- 90-year-old inmate marries 2 wives
- Amputee blind for 15 years
From LAYI OLANREWAJU, Ilorin
For 75 years, Okegbala, a community tucked between Oke Onigbin and Omu Aran, headquarters of Irepodun Local Government Area of Kwara State, has been a colony for leprosy patients, many of who were torn from their families and quarantined there.
It’s the location of the leprosarium of the Evangelical Church Winning All (ECWA), which is close to a hospital established by missionaries on evangelism in Africa from the Sudan Interior Mission (SIM), a gospel body founded in 1893. The hospital is encircled by three colonies of leprosy patients. Oke-Igbala, a Yourba word that means, Mount of Redemption, was a famous healing centre for persons infected by Mycobacterium leprae, the bacterium that causes leprosy, at the time that infectious disease ravaged rural communities across the country.
Till date, commercial motorcyclists dread conveying passengers to the centre even when offered a huge amount, leaving a determined visitor with no option than to trek the over two-kilometre distance from the Ilorin-Omu Aran highway to the leprosarium. A few metres from the entrance of the medical facility, which now serves as a government referral centre for tuberculosis and leprosy was a pitiable sight when our correspondent visited the place recently. For over 10 minutes, 88-year-old Madam Rachael Ajiboye, an inmate of the colony whose limbs were amputated after she was infected by the disease, battled to empty her bowels at a nearby bush. Severely pressed, she crawled with pains from her dingy hut to where she would defecate as her crutches were not handy. She has lived in the weather-beaten hut in the colony since she was 30 years old.
Back from the bush, she went for her crutches and dashed to the expressway in search of food. Hours later, she returned to her hut clutching a polythene bag in which was a meal of rice and some rotten fruits, a delicacy given to her by a Good Samaritan. The old woman settled down to savour the delicacy and then, waited for the next day to continue what had become a ritual for her.
Madam Ajiboye’s routine aptly depicts life at Okegbala, where victims of leprosy have had their lives abruptly turned upside down, albeit, with excruciating pains and distress. While some have accepted their fate occasioned by the disease, others who could not live with the harsh conditions died in sorrow. Life here is brutish and unbearable, yet the inmates cannot leave because they have nowhere to go. The inmates literally live in hell amid hunger, and their daily survival depends on how much they get as handouts from kind-hearted motorists and commuters on the expressway.
One of the oldest lepers in the colony, Pa Samuel Ashaolu, cannot afford to miss the first commuter bus to Omu-Aran to beg for alms; else he would have no food for that day. The 90-year-old man is an amputee from Erin Mope in Moba Local Government Area of Ekiti State, described life in the colony as tormenting. He burst into tears as he relived the plight of inmates at Okegbala to Sunday Sun.
“I cannot recall the exact year I was brought to Okegbala for leprosy treatment, but I’m sure I had been living in this community before independence. I was about 30 years old when I contracted the disease. My wife and members of my family brought me here. When I was cured of the disease, I returned home, but I was sent back because my leg was amputated; they feared I would infect them with the disease. Since I returned here, I have never set my eyes on any of my family members. They dumped me and never came back to check on me. Even the wife I married before I contracted leprosy did not come again. I used to be a farmer in my village, but I could not engage in farming when I got to this place due to the amputation. I cannot engage in any trade and this made life harrowing for me. If I fail to join the first bus to Omu-Aran to beg for alms, I will not eat. That is how many of us have been living in the past 50 years. We depend on begging and handouts which some kind-hearted people send to us through the ECWA Hospital,” he narrated in pains.
However, he said having been abandoned to their fate by spouses and family members, they are determined to forge on with their lives. To keep body and soul together, they engage in carnal relationships with some engrossed affectionately; several of those who involved in such affairs eventually got married.
Hajarat Balogun, aged 85, hails from Oro in Irepodun Local Government Area of the state. She was married and had three children before contracting leprosy 50 years ago. She had digit mutilation which led to the amputation of her legs. She says the deformity made her first husband and children to abandon her at the leprosarium. But her rejection did not deter her from getting married again. 40 years ago, she found love in a 90-year-old man, Pa Jeremiah Akande, also an amputee and inmate of the colony, and got married to him. He suffered same fate as Hajarat from members of his family.
Interestingly, Pa Akande, now deceased, was married to two other women in the colony, 65-year-old Rhoda, and Olufunke, aged 80. The two widows had lived in the lepers’ colony for the past 30 years after they were cured of the disease. Sadly, it is double jeopardy for Olufunke who not only battled leprosy, but also lost her sight to glaucoma 15 years ago. Her predicament has finally incapacitated her and she is no longer able to engage in begging alms to feed. Presently, she depends on her mate for survival.
However, for some of them, they bided goodbye to marriage after arriving the leprosarium. Nafisatu Aminu, a 72-year-old woman who hails from Ilorin, the Kwara State capital, is one of such persons. She is a mother of two and has lived in the colony for 35 years. After suffering digit mutilation and abandoned by her husband and children, the distraught woman said she had no reason to fall in love again.
“I used to be one of the successful fish traders in Idi-Ape market in Ilorin. I cannot vividly remember the year but I know I traded in the market during the regime of President Shehu Shagari. My husband and two children used to look up to me because I provided my children with whatever they needed; but everything changed when I suffered leprosy. My fish business crumbled and I lost my means of livelihood. I was brought to this place by my husband. After he left, I never set my eyes on him again. He abandoned me here until his family members came here some seven years after to tell me he was dead. I never felt any sense of loss after they broke the news of his death to me, because the man never loved me. He took my children away and abandoned me here; so I decided not to remarry. It is hard for me to fall in love again with anyone. I have accepted my fate; if I have the opportunity to live again, I would be wiser to choose a life that would be different. This is not the kind of life I prayed for,” she lamented.
Pa Julius Fabunmi, who makes leather wears and crutches for the inmates, said some of them remarried because they were young when they contracted the disease and were abandoned by their families. “All the old people you see here were brought to the leprosarium when they were young. I remember there are some of them who were brought here with infants; it tells you that they were sexually active at the time many of them started living in the colony. This is why it did not come as a surprise to us when they started courtship and marrying themselves. We have some of them who were never married, but got married in the colony and became parents. Some had been married but had to remarry because of the stigmatization they suffered from family members back home. They all started new life here, because they could not afford to allow the disease to deprive them from bearing children,” he said.
Sunday Sun learnt that medical care for leprosy victims started in 1941 at Iwele-Egbe, Ilorin-Kabba province of the old northern region in the present Kogi State, at a health facility owned by the Sudan Interior Mission (SIM), where two female missionaries, Miss Thomson and Miss Lang, undertook care for some patients. It was to provide spiritual and medical succour to rejected leprosy victims, and was also aimed at eradicating the disease. Two years after, the number of persons infected by the disease increased, just as apprehension and hostility of residents of the immediate communities heightened.
Consequently, the patients were divided into two groups; while 12 of them were taken to Ilofa under the care of Dr and Mrs Herbold, others remained at Iwele-Egbe until 1945, when they were resettled at Ejiba, beside the Oyi River. Sources said a total of 26 patients were later moved from Ilofa to the present location at Omu-Aran, a site popularly known as Oke Igbala. Inmates of the colony had increased steadily since then.
Sunday Sun findings revealed that while they manned the affairs, the late Herbold’s wife established a clinic and maternity home within the leprosarium to extend medical services rendered by the SIM missionaries. Some of the patients who had been cured were engaged in the hospital, others joined Herbold in missionary activities. With an increase in population, the missionaries built houses at Okegbala to shelter health workers.
It was further learnt that the founders of the leprosarium had offered free treatment to victims of the disease, and thereafter, provided those with limbs the needed tools to engage in farming to eke out a living. This was because majority of patients refused to return to their homes after being discharged for fear of stigmatization, and therefore, resided at Okegbala. The situation bloated the population of the area, which eventually metamorphosed to the present Aiyekale, Alabe, and Oloruntele communities.
In 1956, SIM founded ECWA, formerly Evangelical Church of West Africa, in furtherance of its missionary projects in Nigeria. As the SIM missionaries returned to their respective countries, it was gathered that Herbold handed over the operations and management of the leprosarium to ECWA, Nigeria, and it became a referral centre for leprosy cases in Kwara State.
Unfortunately, the condition of the facility was said to have deteriorated progressively due to lack of attention until 1991, when the Leprosy Mission International, TLM, took steps to salvage the situation. It renovated dilapidated structures, built new ones to cater for the needs of staff, retrained support staff and re-opened a primary school in the community, which had been shut for several years. The organisation also engaged a full-time resident doctor for the medical facility that departed at the end of the intervention programme. The Kwara State government eventually re-designated the facility as referral centre for tuberculosis and leprosy. Over the years, it has served the purpose not only for residents of the state, but also those in neighbouring Ondo, Oyo, Ekiti, Osun and Kogi states. However, its management has depended largely on charity to stay afloat.