely unstable. In extreme cases, residents rely on
visitors to bring them news of happenings in the locality and country.
“It is quite tough charging our phone
batteries in this environment as there is no electricity supply. So most
times we gather our phones and give to one of us who go to charge them
for us at Ifonyintedo. Sometimes the person can get there and not find
space to charge because everywhere had been occupied, he or she returns
the phones to the owners like that, cutting us off from communicating
for several days. Even when our phones are fully charged, receiving
network signal to make a call could be almost impossible. That is how
bad our situation is here,” said Abike Odeyemi, a mother of three.
Chilling as it sounds, the terrible
state of the Ipokia Local Government Health Clinic in Iropo, Ogun State,
and the non availability of electricity supply and its attendant
effects, is only a fraction of the horror residents of the locality are
made to contend with on daily basis. For example, primary schools in
each of the over five towns and dozens of smaller settlements across the
area, do not have more than two teachers to tutor pupils of around 200
to 400 in some of the places visited by our correspondent recently. In
Ilagbe, only two teachers oversee the education of the 400 boys and
girls who attend the community’s primary school. The town, after series
of attempts to have government post more hands to help shapen their
children’s’ future, hired a third teacher who they pay N10, 000 every
month. According to Gabriel Onipede, a respected traditional chief, the
move, though to boost the education of their wards, is an added burden
on their lean pockets.
“Our community primary school is in a
terrible state. We have only two teachers teaching about 400 pupils. How
can any child learn something meaningful under such atmosphere? So, as a
community we had to organise one extra teacher whom we pay N10, 000
every month to support the education of our children.
“However, contributing the money to pay
the teacher every month has not been easy considering the fact that many
households are just managing to get by especially now that the bad
state of our roads is greatly affecting the price of our farm produce.
The bad state of the roads in the town is not making the transportation
of our harvest to the market possible, so those who manage to come and
buy from us do so at a very lower price. It is a very big problem for
us,” he said.
While all of these towns have at least
one primary school where their children are being taught, albeit by
fewer teachers than required, majority of the villages under Ipokia
Local Government Area do not have a secondary school, forcing students
from all these communities to trek several kilometers everyday to attend
the only one at Ifonyintedo. As a result of the distance, many pupils
have dropped out of the secondary school – contributing to the high
illiteracy of the area – while those still willing to finish the ‘race’,
have been forced to rent apartments in Ifonyintedo, going home to meet
their families only at weekends.
“Our children trek over 15 kilometers
every day just to attend secondary school at Ifonyintedo,” Ezekiel
Bawola, an old farmer in Iropo told Saturday PUNCH. “As a
result of this problem, some parents were forced to rent apartments for
their children there so they could live and attend the school during the
week and return home on Fridays for weekend. Some children whose
parents cannot afford to rent an apartment and who cannot also cope with
the daily trekking, have dropped out and taken to farming. We fear for
the future of our children like this but as a community, there isn’t
much we can do to change this except government or members of the public
intervene in our situation,” he said.
As a result of the heavy
responsibilities it shoulders, the local government’s only secondary
school, Imotu Community Commercial Academy, Ifonyintedo, now bears signs
of weariness. The ceiling in most of the classrooms in the school have
either been completely destroyed or at the verge of totally caving in.
Doors, windows, desks and even blackboards – all were in terrible states
when our correspondent visited the institution earlier in the week. It
is under such unpalatable environment that Ipokia’s army of young boys
and girls are taught and groomed for a future that looks threatened even
before it had taken off.
“The poor quality of life in the
locality and bad state of the only secondary school we have here tells
you a lot about the high poverty rate across the region,” David Abraham,
a pastor and missionary of the Baptist Mission in Nigeria, told Saturday PUNCH.
“If you move all around the local government area and go to some of
these interior communities, you’ll be shocked at what will confront you.
The people are sleeping and waking up in abject poverty.
“If not for the occasional medical
outreach programmes that we used to organise in some of these
communities where we conduct checks and offer free treatment to people,
the death rate could have been higher than what it is today across the
area. But even with our effort, the demand for quality medical care and
improved living condition is still very high. Something urgent should be
done to save lives and protect the future of children in this area,” he
said.
In the last few months, missionaries of
the Nigerian Baptist Convention have given free medical services to
residents of these communities. Also, students of Bowen University, Iwo,
Osun State, a Baptist institution, have helped organise free education
for both adults and children across most parts of Ipokia. But even with
such priceless interventions, the demand in healthcare and education
remains extremely high.
Local Government officials at Ipokia told Saturday PUNCH that
they were aware of the situation in these communities and were making
efforts at addressing the plight of the people. An official, who asked
not to be named, said that necessary interventions to improve the lives
of the residents would soon be made by the administration.
“We are aware of the situation in some
of the places you have mentioned and I can assure you that intervention
projects would soon commence in those places to ease the sufferings of
the people. We are a responsible government committed to serving the
interest of our people. Things shall soon improve there,” the official
said.
According to a sociologist, Grace
Warikoru, the neglect of rural communities by governments across the
country has contributed significantly to a host of problems including
illiteracy, high infant and maternal mortality, poverty and crime.
The university lecturer says except
concrete efforts are made to address the plight of rural communities,
the attendant effects like crime and disorderliness can spill to urban
areas in the not too distant future.
“If you look at majority of the crimes
committed in big urban cities like Lagos, you’ll realise the culprits
are mostly these guys who came from the rural areas not too long ago in
an attempt to escape the biting poverty in those places.
“The truth is that any government that
fails to develop the rural communities does so at its own detriment
because by the time the repercussions would come, it would spill to the
cities themselves.
“The insurgency we see in parts of the
country today is as a result of the neglect of the rural communities by
government. The moment poverty and deprivation in the basic areas of
life like clean water, food, quality health care and education get hold
of a people; the consequences could prove too costly for not just that
locality but the society at large.
“So my advice is for government to begin
to pay more attention to the needs of rural communities. The people are
not asking for too much; just an improvement in the quality of life,”
she said.
A psychologist, Buchi Anyamele, explains
that trekking several hours to and fro an institution of learning could
have negative consequences for the health, mind frame and assimilation
ability of a person.
According to him, secondary school
pupils who endure long walks in places like Ipokia may not be
psychologically stable to understand and put into good use all they are
taught in the classroom.
“Engaging in such stressful daily treks
is not good for the health and mental stability of anybody. If there are
students who trek three hours to school every day and the number of
hours while going back home, I pity them because I fear they might not
be learning anything tangible after all.
“The human brain especially for young
boys and girls needs to be properly relaxed for assimilation to occur.
There is no way you can pass through such stress and still learn
properly or even understand what you are taught by the teacher. Such
situation is not only dangerous for the health but also for the
psychology of the individuals as it could lead to a loss of confidence
and self esteem,” he said.
While shortage of schools and teachers
coupled with the bad state of roads across most parts of the local
government appear to have aggravated the people’s worries in this Ogun
community, it is the lack of a functional and well equipped hospital in
the region that has proven the biggest albatross. Towns like Madoga and
Kajola used to have fairly operational health centers until lack of
proper funding led to their complete closure recently. The Ipokia Local
Government Health Clinic, Iropo, which for a while had turned out an
able cover, is now also approaching the final stages of its hibernation.
With only one bed left standing inside its dusty and dilapidated ward
and its drugs shelf waning thin by the day, it might not be too long
before its fragile doors are completely shut from the dozens who turn to
it every day for solution.
A medical doctor, Jide Arogundade, told Saturday PUNCH
that the area could witness a rise in deaths resulting from
communicable diseases like typhoid, cholera, malaria and rheumatism if
access to quality health care does not improve in the very near future.
According to him, having two members of
staff oversee the medical needs of a population of over 10, 000 people
is not only dangerous but grossly inappropriate. To imagine that only
one bed is also available to that number is alarming, he said. But
bizarre as it is, this is the sad reality in the larger part of Ipokia
Local Government Area, a remote region tucked in the extremes of Ogun
State.
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