The Deaf As Social Casualties

Copyright © 2006 Kenneth Yali Diouf

Except where otherwise stated, all scripture quotations are taken from the King James Version of the Bible.

All rights reserved. No part of this book should be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or    mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without written   permission from the Publishers.

ISBN:

Typeset and published in the Federal Republic of Nigeria by

 High Calling Outreach Publications

 Port Harcourt.

High Calling Outreach Publications is the Publishing arm of the High Calling Outreach, a Literature Evangelism Ministry which distributes Christian literature and garners support for battered women, abused widows and the destitute.

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Kenneth Yali Diouf

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Preface

Chapter One

A MOCKED PEOPLE

Chapter Two

TRUNCATED EDUCATION

Chapter Three

BRAIN DRAIN AND LEADERSHIP VACANCY IN THE DEAF COMMUNITY

Chapter Four

THE DEAF AND OUR HOSPITALS (I)

Chapter Five

THE DEAF AND OUR HOSPITALS (II)

Chapter Six

EXCLUSION GAGS AND ANGERS THE DEAF

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Acknowledgments

In the course of preparing the book, we borrowed spoken and printed materials from sources whose line of thought and appraisal agrees with the message we intended to pass across to the world. We wish to chiefly acknowledge the contribution of:

v     The President/CEO of Sign Language Communication & Technology, Mr. Adewale Adeyanju(Deaf), through whose instrumentality a journalist with The Punch newspaper office in Lagos  proofread and edited this  book.

v     The Holy Bible

v     The New World Encyclopedia

v     The Nigerian Press

v     Ellen Gould White

v     Gifted Hands International Ministries(Ibadan, Oyo State, Nigeria)

v      International Model School for the Deaf (Afikpo, Ebonyi State, Nigeria)

v     Sir Adolphus Egba

v     Mrs. Catherine A. Essien

v     National Agency for Prohibition of Traffic in Persons

v     Ordinary Deaf Individuals

Preface

If you are not acquainted with the world of the deaf, and if you don’t engage them in conversation on a variety of issues, you can never ascertain that they are politically and socially attentive, critical, and sensitive. They are even judges of their own community.

They are said to be the components of the Silent World. But is their world really silent since there is a lot of speaking and thinking going on in there? Through e-mails, personal contacts, and text messages, ordinary deaf youths afforded us the fuel (critical information, revelations, views) that has now resulted in the development of this book. They are found in eastern, northern, southern, and western Nigeria. What they want to say and do or see done doesn’t find expression in the landscape of the polity that accommodates them. This is why this book carries political undertones.

Our target audience, therefore, are:

§        The Presidency

§        Governors

§        Federal/State Ministries of:

v    Education

v    Health

v    Justice

v    Sports and Social Development

v    Youth Affairs

v    Special Duties(Economic Empowerment)

§        Medical Doctors and Nurses

§        President of Nigeria National Association of the Deaf

§        Chairmen/Secretaries of State Deaf Associations

§        Judges and Lawyers

§        Parents of Deaf Youths/Children

§        Deaf School Principals and Teachers

§        Gospel Preachers to the Deaf

As you read, you will be able to feel the feelings of the handicapped, know their minds, their stands, failures and blunders, wishes, and their dangerous situation in an oppressive and negligent society.

Kenneth Yali Diouf

August 2006

1

A MOCKED PEOPLE

Do you know someone who makes fun of deaf people? ---Reuben Savanick.

On the eve of the implementation of democracy in this land, the handicapped people were led to vote. The eve of the implementation of what has become known as the “wonderful system of government” came on the heels of the eve of the debut of the 21^st century. The handicapped people, in their various parts of the Federation, were led to vote for the political parties of their choice. They are a large nation within a nation. Each category of disabled people was, in those days of political euphoria, affiliated to one political party or the other. They waited in eager anticipation for the day of vote. While they waited, feverish political slogans, laden with mouth-watering promises of relief from age-long intellectual bondage, oppression and backwardness, hit the air continuously. The deaf didn’t hear anything said over the radio and television; but the fortunate ones among them who are worthy to be counted among the literate population bought newspapers to get a sound picture of the latest political development. Those among the deaf who could not read but who were incurably interested in politics depended on their literate deaf colleagues to translate newspaper contents into Sign Language for them. That was how majority of even the most profoundly illiterate deaf girls and women came to be possessors of average political and social news in the land.

Gigantic political dreams, awesome tall anticipation of liberation from economic poverty at the departure or final exit of the military from politics, the imminent experience of righteous and permanent democratic rule (wonderful system of government!)---all these and tens of other little dreams filled the souls of deaf people. The drums of democracy, like soul- shattering sounds of drums of war, energized the souls of the people with that grim resolute desire to aggressively votes en masse so as to leave no one in doubt that the military must go, that the power of their vote would not, this time around, come under the heavy jackboots of the military like the historic June 12, which a military General in this land called an Albatross, or a burden.

The handicapped decided so, too, in their own domain. But the handicapped didn’t realize that the political slogans and gimmicks being employed to seduce them to vote were not going to work in their favour as much as they would wish, or at least not  in proportion to their vigorous expectation. It was not going to work to a degree commensurate with the strength of their confident vote. For many of thousands of them were to be found jobless, uneducated, economic and political beggars, deprived of scholarships, dropping out of school in a democratic regime purportedly crafted or believed to be just and fair. It was surely with chagrin that few were going to vote the military out of power since General Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida(IBB)’s military regime had had unparalleled provision of milk and honey for the disabled in terms of provision of jobs. According to Joseph Wole Demo, Chairman of Blind Standard Watch Organization, “During the military regime, most disabled [persons] were provided with suitable jobs. To be precise, during Babangida’s regime, he made a declaration that all companies should employ 2 percent disabled into their workforce. To our dismay, this civilian government did not and has not put such things into consideration. Other major factors that contribute to the suffering of the disabled are that the ministry in charge of the welfare of the disabled has been merged with that of sports. That naturally would not have a problem. But, unfortunately, the ministry in charge, both at the State and Federal levels, have neglected the welfare of the disabled and focused only on sports.”¹

 Would the incoming new system of government supersede the IBB regime in job provision? They did not know. But they reasoned that democracy would be better in every way since it is the government of the people by the people for the people---a wonderful system of government!

The election day came and went. The swearing-in of democracy on 29^th May 1999 then followed, and the commencement of experiment at democratic rule. Until the third and fourth year of democratic rule, the ruling parties had done nothing to resolve the social and political deadlock of the handicapped. The worst hit handicapped citizens were the deaf. They remained side-tracked and unattended to, and they wallowed in desperate want. It was an unbearable irony even to know that these are a people who had voted for the enthronement of democracy like every normal citizen. They had voted consciously and responsibly, but no conscious and responsible repayment of their vote was made to them in terms of proportionate enactment of legislation enforcing the delivery of proper social services to them in spite of the fact they had filed out to vote for the People’s Democratic Party (PDP). They had lifted the flag of Alliance for Democracy (AD). One group here and another group there of deaf people who knew they were part of the country confidently and trustfully had boasted that All Nigeria People’s Party (ANPP) would win a superior vote. Pride had been taken in powerful political speeches that United Nigeria Democratic Party (UNDP) had all the tricks and strategies for the dissolution of the many ills of the country and the colossal misfortune induced by the marginalization of the handicapped. In other breasts, the Justice Party (JP) was cherished and voted for with such fervency comparable only to the ardour with which the mother of James and John in the Holy Writ requested special seats at the right and left sides of Christ’s throne in heaven.

But their hope---the hope of the deaf---turned out to become a mere mirage or the devil’s waters, which they earnestly ran for only to be seriously disappointed. They still lived under tyranny in a system they voted to establish. Did they vote for democracy proper or for tyranny under the guise of democratic alliance or democratic unity? For not long after, the deaf citizen began to read newspaper headlines blaring out reports of democratic political assassinations. The hearing-impaired citizenry were jostled out of their wits and became confused. They frowned in dismay. They queried nervously, “Where is our vote we gave the People’s Democratic Party? What is the Alliance for Democracy doing with our vote? Did we vote only to be fed with news of senseless political murders? We didn’t vote to see blood but to get justice and enjoy equal opportunity”. These sad and tormented people shook their heads in desperation and sobbed, disgusted, alleging that politicians had robbed them of their vote and misappropriated these to set up engines of political intolerance and homicide. The lamentation continued, “Our teachers, friends, parents and immediate neighbours told us to go to the polling stations and cast our votes into the ballot boxes because better days are coming and we would get a better economy, better education, and free medical treatment everywhere. But now…”

Every vote is a seed. A vote is a seed entrusted by the citizens into the hands of the flag bearers of political parties. The flag bearers and their associates are the farmers who should take the vote seed and nurture it to fruition for the benefit of the people. They are under obligation to fertilize the vote seed with the fertilizer of political accountability, responsibility, sensitivity, wisdom and tact in order to turn over to the people the fruit of their clean vote, which were not sown in blood. The handicapped voted so that the likes of Dele Giwa, Alfred Rewane, M.K.O. Abiola, Kudirat Abiola and other dear patriotic citizens would not be assassinated. But here were they again about being almost overflowed with huge torrents of innocent blood from within the political leadership structure of the fledgling democratic system. If a fledgling system of government could be bloody so early, then when it reaches maturity, the system will have no one to govern since it will have devoured the entire citizens like the land of Canaan, which devoured its inhabitants. The people hoped for a wonderful change, but they were now about to wade in blood---in the blood of some of their leaders being felled. Their disappointment was more than they could bear because blood was made to emanate from the very vote they cast to elect leaders. Change, the anticipated, change, was no where in tow because misuse of the sacred vote of the people killed the looming grand change encapsulated in the honest vote of the people.

However, six years of experimental dabbling into democracy (wonderful system of government?!) seemed to have gradually produced some confidence that the present system would be much better in every way than the notorious military regime disgraced out of power by the vote of the people. This generated the tendency in the people to swear that they would resist any attempt by the military to make an incursion back into the murky waters of this bloodied democracy out of which yet the people enjoyed good things. (This democracy has made widows and orphans when political big wigs fell through the viciousness of democratic bullets of hired assassins from rival democratic parties. These democratic bullets inflicted a grief and pain much greater than what had been hoisted on the people by the dictatorial bullets of military regimes. But the emerging tasty fruits of experimental dabbling into democracy told the people that the system was worth persevering in despite the attendant woeful uncertainties.)

And so while widows and orphans still awaited justice and groaned in inconsolable pain and demanded to know the killers of their husbands and fathers, the polity became taken up with the euphoric celebration of “Democracy Day”. The reason for this elation is this---“that since the Obasanjo administration came on stream six years ago, May 29 every year has always been observed as Democracy Day. The importance of this is to emphasize the importance and superiority of democracy over any other form of governance. But more than this, democracy has come to mean our ‘Liberation Day’ from the hegemony of our military predators who, in their quest to satisfy their lust for power  and material things, saw Nigeria as a chessboard they  can scramble for. The many years they held Nigeria to ransom stunted our growth and left the nation bleeding with 400 billion dollars frittered away into foreign accounts”². 

On each Democracy Day, celebration highlights the following high points as the superior trade marks of democracy in the land:

1.      Liberation from the hegemony of military regimes.

2.      Many positive changes in the lives of individuals and States.

3.      Phenomenal growth beyond expectation witnessed in every facet of lives of many.

4.      Free and compulsory primary and secondary education [in some States].

5.      Manpower development and maintenance.

6.      Sense of unity and oneness.

7.      Political sagacity building bridges of friendship and accommodation.

8.      Reduction of poverty.

9.      Increase in the salary of civil servants [in some States].

10. Road development and maintenance.

11. Anti-graft war/crusade against corruption.

On the canvas of the present democratic rule, we are aware of circumstances ranging from liberation from military domination to anti-graft war. But if you peep a little left here and a little right there, steadily at close intervals, and fix the searchlight of your curious scrutiny and concern on the world of the handicapped, you will be awakened. You will be realizing that democracy proper has not sufficiently penetrated the confined and distressed world of the disabled. The press which has earlier entertained us to our general consciousness of the benefits of democracy now reports to us a sorry dark aspect of the negligence of democratic governance.

The Blind, Deaf and Dumb of Oji River (Enugu State)

“A visit to the school of the blind, deaf and dumb Special Education Centre, Oji River, Enugu State, can only provoke tears and pity. One of the heart-rending stories is the raping of the female inmates.

“Apart from this, the blind inmates defecate in the bush, where snakes sometimes bite them and they march on their faeces. The Centre’s inmates cook for themselves at their dormitories at the risk of fire disaster.

“Established in 1935 by the colonial masters, the Special Education Centre has passed through successive governments. The Centre was said to have started with 12 leprosy patients. Later, Daily Sun gathered, the leprosy section was relocated somewhere around the vicinity. That of the blind, deaf and dumb was established in 1958 and 1962 respectively.

“At present, the Centre comprises four sections: Special School for the Deaf and Dumb (primary) and Special School for the Blind (primary). Others are Vocational School for the Adult Blind, who can no longer cope with future academic requirements under normal circumstances, and short course for those who became blind in the course of their normal secondary school career or in higher institution.

“Apart from the school course section, the other sections are said to be staffed by Oji River Local Government Authority, while the short course is staffed by Enugu State Government Ministry of Education, which provided general administration for the Centre.

“It was observed that since the creation of Enugu State out of former Anambra State, the issue of security of the Centre has been completely neglected. Series of reports are said to have been sent to Enugu State Ministry of Education for the posting of security men to the Centre. These requests, Daily Sun learnt, have not been granted, thereby exposing the inmates to incessant attacks by hoodlums and rapists.

“Commenting on the condition of the Centre, the Chaplain to the Catholic inmates there and Parish Priest of St. Michael’s Catholic Church, Dodo Ugwuoba, Oji River, Rev. Fr. Nwailo Joseph, said the experience at the Centre is a sorrowful one.

“Said he, ‘When you get into the environment, it has nothing to write of human dwelling place. The inmates are highly degraded. At a particular time I asked one of the girls, “Did you prepare anything?” just to tease her. She said yes. “What have you?” I asked. She said she [had] rice. “Who prepared stew?” I asked. She said she was the   person. “How do you know when to put the onion and the rest?” And she said whenever it makes the noise vaayi, she knows the oil is done. If you look around, there is no sign of government coming in for anything there. The students only exist at the mercy of voluntary organizations and philanthropists. I will say the government has failed these children. They are oppressed psychologically. Cult members are even said to come and kidnap some of them as there is no security there. If the State Government cannot do anything to alleviate the suffering of these inmates, let the Federal Government take over immediately’.

“Father Joseph also calls on philanthropist organizations and individuals, both at home and abroad to come to the rescue of the inmates”³.

While a favourable turning point was nowhere in view for thousands of deaf persons amidst exhilarated dins of political celebration in the land, many deaf women were being viciously manipulated, harmed and infected with the HIV Virus by men of the hearing world. Surely this people did not vote for this, not for a democracy that would not democratically defend them, uphold their rights, and give them solid security.

Vote has been extorted from the deaf and the generality of handicapped people and taken to consolidate winning points of the democratic parties. With this vote, many people won significant political favour, prestige, and appointments. The people so privileged knew whose votes gave them these enviable positions where they were supposed to work and “serve and protect with authority”. But civil servants and certain churchmen are known to manipulate deaf ladies and harass them sexually. Wedding, funeral, and religious crusade occasions have been sporadically used to make deaf ladies walk into traps, where they get divested of their hitherto jealously guarded virginity. While the vote of the deaf people would not return to them from the people they gave them to in exchange for better social life, their social risks and hazards increased – deepening poverty, grim insecurity, and fiendish oppression.

Miss Onyekachi Nwankwo’s ill fate is a typical illustration of the misery created for many deaf people in a so-called democratic government. Her ill-usage by a civil servant brings us to question if democracy is really a government of the people by the people for the people, opposing totalitarian or authoritarian rule of single party or a government without parliamentary council. Our learned aged forefathers, before they died, gave us many negative definitions of democracy, which we today call magnificent edifice. We can call democracy a magnificent edifice if we intend to mean that on the outside it is an imposing edificewhich within is “full of hypocrisy and iniquity … extortion and excess” (Matthew 23:28, 25). A democracy can be hoisted over a people without it really living in their blood to uphold the supposed tenets of democracy. The corruption that lives in the blood of men is what will still rule them while they adorn themselves in democratic garbs. This is why Dr. Maitana Sule, a one time First Republic Minister and Elder Statesman found the pre-democracy era far better than the present democratic dispensation.

Granting an interview to the Saturday Champion newspaper, the Elder Statesman lamented that “this brand of democracy will get us nowhere”. He went on to say that “we the younger ones in government respected our elders irrespective of their political differences. There was honesty of purpose, respect for elders and constituted authority. There was, relatively speaking, morality in the society. There was security in the country. We did not notice so much chaos in politics as we are witnessing now. Today, what do we see today? The breaking down of family, disrespect for elders and constituted authority. Honesty has become meaningless. In short, there is meaninglessness in philosophy. Insecurity in polity; chaos in politics, immorality in society, corruption in economy, frustration in arts, lack of creativity in literature”⁴.

That is democracy defined! It might as well signify a dustbin of moral garbage. It is a system that has a congenital penchant to abuse moral values, turning them upside down. Democratic governments have never been governments of serenity, security and peace. Democracies are governments of lasciviousness and abused freedom. The abuse of human rights tends to be at their peak in this dispensation. In a democratic system, we run the absolute danger of having hoisted over us the flag of the institutionalization of such bestial shows of shame as homosexuality and lesbianism in the name of personal freedom. America is believed to be a democratic nation when in actual fact she was originally founded to be a constitutional republic, not a democracy. But somewhere along the way, everyone was led to accept of the concept that she is a democracy. Today, this democracy is regarded as the “murder and pornography capital of the world”⁵, polluting other democracy with her awful moral filth.

Fisher Ames says that “a democracy is a volcano which conceals the fiery materials of its own destruction. These will produce an eruption and carry desolation in their way”⁶. One of the constituent fiery materials found in a democracy is to rob the handicapped of their votes, give them nothing, and then abuse them with impunity as in the case of dear Miss Onyekachi Nwankwo.

MISS ONYEKACHI NWANKO (DEAF) AT A WEDDING CEREMONY

She lived in Delta State of Nigeria. She is a beautiful Igbo deaf lady from Anambra State, but her parents were traders in the Niger Delta. One day, she got an invitation to attend a grand society wedding in one of the towns of her home State. She travelled a fairly good distance to grace the splendid day of nuptial knot tying with her presence, notwithstanding her inability to hear voices of singing of songs of praise, musical instruments that added special glamour to the wonderful solemn occasion. Neither would Onyekachi hear the prayer of the congregation beseeching the God of heaven for his endorsement of the marriage and consolidating blessing upon it as long as it would last.

Many great utterances escaped the ears of Onyekachi, the deaf lady. But instinct now and then would assist her to conjure up some of the things being said; she was more often right in this exercise. Her eyes never faltered in fully taking a thorough view of every single movement in the wedding ceremony arena. She saw the tears of joy and gratitude to God of the mothers of the bridegroom and bride respectively. She saw the revival of physical strength of their grandparents whose usual ill-health inflicted weakness and sadness on them. But today the magic of joy released by the wedding of their grandchildren got rid of that piteous state of their lives. They mumbled inexpressible gratitude to God, even while their hands shook gently with age.

The calibre of people that graced the occasion really appealed to the admiration and sense of respect of Miss Onyekachi Nwankwo. She knew they were the people that rule the cities, States, and the nation. She knew she owed them respect – respect to these chiefs, local government chairmen, commissioners, teachers, business women, transport company owners, bankers, and other representatives from higher government ministries. She was owed by the imposing influence that emanated from them. She could feel it; but by virtue of her deafness, she felt she was a most inferior human being. Not only was she deaf, but she could not also speak. She saw these seated people with imposing influence as gods. She saw the other not so influential people as little princes, and she thought she owed them respect much the same way. But she never felt she herself ought to be respected, appreciated, honoured---and regarded as a complete human being. For quite often society treated her badly, in private as well as in public. Many times she had been subjected to most degrading embarrassment in full glare of the public by arrogant elements in society.

As she surveyed the present society in celebration mood, she could not see in these gods and princes that tendency toward those dispositions that created for one public embarrassment. She wondered how, for quite regularly that was her experience. In herself she felt she needed that deep satisfaction that comes from feeling at home and secure anywhere. But the want of that satisfaction drove a huge tear out of her right eye first, before another huger tear thrust itself out of her left eye---amidst the ongoing nuptial celebration. The tears preached, “Love me…accept me… praise me. I am one of you…”

She knew she had long been the slave of barbed and blazing loneliness, even in the midst of the most exciting places made drunk from the cups of whatever could stimulate wild joy. Deafness carries symptoms of loneliness that plague deaf persons in special places.

Onyekachi Nwankwo’s longing to be accepted, praised and loved in a celebratory environment is not an experience unique to her alone in her individual locality, but it is one experience with global reputation among the hearing-impaired. Very many people are involved with the deaf, but it is just a sizeable number of these that are able to detect deaf persons’ loneliness symptoms, and take the initiative to alleviate them. One teacher of the hearing-impaired that lives beyond the shores of Africa has this to say about the reason that motivated her to start a friendship ministry to the deaf: “It is this loneliness and isolation that inspired me to start DFI (Deaf Friends International). Deafness can be very, very lonely. Just recently one of my former students, who is now in her 30’s, was telling me about a family gathering at her parents’ home. Several family members were sitting around talking and laughing. But no one was telling my student what was being said. She was completely alone and isolated in this room full of people”⁷.

So quite a good lot of hearing-impaired people are not only social casualties, but also they are psychological fatalities with multiple emotional ailments on account of deep-seated fiery feelings of loneliness, exclusion, and isolation.

Onyekachi, the Igbo deaf girl, realized that marriage must be a moving event on account of the tremendous controlled and joy-filled commotions and emotions she saw in that well-decorated Civic Centre Hall. She could have got a better picture or realization of the significant of that enjoyable event if she had been granted by nature to hear the preacher’s sermons and other nuptial orations. In more ways than one, her eyes became partly her ears. So about 55% benefit accrued to her through some act of clemency from nature. She had wiped those tears – and now she was filled with joy for the couple and their celebrating relations, friends, and acquaintances in most high spirits. But she was giving an expensive emotion she herself might never, at least on this planet earth, reap from a society that has not had grace enough to reciprocate kindness and good wishes given them by the handicapped through the direction of nature.  The handicapped must sow good---as they usually do---and be repaid with evil from society. They have not always been the recipients of fairness and gratitude. Their existence has been made to become the containers of pain caused by injustice and oppression; their existence has been made to become the dustbin of society’s moral trash. Why? Because a “man”, according to Ngugi Wa Thiong’o ,”would throw children and the disabled into the fire as he rushes for the debris and leftovers of the imperialist.”⁸. This is a mocked people.

DEMOCRACY STEALS ONYEKACHI’S VIRGINITY

Though Onyekachi was only a guest---a mere guest, three or four drops of tears of joy fell from her eyes onto the floor. These tears were her prayers for a marvellous married life for the new couple. At the end of the ceremony, toward the end of that great day, she could not immediately travel back home. It was getting night and she feared becoming a victim of rape, ritual killers or of some acts of horror unleashed on night travellers by Area Boys (ruffians or street urchins) and armed robbers. This natural fear worked in her heart the resolution to appeal to be the guest of a certain acquaintance in the city for that night only.

She was accepted---her appeal having been granted very compassionate consideration, probably because of her deafness. Her host was an old female friend---a single hearing woman. When Onyekachi came into the compound, it became gradually known to the occupants of that compound that she was a young woman who couldn’t hear. The immediate observation of her hearing defect came about by the use of signs by her host; the signs exposed her so brightly, and she became the centre of attention of majority of tenants in the compound. She was an irresistible sight on account of her beauty. For she had light brown skin, dark lips, very black eyebrows; her eyes had more white in them than black, and were small. She had those charming and alluring feminine physical contours, with long hair that was well plaited.

There were young men around when she appeared in the premises of her host’s apartment. Some of these youths were either tenants or children of tenants. One or two of them looked at her closely to discover something about her. What they discovered, as instinct came to assist them in that mysterious search, was that the lady, the deaf lady Onyekachi was a virgin. But instinct never taught them to sense that she was not a woman that could be easily taken to bed out of holy matrimony. The young men diligently studied her face to see if she was an easy lady, but they could not find out because a complex and mysterious veneer of strange protection from nature would not permit their piercing searching eyes to know anything. Their inability to make a conclusive discovery, therefore, struck fear in the young men, whose principal intention was to attempt taking her to bed. Afraid, they thought they should not venture anywhere near her.

Deaf girls in our land have usually been grossly looked upon as cheap women, dummies and dunces because the belief seems to be popular that they do not possess moral foundations and fortresses, and sense of judgment. The popularity of this unintelligent mentality has emboldened many a man to allow himself arrogant and criminal access to the virginity of the deaf daughters of many families in our midst. It is against this backdrop that nature often resolves to come to the rescue of many good deaf girls by striking strange fear of restraint in the conscience of some men bent on ruining our precious deaf daughters. Some of these daughters have not been so fortunate as to escape sexual abuse despite the tentative attempts by nature to deliver them, “for fools rush in, where angels fear to tread”⁹---thus they have inflicted economic and political damage on the generality of the polity by debasing deaf girls with impunity. Those unnatural transgressors, with their arrogant treasonable access to the virginity of the deaf female citizenry, have wounded society because they have deliberately chosen not to “first follow nature and your judgment frame, by her just standard, which is still the same”¹⁰. Curiosity and inquisitive whispers around Miss Onyekachi would not abate from among the young men; calculated moves were made to approach the deaf lady’s host, who was, unfortunately, a loose single woman.

The battle of nature for the deliverance and protection of poor Miss Onyekachi came also through the voice of certain married women of noble and godly disposition of character in the compound. The women opened their mouths and loudly scolded the young men sharply for their lustful moves to defile Miss Onyekachi. The noble women of Oraifite, where Onyekachi attended the wedding, warned the lustful young men not to dare go anywhere near the deaf damsel for any reason whatever. The sharp scolds weakened at once the hands of the scheming boys who had always sought for virgins to deflower in their communities of Oraifite and Awka in Anambra State.

The gracious women, who were mothers, had often seen how deaf women in their part of the Federation were subjected to various kinds of abuse and ill usage. They did well to raise an outcry which reduced the degree of danger to which the poor deaf lady was exposed at the moment. While two or more youths retreated, the most disobedient one among them refused to beat a retreat; the preventive, forbidding, interdictory and protective barrage of warnings meant nothing to him. He mocked even his own conscience; he would not sleep a minute; he would not blush even at seeing how offended those great women looked when he snubbed their warnings.

The young man, a civil servant in the present democratic dispensation, was most recklessly fearless and shameless. He had lost his head over the deaf virgin lady in spite of the fact that he was already engaged to a young woman of unusually proven integrity, uprightness and faithfulness. Since his heart had never yet become a container for the preservation and practice of the tenets of democracy which he swore he would serve, he made his way to the room of Miss Onyekachi’s host---a not so graceful a woman--- and told her that he had fallen in love at first sight with our beloved deaf sister, Miss Onyekachi Nwanko. With energetic vehemence, he solicited the assistance of the weak host in paving the way for him to sneak into the deaf guest’s room so that he could have sex with her, make her pregnant and then take her to be his wife. The host complied readily. Her ready, speedy, bold and callous complicity had left angels in a serious state of shock because this loose lady had not had good sense enough to question the present standing of this young man’s engagement to his wonderful angel-like fiancée. But in spite of the stubborn and persistent prodding of her conscience not to aid in the defilement of the deaf lady, she granted the base desire of the immoral young man---in blatant defiance of sections of the National Agency for Prohibition of Traffic in Persons (NAPTIP) and Other Related Matters.

Section 12 – Any person who---

(a) by the use of deception, coercion, debt bondage or any other means whatsoever, induces any person under the age of eighteen years to go from one place to another to do any act with intent that such person may be, or knowing that it is likely that the person will be forced or seduced into illicit intercourse with another person,

(b) in order to gratify the passions of another person, procures, entices or leads away, even with such person’s consent, any person under the age of eighteen years commits an offence and is liable on conviction to imprisonment  for ten years without option of fine.

Section 13 – Any person who---

(1) who, having the custody, charge or care of any person under the age of  eighteen years, causes  or encourages the seduction, unlawful carnal knowledge or prostitution  or the commission  of an indecent assault upon any person, commits an offence and is liable on conviction  to imprisonment  for ten years.

Section 17 – Any person who---

(a) conspires with another person  to induce any person under the age of eighteen years by means of any false pretence  or other fraudulent means, permits any man to have unlawful carnal knowledge of such person commits an offence  and is liable on conviction to imprisonment for five years¹¹.

MISS ONYEKACHI NWANKO IS DISGRACED

 Prior to everyone going to sleep that night the host arranged for another room for the other female guests who were to spend the night together with our deaf sister. By and by Onyekachi was left alone in the room. One false reason or the other was put forward to explain why they could not spend the night with the deaf damsel. Could it have been argued that other deaf ladies were soon coming to join Onyekachi?

Onyekachi saw the other guests innocently make their exodus to another room. A single question arising from suspicion could not pop up in her mind. She was too immature, too innocent, too inexperienced, too unsuspecting, and too trusting to sense the imminent arrival of orchestrated ill omen. In the middle of the night she was awakened from a profound sleep aided and deepened by angels to see a man in the room alone with her. She wondered if she were dreaming. The pulse of wonderings disturbed her mind because she had quite very rarely dreamt of seeing herself in a room with a man. So her face, while she looked at the stranger in night clothes, didn’t show fear; it displayed a grim look of anxiety. But she transited from anxiety to horror in a split second when she understood she was not dreaming, as she saw that stranger making persistent requests for sex---a thing she had never experienced before.

Benumbed with fear, horrified by the illicit demand for the exploitative surrender of her virginity, demoralized by the absence of friendly human protection, she had no strength left in her will to resist. Her whole being became as light and weak as straw. She succumbed helplessly in her innocence, deflowered forever in a most dishonourable manner. The illicit and criminal ill usage of her body lasted for several hours---till dawn. She didn’t derive one second of pleasure from the whole abhorrent drama that was the degradation of her womanhood. She had an incurable wound stamped on her being. She did not know what it meant for her to meet a man. But something in her made her weep. When the sex thief was leaving, he took away the blue bed sheet he had put under the girl while defiling her; it received blood from the womb of the deflowered girl.

MISS ONYEKACHI NWANKO IS MOCKED

When she stepped out of her room the next day, she met her host in her bedroom. The moment they looked at each other, the host burst in hearty laugh; she walked up to Onyekachi, put her right hand on the left shoulder of the disgraced damsel, and continued to rock with raucous laughter full of a strange kind of evil satisfaction. This scene left the poor deaf girl puzzled at first because the greeting expressed to her host with a wave of her hand was not returned; it was unimportant in the light of the gigantic laughter full of unholy pleasure which had overpowered her friend. But remembering the previous night’s ill usage of her body, Onyekachi’s confusion evaporated. She became at once instinctively plainly aware that there had been a treacherous intrigue which opened the way for the entry of that horrendous sexual assault. Great pain gripped her heart, clenching so hard at it that she would have gone berserk with the energy and fury of murderous revenge, and would have throttled her host to death. The surge of anger in her soul was fearfully like a Tsunami coursing across the bed of the ocean.

We do not know what power kept an aggrieved Onyekachi under fearsome control, and splendidly restrained her from retaliation, even while the rage of rising anger in her soul grew more and more violent and hotter. The extent of her anger---and hate---assumed a terrifying dimension deep inside her on account of her peculiar inability to vent her anger against her host through bitter words and just accusations, etc., for she was dumb. Her mouth could not fight. So the violent energy of anger that gathered up in her tongue, unable to be released, rushed back to her heart which had by now become overfilled with a tremendous volume of wrath. The overflow of her wrath shook her body, made her eyes look deadly livid from emotional injury; and struggling to find release, it channelled itself through her arms down into her hands which quickly bunched up in hard heavy fists, her body shaking now and then with the beastly eagerness of thirst for revenge. She was but fractions of a minute close to launching her firsts at the wicked host when, again, a power restrained her. And that power was no other than that of God who wouldn’t approve of Onyekachi avenging herself. . .

Miss Onyekachi contained her rising pain and left to return to her parents’ home. There was no justice done because she didn’t make her infamy public; and she didn’t speak out because she knew there was no pint of salt of tendency toward justice in our society. Right there and then, her jealously cherished positive self-image, sense of belonging, notwithstanding her hearing impairment, sense of human worth---all crumbled, forever irremediably crushed within her being. A teenage student, she lost her education when pregnancy emerged. The professed intention of that young man to marry her on seeing her become pregnant was a great lie. He showed no interest whatever in the deaf girl afterwards.

Deep down in the most sensitive and most conscious part of her being, she cried like the wretched, desperate and threatened woman in the Bible who howled, “Help me, my lord the king” (2 kings 6:27). Or she howled like the widow who said to the unjust judge, “Grant me justice against my adversary” (Luke 18:3). But there was nobody in the present democratic dispensation to take up her case. But had she not cast her vote? The absence of instruments to look into the poor damsel’s case indeed establishes the observation that a democracy is partially a fairy tale. She cast her vote into the ballot box because she was guided to believe that democracy would give her a better future. Now her vote, if not cast, would have been the single missing block in causing a dangerous delay in the possible enthronement of democracy with all its defects and hazards. But she reaped nothing from the vote she sowed with her whole heart except an unwanted illegitimate child to brandish. What a contemptible dividend of democracy! What a trophy of disgrace!

Should not a provoked people fight back in self-defence and self-preservation? Should not a dumb, deaf and illiterate people resort to meaningful retaliation sporadically to express what they want to say, how they feel, to show they are being oppressed and to compel their aggressors to rectify their injustices toward them? Occasional violent scenes of fisticuffs created by deaf people are a powerful message people in the ambit of those scenes should duly heed. The violent scenes are a struggle to suppress or fight off naked injustice, mortifying dehumanization, and silly domineering arrogance. It is an appeal for deliverance and protection by the powers that be. It is a remonstratrative retaliation that the Federal Government should sign any bill (presented to it), advocating better elevation of the interests of the disabled. That should be before things get out of hand.

Onyekachi was not allowed by God to fly at her treacherous host for the great injury done her. The case being so, what does God intend the disabled community to take note of, particularly? There is something God wanted them to do about this as a community. But what is it? Whatever it may be, it could never be that they should relieve their conscience wrongly in the light of their awareness of these evils with the popular ridiculous excuse that “we cannot question God but submit to His will”. It does not befit an educated and civilized people to adopt a senseless mindset in the naked face of bold mushrooming evil that debases humans with impunity. If you subscribe to submitting to the will of God in circumstances subjecting me to the oppression of man, then you are submitting to another god. Whatever God intended the disabled to do about what happened to Onyekachi , it is left to them to reason and find out what they should do. Like the Jews, they should cry out in unison and say, “We have a law” (John 19:7), and add, “According to this law of our country’s government our oppressors and abusers must be punished!”

What of the Federal Government? The affliction of lady Onyekachi should pressurize the Federal Government to create some room in the constitution and slot therein laws, by-laws, decrees, statutes and judgments imposing on the generality of society, State Governments and parastatals the obligation and duty of cooperating with the Government hence forth to honour the persons of the disabled, and elevate their interests and rights.

It is not a coincidence, not even an intellectual or ideological accident, that the Joint National Association of Disabled People (------------------- State Branch) turned out hundreds of handbills sometime in July 2002 to call for public sympathy to their gloomy plight. Their strategy and device was not a moral accident. The handbills screamed:

The Cries of Disabled People.

“The public should come and sympathize with us in our moment of grief and sorrow. “The disabled persons are heavily marginalized in ------------------ State. In fact, we are treated like third (3^rd) class citizens. Everybody should bear in mind that it’s not too late for any able-bodied person to become disabled. And remember that some of you have disabled children, relations and friends. If you love them, this is the right time for you to demonstrate that love by joining the Joint National Association of Disabled persons (JONADP) to fight for their rights for the betterment of their future.

“Please all concerned persons should come and intercede on our behalf to enable us to have some sense of belonging in our society. Please join us and make a peaceful demonstration to Government House. Thank you and God bless”¹².

It is a bizarre irony that the very people who voted to earn the government of the people by the people for the people should plead public sympathy to form a peaceful demonstration with the sole objective of going to beg. They intended to beg the elected democratic government for the dividends of democracy they voted into power. The disabled have been beggars enough in our streets, houses, business centres, public places, and we saw them as economic beggars---a bunch of piteous and pariah people. They begged for jobs. They begged for money. They begged for love from their relations. They begged for understanding from school principals and directors because poverty threatened to expel them from school. These economic, emotional and academic beggars have had enough of great lack. But is it just that they should also become political beggars clamouring for the advantages packaged in a democratic regime? Whatever happened to their votes? If the handicapped should under the present democratic dispensation be political Almijiris(Islamic local beggars), then this government is not for them. If they should solicit for intercession to merit desired sense of belonging, then truly “democracy”, as defined by Fisher Ames, “is a volcano which conceals the fiery materials for its own destruction. These will produce an eruption and carry desolation in their way”. So it will be indeed except or until each category of disabled people gets political appointments for the sole purpose of representing before the powers that be the interests of the physically challenged.

2

TRUNCATED EDUCATION

I think most deaf people wonder why God allows some people to be deaf. Often deaf people think they are not very  important. They think the world is moving without them. Many deaf people are frustrated because hearing people don’t take the time to communicate with them---Reuben Savanick.

The blue sky over overhead is a huge tent, supported, it seems, by invisible huge pillars whose foundations are deep in the ground upon which we stand. The pillars, invisible though, are so well set and deeply rooted that not even the most violent earthquake would ever have enough power to shake and twist them. Come cyclones, Tsunamis (harbour waves), inundating floods, those pillars would remain firm and more than stoutly resist the power of those dangerous forces of nature.  However, in actual fact, there have been times when the practices of people under the sun threatened countless times to bring down the weight of the sky to fall upon us and plummet us to death---all of us---to the point of making the earth void again as in the beginning when God was creating the world.

 It was not from a natural catastrophe that the sky almost perilously sagged and collapsed the other day. But it was from petty acts of injustice, warped and insane frame of mind that the sky almost fell. The perpetrator of this near-tragedy lived alone to reap the bitter fruit of his crime with well-deserved colossal disgrace.

MISS IFEJIKA, THE DEAF SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENT

 Miss Ifejika Chuks was once a secondary school student. She attended a special school located some where in the Federal Republic of Nigeria. She was not an only child but one of about five children in a certain family built by an illiterate mummy and an educated father. She was neither the first nor the last born; she stood somewhere in the middle. But the reason for the attendance of the special school was that she was pure deaf. Speculations about how and when she became deaf had always hung in the balance. While her mother speculated that she was born deaf, her father Chucks held that she lost her ears few hours after birth from no apparent cause.

In the early days of her schooling, her father, Chucks, had always been very fair and glad in the payment of his three daughters and two sons’ school fees. As the daughters specially grew older and more money was needed to educate them and provide for their general maintenance, moral epilepsy attacked his fatherly fairness and integrity; the misfortune could not be unconnected with the increasing demands made on his finances by the rising cost of his daughters’ upkeep. Quite often, he came close to total inability to succeed in paying the three daughters’ third-term fees. Nonetheless, he succeeded for sometime. The strain induced by the exertions upon his funds didn’t threaten to discourage him because he told himself since daughters were so precious children; he would not fail to see that they get education no matter the cost. His determination was bolstered by his illiterate wife’s high praise of him. The doses of praise bordered on showing him how proud he must be to have three well-behaved daughters. The couple was of Igbo extraction, but they had broken off that evil tradition among the Igbo that does not place much value on the female child even when she is the first-born in the family. It was a catholic priest who preached somewhere against ungodly African traditional practices that ruined families and demean first-born female children by not giving them inheritances. The Catholic priest condemned the extreme passion with which some Igbo people get elated when they get a boy as their first-born. The priest emphasized that both female and male first-borns should be welcomed and accepted with impartiality, and treated justly when it came to giving inheritances to both sexes. Chuks’ wife was one of those women who had heard that priest. She believed him because he preached from the Bible to ignorant folks, and she went home to preach to her educated husband who was, sadly, in bondage to harsh traditions dictated by the gods in their shrines.

 Before Mrs. Chuks had heard the Irish priest, she had already diligently trained and taught her daughters to a state of enviable standard of decency in speech, conduct, appearance and morality in a society that reeks with homes that have cursed their respective communities with ill-trained and loose girls.

In a nutshell, Ifejika’s mother was the originator of Chuks’ determination to go to any length in terms of financial provision for the girls’education. And her praises bolstered that determination she had skillfully sparked in him very early. She was an illiterate with vision. She did not only praise him, but she also struggled to make significant monetary contribution to the wholesome development of her children of whom she was so proud. She was peculiarly putting very useful accent on the growth of her daughters.

THE EDUCATION OF IFEJIKA AND HER SISTERS HANGS IN THE BALANCE

Chuks’ integrity and sense of fairness, however, came under the trial of some strange kind of moral epilepsy. He had so far gone very far in resisting the impulses of that nagging spell; or perhaps it was a mere temptation. He had endured and overcome it. And the temptation was that something was there titillating his base instincts and insinuating that it was not worth using up his financial assets on daughters. He should, the temptation persisted, do better than that by withdrawing the girls from school and giving them out in marriage.

Sir Chuks Chukwudi, the carpenter, regarded the voice of that temptation as so quite and wise an option or suggestion. But the strengths of his wife’s influence and impact of her praises proved to be a bulwark against subscribing to the vicious allurement of the besetting persuasion; his wife’s influence and eulogies, indeed, were good materials that cemented his resolutions to sneer at the strength of the temptation. His ordeal was worsened when the spirit of that temptation led him to remember that he had been called a weak man for having a daughter as his first-born, and weaker still than a mosquito for having one daughter with such a defect as deafness. These comments bruised his self-esteem and faith.

Notwithstanding the huge volume of resistance Chuks could put up, his integrity kept getting eroded very little by little at a pace that could hardly be noticeable under the glare of psychological scrutiny. The moral erosion going on in Chuks was sustained by something planted in him by his own mother when he was younger. The instrumentality of that something for which his mother was responsible made ultimate victory for Chuks an illusive target.

The man, nevertheless, kept going on in watching over the education of his female children. The sons would have no problems whatever because the spell of the force of Chuks’ temptation could not take any aim at them. The targets were the girls – or perhaps it was Ifejika alone because she was deaf. Miss Ifejika Chuks was deaf and she was not as brilliant as her two sisters. The latter performed well in proportion to the measure of hope reposed in them and the amount of funds invested for their education. But with Ifejika, the situation was a bit different. Her performance rate was below that of her sisters’, and was not in proportion to the finances invested, because of her deafness. Yet she had struggled to position herself beyond the acceptable line, and would therefore deserve being congratulated for trying her best by anybody who knew her condition. But, quite mischievously, Chuks Chukwudi was blinded to this commendable development about the deaf girl who was brilliant in her own way because she showed she could over-ride the limitations posed by her handicap.

DEMONS OF ILLITERACY PLOT IFEJIKA’S RUIN:

SHE IS KEPT BACK FROM SCHOOL

One day, the deaf girl found that she could not leave for the residential school for the deaf, in the Niger Delta, just twenty miles from her father’s house. The delay in returning to school was not unusual because in the past she had to wait, a week or so after school had resumed, for her dad to get the money and give her to leave for school. Days came and went, and the lengthy school term soon shortened down to four mere weeks. All this while, Ifejika Chuks had daily watched her two sisters and two brothers take their happy routine as day-students. Gradually, her hope of going back to school that term was gone out. Her hope ended dismally because her father, under the corrosive degradation of his integrity by that headstrong temptation, had brought himself to the conviction that removing Ifejika from school would prove salutary and refreshing.

Suddenly, instinct began to whisper to Ifejika that there had been a change of attitude in her father, and that this had made him not to send her back to school. She had become so obsessed with the desire to return to school that she dreamed of her school just a night after instinct had alerted her. In the dream she saw class-mates, teachers and principal alike making a great deal of puzzled fuss over her absence. She saw them initiating ways to send a student with a note to her father to see to her immediate return to school. Out of sleep the next day, Ifejika was glad and full of confidence that miles always from home teachers and students were concerned about her.

Of course, deaf as she was, she was more confident than her siblings whom her father rated far better than she intellectually. She always carried to school that great training of immense value bestowed in her by their mother, far better than her sibling could. Ifejika never came short of giving room for the consideration of the views and opinions of her fellow deaf classmates when a quarrel or dispute broke out between her and colleagues, or among the students. A gracious consequence of this moral intelligence of this deaf girl was that she barely had a record of fighting in school---from primary to secondary school. She knew where and how to make intelligent compromise without weakening her budding integrity and inner strength. The aura Ifejika carried about under the eyes of her teachers earned her many great and innumerable praises. She was a wise student, the teachers agreed or commented in unison. She had never been first in class; neither could she be rated as the most morally sound female student.  But she was a unique bright lone star, standing out in her own right.

Ifejika took in seriously the alert she received from her instinct because she wanted to find out if her mum was responsible for causing that alert given her by instinct. Mum was not a party to that. She tried to read something in the face of her brothers and sisters; she discovered that they were simply indifferent about her prolonged stay at home when she ought to be in school. And then she raised her eyes and carefully studied her father’s eyes and face in general for days on end because she craved to get signs of what could have made him keep her at home for so long a time. She saw it! What did she see? She wouldn’t tell. Whatever it was that she saw, it was God who disclosed it to her through instinct. All she could say about her discovery could only be summed up in this sorry statement, “Daddy does not love me any more!” This she said to herself before going on to ask herself why. It was then that once again instinct assisted her with this answer: “Because you are deaf, and he thinks that if he spends money to educate you, it will be nothing, you won’t succeed”. She felt sorry for herself.

She kept her dream vivid in her mind, but she was not going to tell either daddy or mummy about it. Neither would her siblings know. The latter didn’t deserve to know on account of the fact that they had not hitherto had enough milk of compassion and kindness in them to prompt them to plead with their dad on her behalf. She wouldn’t let mummy know by writing down her dream because she could not read it; and if she used signs to inform her, she would smile and laugh only as she was wont to do even when she understood her and the import of issues affecting her. Mum took action a bit late always.

As regards her father, the revelation of what she had read in his eyes was enough to dangerously disqualify him for knowing at his own peril. And, like a horse leaping frantically in the air and neighing in fright as a branding burning iron touches his body, Ifejika’s mother abruptly woke up to the disturbing persistence of her deaf daughter’s unending stay at home. She wanted to know why her gracious deaf daughter was being systematically withdrawn from school. In the day that Mrs. Chuks decided to confront her husband, it happened that he didn’t go to work that day, and Miss Ifejika was, as usual, at home too doing chores.

IFEJIKA’S MOTHER BATTLES THE SCHEMES OF DEMONS OF ILLITERACY

Before mid-day, the girls’ parents put themselves behind closed doors in their bedroom in order to avoid interruption by visitors. The business of closing themselves behind doors was sequel to a gloomy mood that had early that morning descended on Mrs. Chuks. Ifejika didn’t know what was going on between her father and mother; she couldn’t hear at all well enough to eavesdrop, and the many looks she cast toward the closed doors didn’t relay any worth-while feedback or information to her. But the people in the neighborhood had become aware of the steady volume of vigorous arguments, punctuated with screams, sobs, swearing and cursing emanating from within the compound. Cracks in the windows and door had let out noise, which was carried on the air beyond the Chuks’ residence, and, sadly, past Ifejika’s dull ears. Consequently curious neighbours popped their heads in through the main gate of the house in a bid to detect the authors of the ongoing din of arguments. They saw nobody except this deaf girl on compulsory truancy. But they looked toward the closed door and windows. They listened intently for a while and thoughtfully withdrew when they concluded there was no fighting going on behind those doors. One or two cast their eyes at the poor girl after withdrawing their stares from the direction of the noise of arguments mixed with mournful sobs.

Heads of neighbours also jutted up at close intervals from behind the compound walls and threw objects at the girl stooping and sweeping the compound, in order to draw her attention. When she turned to them on noticing objects rolling on the ground toward her, she was greeted with inquisitive gesture of hands pointing towards the closed doors. Because they were no good listeners, they wanted to know from her what was happening in there. But the girl dropped her broom, sat down abruptly on a nearby stool and dropped her two hands on her laps. Her palms stared heavenwards eagerly as if to implore God to come down and extricate her from a snaring mess of tragedy closing in upon her. By so gesturing she meant she didn’t know what the matter on hand was. Her face was gloomy a little, but deep within she was awfully distraught at the very base of her soul.

THE BATTLE IS LOST

NEIGHBOURS MOCK

IFEJIKA BECOMES VIOLENT AND FLEES HOME

Several hours later, sometime after midday, the doors flung open, serving Ifejika the spectacle of a profusely sweating mother in silk dress, sobbing and crying with huge volumes of tears coursing rapidly down her dark thick cheeks. Ifejika quickly turned her eyes away from this sight even as anguish bit her heart harder. She quickly gathered that her mother had been engaged in a great moral combat on behalf of her over school fees to ease continuation of education.

Some neighbours, from over the wall and others looking in through the gate caught sight of the weeping woman and sneaked away. Several of them, however, before retreating, cast a last look of contempt and sneered at the dejected girl. One said under his breath, in low tone, “Why bother so much about this deaf girl”, and walked off quickly, regretting that he had wasted some of his precious minutes on a matter bordering on some funny things about the girl who could not even hear the whir of a mosquito in her ears.

But that night Ifejika dreamed again. The dream’s content was a mere reiteration of the previous one. Now night having gone, and day having begun, Miss Ifejika Chuks became an instant maniac, a mad lady---the delight and confidence generated by the dream were no longer there. She was overpowered by the energy of the fury of revenge caused by perceived injustice. She thought she needed to do something to spite her father in order to show him how deeply hurt she was. The Bible says that “if you see the poor [even your own children] oppressed [even by you] in a district, and justice and rights denied”, then we should “not be surprised at such things” (Ecclesiastes 5:8). And so when the deaf girl’s rights were refused her, she instantly transformed into another Ifejika---no more her usual self. The indignation that had massed up in her soul erupted into a violent conduct, setting her about to smash her father’s television set, broke the window louvres, rip the refrigerator door off its hinges, and overturn several other items that decorated the living room. She kicked pots, plates, shoes, and tore not only some of her father’s best clothes, but her nicest dresses as well. She destroyed her brothers and sisters’ textbooks and notebooks. But Ifejika didn’t spite mummy, who was somewhat a little delighted in a secret way that her wronged daughter, a precious citizen of her native country, had chosen to send, in her own way, a powerful message to her father, to the Nigeria National Association of the Deaf, to the Ministry of Education, and to Nigeria in general.

It could never have been imagined that she could choose to cause so much damage in the presence of her father. But here she was, mad in the very presence of her parents and siblings; none of them tried to stop or confront her. It grieved them to see their things being destroyed so easily by a child of the home who hitherto had been so good, innocent, intelligent and submissive like an innocuous lamb. Yet the energy with which she operated in her almost unnatural rage made all them hold their peace and not dare venture one step toward her.

Mrs. Chuks knew she should immediately intervene to stop her raging daughter, but she delayed action for a while longer than necessary, pretending to be so frightened that she took to her heels and made for the door. But she was back in a split second, no more looking frightened, and went straight up to Ifejika and took her by the hand. She ceased her work of destruction; she breathed hard. And then she wrested her hand from the hypocritical restraint of her mother’s grasp---and ran away from the home, leaving behind the desolate debris of her revengeful rampage.

 The oppressed damsel had learnt that she was not going back to school this long term until the next school season. The third-term fees accruing to her would be allotted to the other children since they performed better than she did, and they needed more support to benefit from extramural lessons. Galled, the poor child cried her soul out after her rampage spree. “I saw the tears of the oppressed---and they have no comforter; power was on the side of their oppressors--- and they have no comforter (Ecclesiastes 4:1).

That stroke of parental stupidity had now turned the deaf lady into an unreasonable friend overnight; and the good relationship between her mother and father became mere history – a history without relics, without memorable monuments. And worse still, a strange kind of ill conflict existed between Chuks and his other two daughters now; the once solid filial ties were marred---simply because a crude injustice was doled out to their sister, Ifejika. The happiness and humbleness and unity of understanding and mutuality in the home pulverized. Chioma and Nkemjika (the two sisters) discovered too late that their father was dead wrong when he favoured them which Ifejika’s fees at the expense of the latter’s welfare as a female child. It was this realization that contributed to the damage done to estimable filial ties; it was too late to make amendment since long after the flight of Ifejika from home, mummy took ill, very ill, became thin, and eventually resolved to walk down the devil-may-care hall of divorce, away from the impious dad of her five children.

LATE REGRET IS NOT REPENTANCE AND CONCERN

“Daddy, why did you do this?” one of the daughters lamented. The others chorused,   “She is our sister”. But Chuks was too hard to sense he was wrong, perhaps because after his wife divorced him, he found unholy comfort in seeing well-to-do men come to his house to woo his daughters and make sexual advances to them. Thus they fornicated their way to university. Alas! Sylvester Chuks and Otto Chuks(the two brothers of Ifejika)were the most awfully affected by the involuntary estrangement of their mother. They showed terrible remorse over what had happened to their deaf sister and their aggrieved mum. They now missed their mother,whom they loved dearly.

In the early days of her unannounced exit from the home of her husband, she hardly left any traces behind by which to stalk her and know her whereabouts. It was as if she had developed wings and flown off in the sky where it is thoroughly impossible to leave foot prints. But since her two sons had a flare for adventurous discoveries, they planned to locate her. They made diligent inquiries at motor parks, wharfs, water fronts where engined vehicles engaged in endless transportation day after day on high waterways in the Niger Delta where Chuks was domiciled. The two adventure-lovers used the season of holidays to do their search, which gradually found them going on with their mission in north central Nigeria---and ending in Bauchi State. It took them no fewer than 2 years to find their mother in Bauchi where she had set up a restaurant. Her physique of a short and thick woman with a ringing voice and dark complexion were the clues used in the search from one motor park to another to lead to her new location. To get as far as Bauchi had been a tedious job for the boys. On coming short of funds, they robbed people here and there to raise their transport fare. They once snatched a cow from a tall Fulani man and sold it to a rich Igbo butcher in Nassarawa State.

As soon as Mrs. Chuks saw her sons, she cursed their father. But she welcomed them, and they stayed with her for the entire period of a very long holiday. She loaded them with money and a great deal of moral teaching to keep them on the right track of pursuing their education. A bitter string she attached to the promise to sponsor their education was that she forbade them most strictly to disclose her whereabouts. Not even the innocent Ifejika nor Chioma and Nkemjika should be informed. In order to avoid forfeiture of their mother’s support and loss of their macho pride and confident ambition, the two young men had no choice but to adhere to the stern instruction. Under this they grew and pursued their education until they became useful human resources in the Niger Delta. But their sisters had had their womanhood raped to shreds.

IFEJIKA’S DESTINY IS LOST

Ifejika had become somewhat of a street girl, meanwhile. And to think she used to be a bright female student. Unfortunately this happened when deaf girls were being deceived, stolen and enlisted in the begging industry by human traffickers of the deaf community. Out of home now, Ifejika Chuks would no doubt be whisked away somewhere.The warm home of the five children of the Chuks had been uprooted by the mortal prejudice and distortion of judgment perpetrated by an unwise father! Several years had passed since Ifejika had left home and school.

In the early days of her tragedy, shortly after the end of that term in which she couldn’t return to school, she met a group of deaf boys and girls from her town, fresh back home from school for the holiday. Some of them were her classmates. No sooner had she met them than she began to narrate the doom that had been brought on her. She recounted her ordeal and disgrace with anger and hatred in full-fledged Sign Language. Her lamentable plight earned her a great deal of sympathy; but no surprise accompanied the expression of considerate solidarity because some of these students in the group had been near victims of criminal education truncation by their parents who thought they have no value.

It was at the point of finishing her story that a certain deaf man from Yoruba country on a specific mission in the Niger Delta came on the scene. He listened to the sorry tunes of the deaf girl’s wind of lamentations. He immediately saw that the crying girl had been forced into compulsory truancy. At once he requested to see the father. With such earnestness that could hardly be described, she was more than ready to take the stranger, Babalola Olatunji Babatunde (B. O. B.), to her father’s house. The moment Ifejika and B.O.B. walked into the now shattered and desolate home, Mr. Chuks’ heart fluttered with great unease mixed with terror; he thought huge, dark and burly B.O.B. was the fiancé of his daughter now come to deal with him. Lines of anger in the face of B.O.B. did more than tell the man that trouble would brew if he missed his steps or misbehaved. B.O.B., the educated but fraudulent and jobless deaf beggar, strongly protested to Chuks to endeavour to restore the abrogated education opportunities of Miss Ifejika.

A supply of spurious reasons was given to justify the deliberate failure to send Ifejika back to school. Instructively, B.O.B. being one who had seen the neglect of the deaf rejected the invalid views and explanations put forward to hoodwink him. He knew these parents! Through Chioma and Nkemjika, who knew Sign Language, B.O.B., the brilliant deaf beggar, lectured to Chuks on the grand import of academic education. He also demonstrated the beneficial import of educating handicapped people, particularly the female ones, no matter the category of their physical impairment. Little education for a disabled woman would be a garland of invaluable grace, and better than none, especially if given or acquired under strenuous circumstances and economic uncertainties. Poor Chuks who had only half-hearted convictions only made half-hearted promises to make amendment in his attitude toward his deaf daughter.

As the gentleman rose to leave, Chuks protested to him about the many precious things Ifejiika had destroyed; he complained as if he wanted restitution from his daughter whose fiery ire he had provoked. B. O. B. despised his protests, snubbed Chuks and rejected him with a contemptuous wave of the hand. He added threateningly, “If you do not send this deaf child back to school unreservedly, there will be more trouble for you from God”. B. O. B was hard on Mr. Chuks because, though an enigmatic religious deaf beggar, he had prayed to God to come to the defence of the social casualties called the deaf and their other disabled associates, and because he had read somewhere recently a noble UNICEF Press Release that runs thus: “Hundreds of millions of children across the globe are victims of exploitation, abuse, and violence each year.  For children who have been affected by insecurity in various parts of the world, trying to live a secure life does not come easily. It is not just the lack of facilities. It is also the absence of safety, reassurance and support. Out of concern for the well-being of children, UNICEF is partnering with other organizations to ensure that wherever children are---at home, in schools, in hospitals, and in community centres – they are protected against violence and exploitation. In areas of conflict, UNICEF helps create a setting where children of all ages can gather to learn, play, acquire life skills, and experience a sense of normalcy amid civil unrest that surrounds them. As a company that believes in living and working together for the common good, we at Canon applaud this unique approach to protecting the rights and welfare of children. We hope that all children will grow up with child-friendly places where they are safe and supported, and where they can enjoy recreational, educational, and cultural activities as they look ahead to a better future. The children of today, the promise of tomorrow”¹.

UNICEF enumerated three-pronged lethal strategies used by the vultures of inhumanity to rob children of their childhood: exploitation, abuse and violence. It is, therefore, no wonder that hearing-impaired Miss Ifejika was a victim of one of these vultures. Her education was exploited in favour of her normal siblings. Abuse grounded her educational pursuits; and violence made her wonder if her person and existence in the world really counted. At one point she paused in her distraught desperation and queried, “God, why am I deaf?”

With B.O.B. now gone, Chuks reneged on his promises to make amendments in respect of the deaf daughter’s education. He sulked badly daily for some kind of wicked reason best known to him. Nothing would and could cure heal him of his moral epilepsy. He had no remorse whatever for losing his family; his disease was most mysterious. Not even a recollection of the brief speech by UNICEF goodwill ambassador, Whoop Goldberg, could summon him back to his senses. Whoop had said, “Every kid needs a safe haven, a place to try out dreams and let the imagination soar. For me, that place was the theater. The stage was a magical place where anything could happen and I could be whatever I wanted. That’s what a child-friendly place is all about---having a place to express yourself in safety and dignity and discover who you are and what you love. It’s what every child in the world deserves.”².

School where Ifejika could have expressed herself in “safety and dignity” was wrested from her through abuse, exploitation and violence. School where she could have discovered herself and what she loved was painted before her eyes as being too lofty and sublime or sacred for the hearing-impaired and disabled to venture further into with their resource-consuming physical clumsiness. While her “welfare passes away as a cloud” (Job 30:15) in her native country, a 20-year-old Italian deaf girl, T.G. had a different song to sing. After just one year in University, T.G. said to us through the Internet on Wednesday, 19th July 2006: “But it is important that I have been there [university] and year wonderful for me that changed myself: believe myself, high confidence about Deaf World…”³. Home was made unsafe for Miss Ifejika before it was broken and lost. Home was lost because mummy was gone. With no more home, Ifejika no longer had any launching-pad for confidence, self-discovery and self-realization. She could not even find an alternative one in a world she had once known to be kind but which had now become beastly and brutal.

THE REAL FOUNDATION OF CHUKS’ CONDUCT

Neither nature nor the Holy Bible has ever had the least inclination toward the tendency to project that physically imperfect people are taboo. But some ingrained misgiving, born out of some mischief in humankind, has branded us with the trademark of prejudices we ourselves can hardly find reason to explain. It was this inexplicable misgiving that maltreated the person of Miss Ifejika Chuks. No other reason could be attributed to her father’s immoral conduct toward her now than the sheer fact that he didn’t like people with disability. He didn’t like them even if they were his own blood relations. He merely tolerated them but denied them love. And if he could not exercise tolerance and endurance, he schemed to ruin them and their chances of advancement as in the case of his own daughter. He had already damaged the good prospects of good life of people with disability long before he had his daughter. He had taken his insolence for the physically challenged to such a refined state of perfection that a mere slur he cast at them was sufficient to make a whole community or family give up whatever optimistic prospects they entertained towards the disabled.

Poor Chuks might be forgiven because he was just systematically obeying the tenets of a low attitude injected in his psychological make-up by his own mother. She had suffered untold trials, challenges, and difficulties as a result of having had a handicapped child, a brother to Chuks. His name was Chinedu who crawled because he could use neither legs, and was a dwarf and a hunch-back. When he was born and the day of his naming ceremony came, less than ten people attended the occasion. This offended Chuks and Chinedu’s mother, wounding something in her being. She never recovered from this wound. To discharge the load of her grief, she went to weep and sleep four whole days in a shrine of one of the gods of Igboland.

Although she managed to raise the boy and had him apprenticed to a shoe-maker where the dwarf boy proved his mettle and succeeded at the trade, she never stopped saying mean things about him, and the embarrassment she had suffered.

Chuks grew up with his dwarf brother, hearing all that their mother bitterly spat out about the harsh struggle she had had bringing up Chinedu. This aberration naturally transferred to Chuks who, rather than pity his own brother Chinedu, silently accommodated, harboured, and endorsed his mother’s venoms---and hated his brother. The transferred resentment took a better part of Chuks who later thought that he was cursed because now a deaf girl had become his daughter. In an unusual exhibition of a sudden flash of good sense, he reasoned that he was going to change his attitude and be extremely positive toward the auditory disability of his daughter. It was at this juncture, as if to begin his deliverance from the grip of that entrenched transferred resentment that nature hastened to give him the ready alliance and support of his wife who saw nothing wrong with the deafness. She was most resolute; and it was this resolution that propelled the aggressive energy with which she trained her daughters the way she did before the crash of the home.

Unfortunately, Chuks’ good sense and co-operation were short-lived on account of the fact that the impact of his mother’s disposition toward Chinedu was no match for whatever positive impact his wife could exert on him in the face of the deafness of Ifejika. Hence the extreme relapse of Chuks into the malady of poor attitude. Demons of illiteracy, therefore, capitalized on this transmitted resentment in Chuks to fight Ifejika, destroy her education, and make her useless to herself and her own native country. She had become like those handicapped babies left at the mercy of the crooked wisdom of so-called medical doctors and heartless parents. Of such endangered persons, a radio preacher said, “Some Down Syndrome babies have been denied life saving measures even by their parents, and many have been killed by abortion before they could be born.”

DISABILITY BUILDS STRONGER UNITY IN A FAMILY

Ifejika was unfortunate to be among handicapped people who get maltreated like deformed babies. Her presence in the home was the cause of much of the unrest there on account of her physical impairment. But is disability a crime? What then does the world have to give her since her disability lay at the root of the brewing crisis in the home? Chuks’ misconduct created a series of woes for the home. Then a better conduct on his part would as well have created a series of good things for the benefit of his children if he had persevered in supporting Ifejika even if her academic performance would never show any good signs of rising above the present below-average score. Such a positive conduct would have been a virtuous duplicate of the case of one baby Jonathan born with Down Syndrome. Of lucky Jonathan the radio preacher said: “. . . Jonathan’s parents loved him, and his doctors cared for him, and he lived. He spent a month in intensive care and was rushed to the hospital six times in the first 14 months of his life. But he made it. During those times, was it all misery for the Curtsis family? Jonathan’s mother writes, ‘Throughout this period, our daily life with Jonathan was pure joy. He needed a little extra help to meet his potentials . . . Perhaps because we so rejoiced when he was home and healthy, we relished our new responsibility. We’d gather in a circle on the floor around Jonathan and wait for the slightest lifting of his wobbly head. Then we’d cheer as though he scored a touch down. ... My older children grew more caring and compassionate every day. A stronger unity was built into our family. That’s why we all understand when my son Matthew said, “Wouldn’t the world be a better place if everyone had a brother with Down Syndrome?” ’

“If you think Barbara Curtsis (Jonathan’s mother) was just trying to put the best face on an unfortunate situation, here’s the rest of the story: ‘When we found out what a treasure we had [in Jonathan]’, she says, ‘we decided we wanted more. Yes, it has been a challenge. But with adversity has come an expansion of my heart. God has helped me not just to accept, but also to rejoice in his plans for Jonathan’. ”

WHAT SONG DO AFRICANS HAVE TO SING?

Ifejika’s father felt threatened in several ways by the disability of his daughter; he was too visionless, too short-sighted to see the immense treasure in the deaf girl; he couldn’t see any other profitable side of his daughter because he was mutually blinded by the not so excellent academic performance of the child. He insulted all the good work his wife had carried out on the girl by way of training her well enough to have reached a commendable, enviable, and irrevocable moral glamour. Chuks truncated the best that could have come from his wife in terms of more development in the person of Ifejika; he truncated what could have been an expansion of the love and feminine promises of the heart of the poor girl’s mother.

With that criminal attitude, Chuks didn’t allow the condition of Ifejka to consolidate and strengthen the bonds of love and unity in the humble home. He wouldn’t want to see, learn, and practise what justice entails, and how true love is practised and what price one has to pay “to receive the instruction of judgment and equity” (Proverbs 1:3).

 This murderer of the dreams and human rights of Ifejika dangerously succeeded in portraying disability in blackest light in the eyes of his other children; not only that, but he managed to convey to them the message that the world is a worse place to live in with so many deaf people littering the face of the whole earth. In destroying the welfare of the damsel, Chuks actually ended up truncating himself, his own soul---and the entire nation. The family lost Miss Ifejika Chuks; and the deaf community was deprived, regrettably, of a prospective potential leader of the disabled, and the Niger Delta was perilously robbed of gigantic abstract resources encapsulated in the single human element called Miss Ifejika Chuks.

Miss Ifejika became a lost woman. When the next term came up, she was not taken back to school. The pain of having her rights wrested made her afraid of the family into which she was born. Overpowered by this home fear, she decided to run away from home with her heart slashed in two equal parts. She had become like many other neglected deaf girls who have irredeemably become the graves of their own womanhood, motherhood, and store of other capabilities because they are untapped in a blind nation drunken with the liquor of religious hypocrisy, outraged with political hiccups, and tormented with moral dysentery. These are unusual graves cemented with the materials of disability-phobia by the promoters of retrogression in the society.

Several years later, Miss Ifejika returned home with what, in our land, certain miracle churches would call “bouncing baby”. She carried a baby boy, born three weeks ago, still nameless, and being brought home to the Niger Delta by a retired gray-haired midwife now in the employ of a private orphanage in western Nigeria. Prior to the delivery of the baby boy, Miss Ifejika had a slight brush with human traffickers and ritual killers between Anambra and Edo States. That was while in the flight from home with a grief-smashed heart. Providentially, a roadside mechanic who knew her and her parents rescued her. But the distraught girl was too full of woes to remember him. Her memory was blurred; yet she confided herself into his hands, hoping he would help her. In what capacity?

It was this innocent confidence that earned her the bouncing baby in the long run. On the emergence of the pregnancy, the mechanic took her to an orphanage in Benin City and conceived vehement lies that resulted in Ifejika being taken in charitably by the operators of the orphanage.

Not along after the refugee girl was brought to her father’s house, which no longer held mummy, she ran away again, after having deposited her child in the laps of her father. He now dandled an illegitimate grandchild as the reward for truncating the deaf girl’s education, and not seeing that something good would come out of the child’s deafness. Winston Churchill would best describe Mr. Chuks as “the pessimist [who] sees difficulty in every opportunity”.

Mrs. Curtsis and Mr. Chuks are completely strict opposite with regards to their disposition towards disabled children. For a virtually thorough education, it should be psychologically recommended that Chuks and his contemporaries of like character in our society take a noble learning, curative and discovery tour down the hall of history, as far back as four thousand years, and meet pagan King Hammurabi of Babylon who was noted for enacting 282 laws to stabilize the social order and make it work more justly. The laws of King Hammurabi “covered everything from the regulation of commerce and military affairs to the practice of medicine and the treatment of [handicapped] children”⁴.

It was when Chuks became an older man and felt the need for more human fellowship and warmth that he woke up to the sordidness of what he had done to destroy his family. We caught him emerging from a queer stupor, perhaps temporarily, to feel an assault of mighty pangs of remorse buffeting him and demolishing his inner peace. The incident took place in his carpenter’s shop about a decade after the loss of his family to his own folly. From remorse, he degenerated into a man suffering from numerous ailments lodged in his abdomen for sometime. Then miraculously he recovered. We caught him beginning a romance with religion, as he grew older. One day, he picked up a moderately used Bible that belonged to Ifejika, his daughter, and went for the time in his life to enter a Catholic Church under the superintendence of an Irish missionary priest who domiciled in the Niger Delta.

This fellow’s entry into the fold of saints sparked a mild gossip because Catholic saints regarded him as a scoundrel.  The Irish priest’s ears caught whispers of the tittle-tattle that the man who had avoided Church had now boldly come in, holding a Bible pressed against his heart.

The whispers engrossed the attention of the missionary priest who soon got one of the ushers in the congregation to bring Old Chuks over to him, last of all, after he had met with all the first-time comers. Long, long before now the priest had heard of this man who sold his family to the impulses of the whims of folly. But he had thought himself too holy to venture anywhere near the lonely man’s quarters on account of his horrendous sins.

Chuks met the man in a private room, and at once began to reel off to the priest what it was that had so burdened his heart as to push him to attempt to seek inner consolation within the gates of hallowed grounds. Perhaps, finally, the pulpit of Catholicism might have the words to ease the discomfort and guilt that made his conscience devoid of peace. The priest listened with rapt dignity of interest as this tortured man was really honest in the narrative of the self-engineered incidents that destroyed his family and had brought untold hellish disquiet to his soul.

The sordidness of the whole story aroused the disgust of the Irish missionary priest, who well remembered this confessing sinner as the husband of the woman he had helped, through his gospel messages, to love her daughters. From utter repugnance, the irish man moved to being gripped with bilious wrath against Chuks, whom ignorance and absurdity made to ruin the lives of so beautiful and promising daughters of the Niger Delta.

As the narration of the sorry story tailed off to a distasteful end, Chuks got a gale of reprimand of so severe a nature from God’s representative that the man sobbed and knelt down with his head bowed to beg God for forgiveness, and as if to solicit the priest to implore the mercy of God over him in intercession. But the religious posture of a now regretful Chuks didn’t pacify the holy wrath of heaven’s representative. Rather, it seemed to add more fury to the hot disapproval and wrath of the holy man. Violent gusts of castigation, sandwiched with words of correction and revelation from the Bible, continued to pour out for this family-less man.

 With each gust of reprimand, Chuks did the harder sob---and weep. Remorse and cruel disquiet troubled him inside; and as if to take the weeping man’s punishment of the conscience to a painful climax, the priest, who is now racked with grief for a family broken up, could not stop his hand from falling on the catechist’s cane lying on table nearby, with which he didn’t hesitate to give his remorseful new saint several hard strokes of the cane on the head---because what Chuks had done to ruin the family was a maximum felony against the Church, the community, the nation, and the Kingdom of God.

Following this, Chuks became a religious man. Beyond that, he didn’t try to recuperate his family; nor did he even make restitution to his in-laws who had once depended on him for support in the resumption of education and pursuit of business enterprises. These have now joined the economic locomotive of survival of the fittest, which runs on the wheels of economic crime, fraud, forgery, corruption, deceit, and lies.

3

BRAIN DRAIN AND LEADERSHIP VACANCY

IN

THE DEAF COMMUNITY

Our education system is a near perfect mirror image of our national lives: a paradox of affluence and extreme poverty, a pious people living in abject moral bankruptcy and the emergence of conflicting value systems which detracted from the effort to focus attention and energy on the task of social regeneration, genuine economic development and a sustainable democratic system ---Ufot Ekaette*.

*Secretary to the Government of the Federation, in June 2001, when the University of Uyo, Nigeria, adorned him with an honorary doctorate degree.

In the Holy Bible we find that historic narrative of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, and the Babylonian empire in the ancient world.  Babylon was the capital city of that great empire which rose to dazzling splendour and awesome political, military and economic might under the maximum rulership of Nebuchadnezzar.  Such was the magnitude of that empire’s power that the prophet Isaiah, speaking from God, described it as “the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the chaldees’ excellency” (Isaiah 13:19); and Jeremiah the prophet, also a mouth piece of God, put more shine on the description when he sang that Babylon was “a golden cup in the Lord’s hand”, “the praise of the whole earth” (Jeremiah 51:7, 14). There was no corner of the earth in the ancient world where the irresistible influence of Babylon was not felt, feared, and revered. The king was conscious of his great achievements, which went to his head. So he woke up one morning, took a grand proud survey of the kingdom of Babylon with one full arrogant sweep of his eyes as he walked in the palace. Conceited out of measure, pleased with none but himself, he enthusiastically boasted in self-exaltation. “Is not this great kingdom Babylon, that I have built for the house of the kingdom by the might of my power, and for the honour of my majesty?” (Daniel 4:30).

That Nebuchadnezzar was powerful was a hard fact that could never have been subjected to controversy, gainsaying and doubt, not even by his worst enemies and most depraved and stubborn detractors. His power was incontestable and absolute as long as God kept him in power.

This monarch of old was, unfortunately, cruel, oppressive, idolatrous, and God-defying. He gets angry at you if you do not worship his gods, and threatens you with destruction, and wonders if God can deliver you from his hands if you deviate from the State polytheistic religion to worship the God of heaven he does not know.

Being a mighty monarch, he knew how to break the military backbone and defences of any nation with which he had political wrangling. When he had broken down the power of an enemy country and subjugated them to himself, he would sweep through the conquered territory with his formidable military chariots, whose mere distant sound, to say nothing of their sight, was wonderfully sufficient to send the opposing army fleeing for their lives. Seeing his enemies beating a cowardly retreat did not satisfy the monarch enough to stop and proclaim to the world that he had become a victor without shooting a single arrow. He had an eye to something else that would give him more delight than the thrills of victory. And what is that?

Well, he would course through the entire conquered land like a desert sandstorm and crush all resistance, leaving blood and tears behind. Amidst this brutal scene, he would look for the best brains among their youths, and carry them off to Babylon. Looting the crop of sharp brains had always been Nebuchadnezzar’s reasons for going farther and farther into a defeated territory even after he had killed young men, maidens, and old men.

That was what he did to the land of Israel, engaging in the smart task of brain-draining the nation. Biblical history sums up his operations thus: “He carried away all Jerusalem, all the princes and all the mighty men of valour and all the craftsmen and smiths: none remained save [except] the poorest sort of the people of the land. And he carried away the king’s mother, and the king’s wives, and his officers, and the mighty of the land . . . and all the men of might. . And all that were strong and apt for war” (2 kings 24: 14-16).

The smart intention of this oppressive monarch was to use these brains to develop the empire of Babylon, and to increase and maintain its formidable economic, military and political dominion. Back to Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar would sit down and command one or several of his officers to bring certain of the captives so he could take a look at them for analytical assessment and evaluation of their natural worth. He would hope to find them to be “well favoured, and skilful in all wisdom, and cunning in knowledge, and understanding science, and such as had ability in them to stand in the king’s palace, and whom they might teach the meaning and the tongue of the Chaldeans [Babylonians]” (Daniel 1:-4; 5:11-12).

In taking away the intellectuals out of the conquered land of Israel, Nebuchadnezzar inflicted on that land a poverty that would take decades to overcome and eradicate; without the intellectuals, natural resources could not be tapped, utilized, and distributed for maximum national benefit. Counsel could not be obtained because we find left behind a bunch of poor people in the ruins. An official of Nebuchadnezzar allowed the poorest of the people to remain. They had nothing; so he gave them land, vineyards, and fields to work on for their subsistence (Jeremiah 39:10; 2 kings 25:12).

I feel that Nebuchadnezzar mocked the poorest of the people when he allocated fields and vineyards to them. He threw a rude mockery at them by that apparently kind gesture. However much the poor might have felt relieved of their years of grievous poverty after getting something now in a country so wasted, this turn of events might have been the beginning of another round of a series of problems. They were still not better off because Nebuchadnezzar had taken away the cream of the country that the poor would have depended on to develop the country. There were no Agricultural Officers, Forest Conservation Officers, Civil Engineers, Educators, Publishers, Police Force, Army, Medical Doctors, Sociologists, Social Workers, Environmentalists, etc. In short, there was no government. There was nothing! Nebuchadnezzar would have been kinder if he had ferried all the poor to Babylon and catered for them in that prosperous and powerful Babylon by providing economic relief packages, first of all, and then education. But, alas, he had no such grace in him to think like this. Instead, he proposed further linguistic education for the men of valour he had taken from Israel.

 This strategy was intended to facilitate their easy integration into the Babylonian culture. What a cunning monarch! What an intelligent brain-drainer! The poor received land gift from Nebuchadnezzar! What is the use of giving landed property to poor people when they do not have the intellectual ingenuity to raise industrial estates on such lands? Is there wisdom in giving plots of land to impoverished mendicants when they cannot build shopping malls for their friends’ wives to go Christmas shopping there? And since Jeremiah 5:4 described these poor fellows as being foolish and ignorant of God and his laws, how then could we dare hope that they would put their minds together and come up with the idea of building elementary and secondary schools to breed literate youths, future leaders, and intellectuals? How could they stretch their imagination far enough to initiate institutions for the empowerment and integration of the poor and oppressed in any emerging social and political system?

MONUMENTAL UNCERTAINY/REJECTION

EXILES NIGERIAN DEAF INTELLECTUALS

Now do you know that the deaf community in our land is suffering from the grievous consequences of brain drain? It is a community with a blind man’s cane, groping left and right. It is a community clothed in rags as far as we are concerned about leadership. The absence or depletion of constructive leadership in the community is an indicator to this factual and circumstantial debacle.

We do not have a modern-day Nebuchadnezzar engaging us in political bickering, threatening us with invasion and then mustering his army to sweep through our land to rob us of our young intellectuals, spiritual youths of the calibre of biblical Daniel, and moral giants like Joseph in the Holy Bible. There is no such pagan potentate like one of the kings of Egypt among us who would pay any price to retain gifted refugee Hadad when the latter made known his intentions to return to his own country for a specific political mission (1 kings 11:1-22). And neither do we have possessive kings like Artaxerxes who must be compelled through prayer and fasting to release Nehemiah, his servant, who desired to return to his native country to begin the rebuilding of the broken lives of the poor left behind by Nebuchadnezzar. (Nehemiah, an Israelite banished to exile, had heard reports from one of his brothers and certain men that the mocked poor people were “in great affliction and reproach”. The distressing news beset him, and he appealed to God for grace to obtain a temporary or limited leave so he could return to his motherland to start leading and rehabilitating the poor traumatized by the reverses brought about by military invasion, destruction of the economy and the depletion of valuable human resources.)

But the harsh economic climate, the mean attention and favours given the deaf in our society, the hypocrisies and double-dealing activities of certain government officials, including the folly of their own leaders---all these factors have conspired to make the best brains in the Nigerian deaf community aspire desperately toward leaving the country. The crave for life abroad is sharpened to a high pitch by the failure to receive at home that desired ideal education which they believe is a good tool for maximum development of fertile sense of belonging among and in themselves, and for healthy sense of their usefulness to themselves and the society. So to get that education and sound sense of self-worth, they turn their noses toward America and the United Kingdom.

Here at home they are forced to abandon leadership opportunities, to shelve that noble already verbalized dream of becoming exemplary role models in the deaf community. This abandonment of opportunities and aspirations, however, have not been without its accompanying feeling of chagrin and colossal sense of loss because it is something forced on them by prevailing yet preventable circumstances in their immediate home land.

An enlightened and brilliant people with a highly developed capacity for higher, better expectations and more palatable intellectual goodies cannot be chained to spend their life in an environment that delights in mediocrity, insensitivity. They cannot be held down by a crooked society that demeans promising individuals. They have to go; they want to go and live in the diaspora because the demons of mediocrity and backwardness are hard on their heels for the sole purpose of victimizing them. Another reason they have to go is because their home land---the Giant of Africa---is not ripe or fertile enough up till date to accommodate value and digest the intellectual resources, moral inputs and spiritual energy found among the deaf. Neither is their motherland at present (and when will she be?)ready to meet demands upon which they will remain or return to engage in exquisite developmental performance and productivity.

In spite of the glaring consciousness of the sorry state of leadership issues among the deaf here, there is hardly an intelligent Nigerian deaf person who does not long to go away. The afflictions of the lower class of the hearing-impaired have now started to become matters that do not concern them much. The environment or society that bristles with the thorns and briers of some kind of subtle segregation puts them off.

Mrs. Catherine A. Essien, in her book, Self-Image, states that “the Introduction of Universal Primary Education (U. P. E.) in September 1976 by the Federal Government of Nigeria threw open more doors of opportunity for education to all disabled children. Then the process of tapping their potentialities, which were overshadowed by visible disabilities, began. All things being equal, an average disabled person in Nigeria today should be literate. This leads us to consider the pyramid of educational attainment among disabled persons in Nigeria. At the tip are a few professionals such as university professors, lawyers, scientists, pharmacists, business men and women and others who live permanently abroad. Following the tip is a moderate population of teachers, technicians, tradesmen and women who work in government and private establishments . . .”

“The process began”, said retired hearing teacher of the deaf, Mrs. Catherine A. Essien. What process did begin? It was the development process of the disabled. But, sad to remark, the process has been stunted half-way somewhere, resulting in the current deficiency of effective leadership in the community of disabled people. The stunting of the development process is the obvious reason for the abuse of the human rights of the deaf and their disabled associates today. It accounts for the inability of gifted and talented educated deaf people to find jobs or positions where nature designed they ought to be employed. Many are in the wrong place, doing the wrong thing, thus tragically participating in rusting their own potentials. There is also a much greater expanse of vacancy in the wider or general society, which the hearing-impaired should have filled out. But they are not there, and cannot be there to clear the vacancy because they do not have leaders to lead them; and there are no leaders because most capable intellectuals have left the country; the few that remain are also envisaging leaving poor motherland.

DEAF YOUTHS IN TANGLED WEBS OF DISTRESS CRY FOR LEADERS

As a consequence, we see a generation of deaf people rising across the nation and going through life without leaders who truly have the light they need to succeed. There is vacancy. Yet the abundance of leadership vacancy has not elicited a corresponding concentrated call for occupation of the vacancy. It has only made more acute that consciousness of lack of leaders, for the time being. If there has been any grave constant call for leaders, there should have already emerged a profuse turn out of volunteer leaders to fill out the huge expanse of leadership vacancy. But the spirit of voluntary leadership activity itself is far from emanating from within the hearing-impaired community because the concept of self-sacrifice, with its attendant outcome of little or no immediate rewards, is regarded too risky and too expensive to absorb and practise. Fear of the acceptance and application of the concept and principles of self-sacrifice is inevitable because of the character of that part of our culture, which believes in the acquisition of wealth and promotion of self-interest even at the expense of others. That is the ingrained culture of corruption, which motivates us to use our entrusted position, voluntary or otherwise, to wreck the good destinies of others, leaving them worse off. Ngugi wa Thiong’o the patriotic Kenya writer remarks about this sickening condition of the leading people that “they have been taught the principles and system of self-interest and have been told to forget the ancient songs that glorify the notion of collective good. They have been taught new songs, new hymns that celebrate the acquisition of money”¹.

With some of the best brains gone, the community of the hearing-impaired is becoming a desolate wilderness full of “reproaches and afflictions” (Hebrews 10:33). There is a stagnant and blank existence trailing many. However, the terror and anxiety aroused by the sensation of the advent of empty existence for many deaf youths in the community have begun to lead to the entertainment of salutary expectations. The expectations lately are that the many Nigerian deaf intellectuals in the Diaspora would return home and stay to work as high quality and transparent educators, preachers, teachers, missionaries, lawyers, writers, and so on in the tormented brain-drained hearing-impaired community. Youths are yelling!

But will the expectations be gratified? Certain ones among these frustrated deaf people, notwithstanding their lack of leadership training and experience have dared to rise and attempt to lead. They feel something must be done to reverse the prevalent volley of afflictions and woes so that at least a temporary reprieve could afford them special occasions to retreat. Retreat? ---Yes! Why? Retreating would be necessary as opportunity to think up battle strategies and schemes. And then evaluation of these strategies and re-organization of the battle would follow and result in a re-launch into the battlefield with more tact and efficiency with the sole aim of getting out of the woods of multiple afflictions and deprivations.

Appreciable break through have been brought about here and there by these courageous young leaders. For this they must be congratulated and held in high esteem so that their fascinating casual leadership style would record landmark victory in the many battles for general empowerment, acceptance, integration, and recognition. But the subjects under these aggressive young leaders are sometimes or quite often too shortsighted to be grateful and appreciative for little battles won in the liberation struggle. For when the leading novices made mistakes or engage in deliberate putrid acts of corruption, the virtues of overlooking inevitable blunders and forgiveness would not be allowed to dominate among them. And so subjects would gang up to scourge and beat black and blue their very guides initiating liberation moves.

Several leaders have had the misfortune of being manhandled, assaulted and demeaned for erring, blundering, cheating, and for being dishonest. Such discipline usually is not preceded by constructive and conflict resolving dialogue. The situation being so, the distraught and humiliated leaders would decide it quit, and they would pack their casual leadership tools and resources, and turn their back on the fields of operation, leaving behind a bunch of ingrates and social casualties tumbling back into distress and chaos, and losing in no time the significant refreshing gains they have made in society. This turn of events compounds the leadership problem in the deaf community because of the volunteering leaders’ departure from the liberation combat field. They have retreated too prematurely, combat unfinished. And now intending volunteers leaders here and there are reluctant to venture on the leadership platform lest they be targeted for malicious destruction born out of suspicion, misunderstanding, jealousy, and folly.

STATE OF DEAF COMMUNITY SICKENS INTELLIGENT DEAF LADY

A consequential effect of this development is that majority of our deaf youths have become social, intellectual, and spiritual kwashiorkor cases. A Niger Delta deaf lady with leadership abilities has this to say to a friend in text message form through her mobile phone about the ragged disorganization in the deaf community. “The way they treat each other is not good. That is how they are scattered everywhere; they have no jobs. They are not united. They always discourage me whenever I see them.” The dearth of leaders has spawned the establishment and growth of the army of deaf beggars, most of whom are youths full of might, vigour and immense potentials. The emergence of intelligent criminal deaf beggars and fraudsters is a pointer to the seriousness of the malady of leadership absence. The absence of no-nonsense aggressive leadership for the deaf youths of our country manufactures cases of intelligent elements in the throes of “extreme poverty, a pious people living in abject moral bankruptcy and the emergence of conflicting value systems which detracted from the efforts to focus attention and energy on the task of social regeneration and genuine economic development and a sustainable democratic system”².

The slipshod and harsh treatment the deaf dish out to one another seems a transformation of their frustration into transferred aggression. When the noose of exploitation, covetous manipulation, double-dealing, double-facedness, discrimination, segregation, and oppression unleashed by society tightens on them by the day, they vent their anger on one another. This creates public scenes of mindless, naked brutality, perhaps---

Deaf Athletes Assault Leader, Warn Gora!

 “Deaf sportsmen and women on Friday [23^rd December, 2005] threw caution to the wind when they rough-handled the Vice-President of the Nigeria Deaf Sports Federation, Mr John Yusuf, at the National Stadium, Lagos. The athletes, who were 30 in number, turned down all please from passers by as they descended on Yusuf, tearing his shirt and beating him for alleged misappropriation of a sum of =N= 400,000.00. After the fracas, Yusuf tendered a letter of resignation as Vice-President of the body to save him from further assaults from his aggrieved colleagues. He also promised to refund the =N= 400, 000.00, which he claimed he borrowed from one Simon Obiya to prosecute his trip to South Africa where he went to observe the Melbourne 2006 Commonwealth Games qualification match between South Africa and Ghana. The athletes, led by Bello Bala, among other things, asked for the cancellation of the recent elections conducted into the federation by Elias Gora which, they claimed, was fraught with fraudulent malpractices. ‘The supposed recent elections were illegal due to the fact that Gora had already selected the would-be executives long before the elections without due processes’, Bala said.

 “He explained that the vote of no confidence passed by the entire [deaf] athletes on the former executive was as a result of financial recklessness and visionless leadership style and unaccountability of the last board, led by Suleiman Kaita. Bala called on the Sports Minister to urgently find a lasting solution to the alleged election malpractices by revisiting the issue if he wanted peace to reign in the federation. He also told the Sports Ministry never to send Gora as electoral officer to avoid any embarrassment he might face in the hands of the [deaf] athletes. ‘My colleagues are already spoiling for war with Gora, and ‘I think the best thing is not to show up at the venue of the re-elections’ ”³.

The leadership disaster is dangerously alarming in the community of deaf people in our land! Their own leaders do not help matters because their use their position to become executive foxes and pick-pockets.

                                 Tell the world that awufu* money

In Nigeria is potent like arrows.

Joyfully welcome corruption in,

But fight its shadow.

Let Ghana-must-go fly out

Through the back windows

Even if they cut and roast

Your stubborn ear for you to eat,

Don’t listen to side-talks

That “your wuru wuru* don do!”

Tell the world that mago-mago* is good;

Proclaim that awufu has bone.

Show that as wuru-wuru man,

You are solid like stone.

Exchange blows, and bite the fingers that fed you,

But remember that posterity will judge you⁴.

*awufu or awuf:  free money.

*wuru wuru: cunning.

*mago-mago: crookedness; not straight forward.

The community has a dismal memory and records of deaf leaders that took advantage of their positions as presidents, secretaries, treasurers, and public relation officers of organizations of the deaf to amass wealth. They get access to Awufu money after they have presumed to organize and execute programs in the name of the deaf in their respective States. Bastard abuse of office is a living phenomenon in the so-called educated deaf leaders in this embattled community. Stolen funds are used to build for oneself a cozy economic security and used to flee the harsh debilitating realities at home for the greener pastures in the Diaspora.

These executive foxes have made an incalculable tremendous input to the political and social destruction of these bewildered and maladjusted deaf youths. Nasty corruption has aided the problem of brain drain; and this in turn promotes mediocrity to the extent that it is now luxury and excellence among us to find that in some part of the country the executive officers of branches of the Nigeria National Association of the Deaf are illiterates---power drunk illiterates, ignorant leaders of the blind, conceited illiterate despots. They sting like scorpions as they manipulate and program illiterate and unenlightened subjects to carry out violent attacks on fellow deaf citizens, and to foment mischief, conflicts, and selfishness.

Even some leaders of Deaf Churches are victims of semi-literacy.  It is ear-marking the education of the handicapped has never been one of the major priorities of the government. So most of those that lead the deaf in their churches have been unable to go through the entire Bible more than three times. Limited literacy encourages ignorance and bigotry. They preach against politics, which simply means the art of governance, government or affairs of State. One or two of these evangelists and preachers would not attend meetings summoned by associations of the deaf because “it is politics, and Deaf Churches should shun it.” Thus teaching, they build in the minds of deaf youths politics-hating poison industries. These monstrous evils constitute parts of the foundation of the Nigerian deaf community’s leadership structure. Many deaf youths, therefore, technically and systematically, emerge moribund social casualties. There is a rich abundance of misguided counselling sponsored by ignorance and narrow-mindedness and semi-informed pastoral pulpits. Deaf youths have had their minds twisted to think unfavourably of politics. Political assassinations and government misrule have been used as circumstantial evidence that politics is evil and should be held in a bad light permanently. Thus a nasty seed is stricken into the psyche of intelligent deaf youths with leadership aspirations. The fecundity of their mild minds is forever scuttled to the detriment of their community and the nation. They get so blinded that they do not realize that the very politics that is portrayed in a bad light and under which they live is the one providing them with schools, security, and all that a government has to offer. They won’t be brought to learn that the Holy Bible itself is full of politics, political principles rulers should adhere to if they want stability and progress in their domain. The leprosy in our pulpits is clearly diagnosed by Reverend Mr. Steve Ogan in his book Starting Rainbow Initiatives where he wrote: “The balkanization of the gospel has led to the tendency to suggest that social, economic, and political problems in the nations are not the concern of the Church. Politicians should be concerned with such matters while the Church concentrates on spiritual issues. Thus, there is a dichotomy of the spiritual and the secular, the sacred and the sensual”⁵.

Worthless preaching about and against politics has produced immense social casualties tied or strewn roundabout religious pulpits, not only in the hearing world, but very much also in the hearing-impaired community across this land and beyond on the African continent. That part of their being which appreciates, defends, upholds nationalism has been compromised in the name of religion. Perhaps the prime suspect in the creation of this frightful destruction is the contagious, poisonous, and misleading pulpit of the sect of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Deaf youths tell us that as members of this sect, they have been advised not to participate in voting exercises in the organization established to “protect and advance their rights”.

This unhealthy development should alert us to the possible re-enactment or repetition of sorry key events in the history of the Roman Empire of old. One of such events was the involvement of illiterates in the destruction of the Roman Empire. If you don’t know history, let us take you a bit down its wonderful halls where we can learn much to get wisdom enough to enable us to rule the prevent with transcendent caution. That is, we should understand where to place illiterates and ill-informed religious leaders among us and what to do to check the menaces they can cause in State organizations of the deaf, Deaf Churches, and the nation. “Beginning in A.D.410, illiterate tribes (the Germanic Visigoths and Vandals) began to invade Rome. Rome was quickly overrun. By 476, the last empire and the great empire that had dominated the world for nearly a thousand years came to an inglorious end”⁶. Why should we fall like the Romans by having in our midst illiterates as executive officers of our deaf organizations? Rome was not build in a day, but savage illiterates played a powerful part in the decline and destruction of the Roman Empire in the shortest possible time.

DEAF YOUTHS THREATEN TO STAGE A COUP

Deaf youths know they need to be delivered from uneducated blind leadership, which grooms all the characteristics of votes of no confidence. So somewhere in this country, deaf youths decided to stage an open coup. Before they struck, they sent a warning notice to a problematic leader to resign within two weeks or “a trial shall convince you!” The notice was constructed in typical Deaf English.

                                                                       Centre of Good Leadership

                                                                              For the………State Deaf Association

                           Date:

        The Chairman,

         …… State Deaf Association,

An Open Letter of Resignation to Chairman of………State Deaf

Sir,

We the citizens of………..State Deaf, thereby, decided to take the ox or bull by its horns, have given you, Mr…………………………, the Chairman of………..State Deaf Association, two weeks of resignation.

We, the………………….State Deaf, are impatience and fatigued with your leadership style of which we described as undemocratic, uncivilized, and barbaric. Your style of leadership is a source of embarrassment to some deaf intellectual individuals not only in………..State but outside States!

As a result of the reason, we collective agreement, decided to issue you two weeks to either step down or resign unconditionally as Chairman of our Association.

Failure to do so after the expiration of this ultimatum, we shall have no other choices than to commence impeachment procedures against you according to the constitution of………..State.

Deaf Association/Nigeria National Association of the Deaf.

A trial shall convince you!

The said Centre of Good Leadership doesn’t externally exist; but it only exists in conceptual form within the very depths of their being where it is a sound and genuine reality. It is a reality in gestation period. There is, in those deaf youths, that burning desire for good guidance. But good direction can only possibly be obtained if they get emancipation from the snares of bad leadership within their community. That embryonic reality or Centre for Good Leadership can only be born if and when deaf youths tormented by sick management take collective action to remove hypocritical leadership that is a snare.

While the national stadium in Lagos State (Centre of Excellence!) witnessed a show of symptoms of gangrenous leadership in the Nigeria Deaf Sports Federation, some key members of the National Executive Council of the Nigerian National Association of the Deaf were at the Hill Station Hotel in Jos, Plateau State (Home of Peace and Tourism), taking courses and attending workshops on effective leadership. The program, a prime landmark performance in the dark history of National Association of the Deaf, was held from 17^th – 23^rd December 2005, in collaboration with the University of Gallaudet (USA) – the world’s only accredited University for the deaf.

A team of USA-based Nigerian deaf people in the employ of that university brought in this program. The sole objective of the program was to aid the Nigerian deaf people in the recovery of leadership reins, which they have lost through brain drain and corruption. The program tagged “Preparing Deaf People for Effective Leadership” had these two parts as its major legs: -

1.                  Strategic Leadership

2.                  Strategic Planning and Problem Solving

Beyond this, considerations should be made to present in future themes like:

1.                  Qualification for Sound Leadership

2.                  Consequences of Bad Leadership: Personal, Corporate, and National Losses.

Perhaps these and more will help to serve as strong preventive insurances against brain drain and the damages caused by the bugs, lice and leeches of embezzlement, self-enrichment, self-interest, and poor elementary and secondary education.

Since deaf people in the country have begun to undergo leadership training through their once rusted and moribund national association, one may wonder as to the helpfulness of leadership training to the deaf. Of what use is leadership workshop to them since they cannot hear and most of them have severe stiff speech impediment? How will they lead since their language---Sign Language is not a familiar vernacular in wide use near and far in the hearing world? But the essential truth is that leadership capabilities of diverse kinds can be found in the form of abstract expansive layers in those whom nature seems to have not allowed passing for complete human beings physically. The archives of history overflow with the forgotten or somewhat cheapened records of leadership stunt exhibited by the disabled through the wondrous halls of history. In the 14^th century mankind became a wretched victim of raw religious manipulation and worthless hypocrisy perpetrated by the Roman Catholics in the name of God. The bloody foundations of papacy or Romanism then spawned the historic horrors called the Inquisition, the Mendicant Friars, and the erection of stakes for the burning of righteous dissenters, among many others.

According to writer Ellen G. White, “the noontide of the papacy (Roman Catholicism) was the world’s moral midnight. The Holy Scriptures were almost unknown, not only to the people, but to the priests . . . Men shrank from no crime by which they could gain wealth or position. The palaces of popes were scenes of the vilest debaucheries . . . For centuries Europe made no progress in learning, arts, or civilization. A moral and intellectual paralysis had fallen upon Christendom”⁷. As if these deliberate tremendous moral bouts of decay were only a tip of the iceberg in the eyes of the comperes of general retrogression, they went more than one step further to hasten in the baring of the whole iceberg. This criminal daring was manifested when the Bohemians determined to resist the torrents of crime by the Roman Catholic Church about to overwhelm and overpower them. The resistance of the Bohemians came on the heels of the rise of the indignation provoked by the execution of John Huss by Romish popes. The executed Huss was one of the reformers raised up by heaven to denounce the wicked activities of popes and their stooges.

The popes resolved that Bohemia must be subjected to accommodate Roman Catholic doctrines since hitherto, because of the hardcore preaching of John Huss, the people of Bohemia had mocked popes and prelates. But the popes, prelates, and bishops were in for one the most incredible surprises of their lives in spite of the immensity, might and power of their armies sent against Bohemia.

John Ziska (1360-1424) was the blind man at the head of Bohemia that showed the armies of the popes that their so-called divine mandate and authority to crush all rebellious dissent did not really hold a single drop of water. According to the New World Encyclopedia,   Ziska, the blind military General, was descended from a noble family and became a page to king Wenceslas of Bohemia, but afterwards joined the military service against Teutonic Knights. In the decisive battle of Gruwald, near Tennenberg, Germany, he fought on the losing side but was highly rewarded by the king for great bravery. He was an adherent of the Hussite doctrine and, after the murder of John Huss, became imminent as an advocate of the new faith. In 1419 he was chosen as leader of the Hussites largely because of his gallantry in the Hungarian wars against the Turks. Ziska led the Hussites in their defence against the papal Bohemian crusade (1420-1422).

Ellen G. White tells a bit more about the historical gallantry of John Ziska---

Blind Military General Leads Army to Victory

“The murderers of Huss did not stand quietly by and witness the triumph of his cause. The pope and the emperor united to crush out the movement, and the armies of Sigmund were hurled upon Bohemia. But a deliverer was raised up. Ziska, who soon after the opening of the war became totally blind, yet who was one of the ablest generals of his age, was the leader of the Bohemians. Trusting in the help of God and the righteousness of their cause, that people withstood the mightiest armies that could be brought against them. Again and again the emperor, raising fresh armies, invaded Bohemia, to be ignominiously repulsed. The Hussites were  raised above the fear of death, and nothing could stand against them. A few years after the opening of the war, the brave Ziska died; but his place was filled by Procopius who was an equally brave and skillful general, and a more respectable leader.

“The enemies of theBohemians, knowing that the blind warrior was dead, deemed the opportunity favourable for recovering all that they had lost. The pope now proclaimed a crusade against the Hussites, and again an immense force was precipitated upon Bohemia, but only to suffer terrible defeat . . .”⁸.

Now, the significant question is: “How could a blind man lead a warring army to smashing and stunning victory?” Furthermore, it is worth querying thoughtfully: “Why was not General John Ziska calmly demoted, and as the case might be, anxiously disposed of and divested of his generalship when he became blind while in active service?”

To answer these questions, we must firmly assume that grave restraint and prudence must have been exercised in the face of the unexpected visual impairment that befell General Ziska in the middle of a raging war. The application of cautious perception of judgment led to the continuance of Ziska as the leader of the army of Bohemia. A fact that needs to be grasped and embraced is that the visual disability of General Ziska did not erase the knowledge, experience, and images of military warfare from the canvas of his brilliant mind. It cannot be debated that before the sad advent of that disability and the outbreak of war General Ziska had never once thrown his mind into the business of imagining himself fighting still other wars and reflecting how best to take his gallantry to unprecedented height and make, in the shortest possible time, a clean sweep of any formidable foe, charting the movement of his men, and launching successful defensive and offensive performances. This pre-war mental envisaging surely must have aided the blind General in his campaign, among other things.

Men of the early centuries of the Christian era had a far more sober approach and more tactful handling of the disabled than do the so-called civilized people of the twenty-first century. In our country, when you become disabled while in professional active civil service or otherwise, you are most likely immediately removed from office. A solemn anxious meeting is held about you in executive councils of your company. And before you are aware of the details of developments, you are packaged into a wheel chair or a blind man’s cane is pushed into your hand – and you are sent to Disabled People’s Home where the Government and the public come by and toss you insignificant economic welfare packages. Others of you find yourselves disposed of, like disposal syringes, in poor suburbs and villages among your poverty-ravished folks and communities. You rotten within, your personality crumbles, your self-image basely diminished---whereas the Government should have improved on your condition and leave you in your chosen profession to continue working and---like General John Ziska---become a blessing to your home country. But, alas, our governments have never had a healthy approach toward the newly disabled adults.

Still others of you are sent on premature retirement, and taken to a Federal College of Education for strategic recycling. Interestingly, this process of recycling you for the wrongly assumed maximum productivity never really makes the difference in your life no matter how many years you spend in the colleges. Conditions there will merely depress you; you get disoriented. You would long to return to your former work, where you believe that notwithstanding your disability you can still wonderfully perform, and initiate new innovations into your job. Such innovations you now introduce are fundamentally the precious products of imaginations you made about your job and approach to it, and painted on the canvas of your mind for future execution before that disability touched you in your mature adult age. But the merciless executive blunders of your government and company will not allow you the least chance to exhibit fact that you can still keep your job despite physical deformities. Pragmatically, you are lodged in the trash can of wretched misplacement, miserable demotion---and last, but not least, ample uselessness. John Omiecinski, an ordinary man diagnosed with multiple sclerosis says you are “put out of work on disability”.

But the blind can lead. It, therefore, goes without saying that Helen Keller was not exaggerating when she told the world that was astonished at her feats as a blind woman that “the public must learn that the blind man is neither a genius nor a freak nor an idiot. He has a mind that can be educated, a hand which can be trained, ambitions which it is right for him to strive to realize, and it is the duty of the public to help him make the best of himself so that he can win light through work”⁹. It is no less so with the deaf. The deaf can lead the inveterate alcoholics to divorce themselves from alcoholic liquor. They can lead, do lead, and have led roguish husbands to stop beating their wives. They have led one another to foil the operations of armed robbers. Where can they not lead?

4

THE DEAF AND OUR HOSPITALS (I)

Many deaf patients visit their health professionals with paper as the only means of communication. This can be frustrating for the doctor and patient. It is also a very ineffective way to address a very serious subject like your health. We currently can’t change your experience for every doctor or hospital you visit. BUT for one day we can eliminate the paper in this health care experience. On Monday, 6 June 2005, the Friends of Gifted Hands are pleased to announce our first Health Fair for the Deaf Community. At this Health Fair, local and international health professionals will partner with sign language interpreters to provide medical services to the deaf community. There will be free and subsidized medical services offered to the deaf community, Health professionals will be offering: (1) Free Vaccination for Children, (2)Blood Screening, (3)Sickle Cell Screening and Counselling, (4)Pap Smear Examinations, (5)Physical Exams. Health professionals will be available for counseling on family planning, physical fitness, domestic violence, genital mutilation, breast cancer and more. The Health Fair will be held at Molly Hospital, American Quarters, behind the Lister Petrol Station, Iwo Road, Ibadan. It will be between 10 a.m. and 7p.m.  If you have a large group (10 or more), please contact us for an appointment for your group. If you would like to be included as a presenter, please contact me before June 2^nd.Don’t miss out on this opportunity to receive the medical attention you deserve and need---Sable Badaki.

MASTER BALARABE DANDUNIYA BECOMES DEAF

Sir Balarable Danduniya is a cultured deaf young man in our land. He hails from north- central Nigeria. But he lives in the western part of the country that accommodates dense rainforests, thick natural vegetation unlike what obtains in the rather geographically too dry north. Master Danduniya was not born deaf, and never did his parents suspect that one day this good boy would contend with the handicap of deafness before he was 19 years of age. His parents are educated people, and carry about them that normal carriage of sound common sense expected of educated people. Prior to the annoying occurrence of loss of hearing in the life of their son, they used to be very kind to the poor and disabled in our society. And they carried this characteristic feature of their personalities along with them after the incidence of  black deafness labelled the poor boy as ill-fated.

Nobody really knows why God allowed the boy to lose his hearing to a mercilessly grim bout of meningitis. People just kept wondering endlessly and shooting bewildered and astonished looks toward heaven, in utter displeasure. They were displeased because they held that God should have been kinder to the family since the ill-fated boy’s parents had been tremendously kind to poor mendicants. But the boy’s father had not the least opportune chance to sicken his mind with speculations, questions and thoughts bordering on perceived injustice of God toward him. He knew that action and strategic scheming were all he required to feint whatever disgrace and humiliation that dismal ill-fate intended to hoist on him. He wouldn’t allow himself to be mocked.

Balarabe Danduniya’s illness had been a prolonged one, which closed with the disappearance of his hearing. This boy had so far been a fairly good student. Immediately his hearing was gone, the boy-patient began a dramatic recovery that even surprised the doctor and his team of nurses in one of the Government-owned hospitals in Taraba State of Nigeria. The stunned medical team was forced, too, to cease the administration of drugs meant to nurse the boy back to sound and well-consolidated health. The strange rapid recovery disappointed them because, so far, they had had a good time practising their profession on this wretched patient. They congratulated themselves and believed in themselves on account of the medical tact and expertise they had so far managed to employ to keep the boy alive in a poor place like the north.

Practising on the boy had served them bountiful opportunities to glean new insights and experiences presented by having to deal with lengthy cases of illness. Insights and observations so garnered were later employed to treat with astounding success stubborn medical cases.  Although delight punctuated the exercise of medical attention the doctor and his nurses lavished on the boy, they plainly could not conceal the fact that they had made light of that delight when at times they exhibited signs of fatigue in having to deal with a long case almost daily. At one point or the other, the nurses would lose their friendliness, tenderness and love, and become annoyed with the whining and slaving of the boy under the heat of illness. So it was sort of relief from stress for them when, at last, the disease packed out of the life of Balarabe Danduniya. However, they lamented his loss of hearing with tremendous commiseration that no one could really fully describe.

Spirits were cursed, witches were summoned, through bitter imprecations, to deal with the witches suspected to have caused the loss. But fate had decided that Balarable Danduniya must remain hearing impaired the rest of his life. Even if witches had been dealt with by witches that would have been kinder to the boy, and that could have the power to wrest power from the cruel witches, and restore his hearing, the irreversible verdict of fate was that there would be no turning point in the recent circumstance that had sent some many friends of the family to lose faith in God, and being wary of being too good lest wretched misfortune overpower them.

Unlike his rather too superstitious nurses, the doctor didn’t blame any witch; he cursed no spirit. But he became severely discouraged because he could not see how, despite his best efforts and the diversity of potent drugs he had used, the boy should still end up becoming deaf in the middle of his youth. The doctor became disconsolate, indeed! He saw himself as a failure because he believed that, somewhere along the way, he had missed his marks. Really? Perhaps – but not certainly.

The unhappy doctor could hold he was a failure if he would not realize that fate had definitely resolved to have the boy become what he had now become. Even if he had missed his marks, as he believed, and the tragic resultant incident was irreversible, poor Balarade Danduniya must be prepared to begin a long gloomy odyssey into the frustration–laden and misery-ridden and sorry world of the deaf where mines of talents, gifts, utility, visions and pragmatism remain unexplored, undeveloped, unused by blind parents, blind governors, and blind presidents. That Balarabe Danduniya should be what he was now by virtue of the harsh strokes of meningitis was the preliminary initiation into the territory that accommodates the perimetres and precipices of the world of the deaf so that at least, through him, nature could disclose bits of shocking facts about the hearing-impaired in our localities…

The boy was not immediately released from the hospital despite signs of thorough recovery. He was detained for one more week – which was the last block of time that brought to six full months the length of time spent in hospital by a secondary school student! The one-week long retention of the unfortunate student afforded the distraught doctor, Bulala Mairuwa---as his name goes---the opportunity to sit down in his office and home spontaneously for hours on end and think to see what he could do to restore the boy’s hearing. He could think up no scheme; hospitals were too poor to allow for tentative medical undertakings of retrieval of lost hearing sense. He was compelled to shelve his resolute brain racking---and decide that the once perfect sound hearing of Balarabe Danduniya must be medically recorded as having become an unpleasant history.

 Dr. Bulala Mairuwa gave up!

The vicissitudes of life having imposed an important physical defect on Danduniya, his parents submitted themselves to accept what they could neither have controlled nor have prevented from occurring. In their loftiest and best reasonable opinions, this promising child should still continue his education. They knew that he would not be able to cope as well as he used to do before he was condemned by meningitis to give up his hearing sense. The unexpected change in the life of their son didn’t discourage them; it rather made them more thoughtful and more creative as they struggled to find how best to lead the boy in his educational pursuits. This steel determination was sparked off on the platform of the vision of seeing their son emerge a successful man, disciplined and matured despite his deafness, which many would believe to be a resilient barrier to standard achievement in life.

Nature had blessed this boy with an active father who was fond of cheating bitter circumstances by not allowing them to rule him, and by strategizing against them, and tricking them with the smart moves of a military General. He never once entertained the defeatist mentality of cowards and weaklings. So he made an efficient placement of Danduniya in a boarding school for the hearing-impaired located in the west of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Such school specializes in dealing with deaf persons of all categories and age. Here the boy, with his fresh deafness and total ignorance of Sign Language at this initial stage, faced and pursued his education calmly but with resolute ardour. This disposition was owing to the manner in which his ambitious and confident father loved to drive pride and confidence in his children in the face of challenges and responsibilities before them. This magic was to work best when Danduniya’s ears were lost. The negativity that disability strikes in some of its timid and weak victims could not take root in Balarade Danduniya. The defect he noticed he bore did grieve him indeed; it infested him with an unnatural sort of excessive self-consciousness, self-pity, and miserable shyness; and, of course, he was aware that there had been a bit of dampening of his learning ambition since the outset of his hearing defect. His intellectual perception, he noted, also suffered slight decline. For he could no longer remember the meaning of certain words he had earlier known and used with amazing correctness. His observations about himself at present made him set to regain the resources of knowledge and ambition. He studied hardest---while acquiring mastery of Sign Language.

DR. SYLVESTER EGHOSA ENCOUNTERS BALARABE DANDUNIYA

One day, Balarade Danduniya went to a University Teaching Hospital for some specific medical attention. When it was his turn to see the doctor, he handed over to the latter the result of the blood tests with which a nurse of the Department of Hematology directed him to see Dr. Eghosa. On reading the letter, the doctor anxiously realized that he was going to do business with a deaf man. He suddenly became sullen and looked angry and bitter---probably as he remembered some recent unpleasant experiences he had had with deaf people in this Government-owned hospital or perhaps elsewhere. Rather grudgingly, he jotted down a question on a paper and set it before Danduniya to answer in writing. Sitting down in front of the doctor, with the table between them both, Danduniya saw the ill temper of the man who was going to take care of his health, but he held his peace and didn’t scowl back. He avoided a typical stance many deaf people are wont to display when they become aware of faces unfriendly toward them. But Danduniya didn’t budge one nerve, for he had, since turning deaf, become used to disrespectful, contemptuous, and hateful faces of persons here and there who didn’t love people that bear the kind of physical defect he carried. It was a severe humiliation and dehumanizing insult for the young man.

And while he wrote down his reply, the doctor occupied himself with other medical documents, all the time expecting to read from his deaf patient the most awful English man ever could write---no capital letters, no accurate punctuation, misspelled words, misplaced words---all running to lead one to conclude that all this writing was incomprehensible nonsense! He thought what the boy would write would be as awful and irritating as those coarse grunts and rough squeals made by dumb persons trying to speak.  Interestingly, Dr. Sylvester Eghosa was in for one of the stunning reproofs nature could ever bring to the door of his life, for him either to accept and commend or choose to disregard and pretend, in the blindness and depravity of prejudice that he was dreaming to his own ruin. Luckily, he maintained a constructive attitude. For when he read the boy’s simple explanation of his ailments in simplest English, he was surprised out of proportion.  Tiny sweat beads competed with one another to occupy prominent position on the surface of his entire forehead at the same that terror mixed with nervous amazement became vivid in his eyes.

Dr. Sylvester Eghosa turned into someone who had seen the Jolly Roger (Flag of the Pirates) being hoisted in his office with all its potential signals of frightful danger. The simple reality that a deaf boy could write simple English to explain himself without pretension was too much for Dr. Eghosa to admit. But the truth of this reality must, therefore, throw him into total demystifying amazement and terror. In the past half of a decade he had nothing but illiterate deaf youths come to his office for one medical prescription or the other, with whom he could not communicate and who could not communicate with him either. This regrettable circumstance, therefore, trained him to breed the myth that this category of people should not be given the best of medical treatment since their condition makes exorbitant demand on his time, energy--- and disturb his customary routine of attending to patients daily without much hitch. What he now had before him demystified him and purged him up of his suicidal prejudice and delinquent betrayal of the medical profession, which enjoys medical practitioners to be compassionate, patient, kind and what not toward the unlovable, irritable and unrefined.

 Dr. Eghosa’s mind was now re-programmed to think the best of the likes of Balarabe Danduniya. So he wrote on the prescription form, with resolute generosity of commendation: “He is deaf, but he can write very well”. He felt sorry about his earlier unhealthy disposition; then he sent his deaf patient to the next medical practitioner for further attention. Those generous words of a now penitent Dr. Eghosa served as a sort of passport that worked for Danduniya throughout consultation and treatment procedures. Those magic words lowered and annihilated barriers of entrenched prejudices against the hearing-impaired found in many hospitals across the land. Those words spared him the scourge of waste of time experienced from unnecessary waiting and agony to which a significant number of illiterate or not so illiterate hearing-impaired citizens are condemned in hospitals in their very dear native land. They must wait, wait, and wait, sometimes, until their hearing counterparts were served first. It does not matter if they get to hospital at cockcrow or if they drag their beds from their houses to the doctor’s office and sleep there severely sick, untreated for hours on end. They must wait because they cannot hear, because they cannot speak, because they cannot write--- and because they cannot read. Alas!

Such terrific anguish there is in being deaf with the colossal stigma of speech-impairment and thorough illiteracy!

Perhaps, it is with the intention of drawing our attention toward illiterate deaf patients that nature deemed it convenient to impose deafness on Balarabe Danduniya, and subsequently lead him to have that memorably historic encounter with Dr. Sylvester Eghosa. The accomplishment of the goal of that intent or strategic phenomenon of nature aroused our curiosity. It motivated us to research and find out what illiterate deaf patients pass through as we beamed our inquisitive searchlight on their dismal world.

Before Dr. Sylvester Eghosa, a gray-haired short man with mustache and beard dotted sparsely with gray, let the boy go, he subjected him to a brief puzzled interrogation. The questioning immediately followed a conversation Danduniya began because nothing was told him as to the nature and seriousness of his blood test results. “How serious are the blood test results?” he asked, and the doctor made gestures to explain that there was no problem found in his blood.

After scribbling some other things on the prescription form, Dr. Eghosa picked up a sheet of paper, and wrote: QUESTIONS. Danduniya read the word and nodded, thinking that they bordered further on medical issues connected with his health problem. But they were far from touching on that.

Doctor: Are your parents educated?

Danduniya: Yes, my parents are educated.

Doctor: That is why you are also well-educated and taking care of yourself.

Danduniya was not surprised by the remark; it was not he first time a comment of this type was made about him. The mere fact he could write and answer questions though he was deaf made him pass for an educated man everywhere.

Doctor: Where do you work and what do you do at work?

Danduniya satisfied the nosy and repentant doctor to the best of his ability---that he was a computer operator.

Doctor: Are you paid salaries here?

Danduniya: Yes.

Doctor: Reasonably?

Danduniya told him how much he was paid monthly--- =N= 7, 000.00.

Doctor: What is your level of education or last school attended?

Danduniya: Secondary School.

 Doctor:Your disposition is good. Your level of understanding of English is good. Your handwriting also. God bless you and lead you all through life.

Danduniya bowed his head slightly as he sat opposite the inquisitive and impressed doctor to show that he accepted the good wishes of the gray-haired fellow.

Doctor: Are you married – if not, when will you marry?

Danduniya: No, I am not married. I may marry this or next year.

Doctor: Go ahead and marry . . . your predicament is not a barrier. You are coping very well. Many thanks to your parents for support and understanding.

 Thank you and God bless ---- Dr. S. V. Eghosa.

DR. EGHOSA IS ANGRY WITH PARENTS AND GOVERNMENTS

The last statements of Dr. Eghosa give us to realize that wherever handicapped people amount to something worthwhile it is because, no doubt, their parents have been very supportive and understanding. Dr. Eghosa deeply sought to find out what formed the background work of the life of this young man. To his satisfaction, he found it out. As a medical personnel whose eyes and brain had been trained to fundamentally get a mental picture of conditions that lead to health troubles, he had long drawn his own conclusion of the background of those miserable deaf patients he hated. That those patients could not read, write, and speak made him form a very cute and efficient picture of their background without anybody having given him any clue. His diagnosis, though unrelated to health issues at this moment, was an amazingly accurate one. The picture he had drawn in his mind regarding the background of these deaf youths was that their background was as offensive as the decomposing corpse of a pig killed while wallowing in filthy mire---and left there to rot. When these youths became victims of hearing-impairment, Dr. Eghosa reflected, their parents allowed them to range free through life without control, training, restriction, education, support and conducive campaign on behalf of their well-being before the Government. Parents had not fought for better education for the deaf whose so-called “special schools” appear to be mere makeshift unequipped institutions.

The parents had not been creative, Dr. Eghosa mused further; they had not stretched their imagination far, far enough to see what rare privileges could be available for their wards, and take them there for ultimate lasting profit. You cannot breed a horrendous background of a life for a long period of time and expect a committed teacher or a medical worker or a social worker to deal with it by attempting to erase the indelible effects with the sole hard core aim of ushering in something new. So reasoned Dr. Eghosa. He pouted in annoyance, not at the poor deaf, but at their parents, teachers and even at this Government. In his mind, the respective State Governments were guilty of not setting up permanent scholarship trust funds for the deaf across this Federation, for neglecting applications for scholarships submitted by education-hungry youths, and for delaying release of their scholarships, if any. These illiterate deaf youths along with others in the handicap bracket are mere social casualties of a society and successive regimes in the throes of consistent degradation and moribund departure from the lofty moral heritages bequeathed by our modest visionary and conscientious ancestors.

It is worth noting that Dr. Eghosa’s questions didn’t start with the inquiry as to what school Danduniya had attended. But it began with the inquiry as to whether the young deaf man’s parents were educated---because schooled parents must, if they have handicapped children, breed educated physically imperfect offspring. This is the norm every respectable and truly patriotic society must adhere to, encourage, uphold and maintain as a perpetual unalterable policy and heritage.

Previously, Dr. S. V. Eghosa had dealt with deaf persons who were sent to hospital with all the scandal of their illiteracy to meet him. No parent, no guardian and no note accompanied these patients. Their condition, inability to communicate and their very presence was a faceless embarrassment, indignity, and mockery to Dr. Eghosa. He saw the whole scenario as a calculated insult. This grievous circumstance laid the foundation for Dr. Eghosa’s bitter attitude toward this people for whom he had no good wishes, no blessings, and no respect. Worse still, he despised with deeply graceless contempt the parents, guardians and the very general society that had allowed these human beings to grow up wild and uncultured intellectually.

In harbouring bitter contempt against the poor deaf, Dr. Eghosa was himself unintentionally becoming a victim and prisoner of feelings created by the negligence of parents and Governments in the dirty venerated art of treasonable felony because they do not educate the handicapped enough. Luckily for Dr. Eghosa, he had a timely and systematic deliverance after his classic encounter with Balarabe Danduniya. 

A MEDICAL DOCTOR CONFIDES IN THIS WRITER

This writer has had the privilege of talking with a medical doctor about the economic and social disadvantages of the deaf. The doctor, who is one in private practice after years of service with the Government, is blessed with the eye of a sociologist. His expertise in matters relating to society is derivable from the fact that he has had a long-term wide range of social involvement. He renders emotional, material, medical, financial, etc. support to the poor, the neglected, flood victims, victims of communal clashes, and other natural disasters etc. He has developed a cunning skill in the art of looking beyond the mere appearances of problems presented before him by parties and pretenders who are usually at the root of the suffering of others. With insights gleaned from the scrutiny and survey of background of crises, etc, he authoritatively speaks and doles out warning, admonitions, counsels and instructions. All of these are as steady as the needle to the pole; they are applicable and infallible and piercing, meant to silence the windy empty music of hypocrites and liars.

Although much of what he has heard or known about the deaf were reports from others, he hit the nail on the head when he engaged in a brief conversation with this writer. He asserted: “Many of these parents of the deaf and dumb are not as poor as they claim to be. The truth is that they are not willing to invest in the deaf and dumb because they feel that the deaf and dumb will not be useful to them. So they purposely abandon the deaf and dumb. Many of them think that the deaf and dumb are a curse on them, and so prefer not to care for them. These parents need counselling and education on how to care for the less privileged . . . They abandon their responsibilities. They forget that it is not the fault of the deaf and dumb for the situation in his life. As a matter of fact, it could even be the fault of their parents, who need education. They need moral counselling. They need the word of God . . .”

5

THE DEAF AND OUR HOSPITALS (II)

Who can help us tell what the health and medical needs of the deaf community are? ---Sable Badaki.

Balarabe Danduniya is an exceptional case or an exception, but not the rule! The nation litters with thousands of other deaf persons who are the stark opposite of him. These are dearly paying with their very lifeblood for not being literate, for not being accompanied to hospital with either a second party or a simple note from either a guardian or a teacher. Among them are those that dread going to hospitals or clinics because they cannot write, and because they cannot find someone to bear with them and take them for treatment, and speak to doctors on their behalf. And there are those that go, though either literate or illiterate, but who create violent scenes sometimes, as they grow impatient and get angry with doctors and nurses for “wasting our time”.

The fearful sick prospective patients get ravaged by sickness and disease---so premature deaths become an inevitability, an irrevocable decree. And where they manage to reach a medical centre, the triple handicap of deafness, dumbness, and illiteracy leave them at the mercy and fancy of medical men to deal with the way they deem best. Many perish, therefore, more from the ravages of undiagnosed sickness and disease than from drug maladministration. Others still could not detect or suspect what certain symptoms have begun to make them feel uncomfortable in health. So they could not get alarmed enough because they had no basic knowledge they could have accumulated through functional literacy to save their own lives. On account of not knowing and being not alarmed, they scarcely speak of their problems. Consequently, they fall into the category of people an integrated school in the Niger Delta refers to as “silent sufferers”.

Between illiterate deaf couples, we have normal babies. These babies, an enviable asset to their parents and country, are in danger of dying from under-dose and over-dose of drugs before they are three years old. In the event of the babies taking ill, unlettered mum may not immediately know what the matter is. They couldn’t differentiate between the child’s normal and abnormal cries, breathings, natural and unnatural coughs because their ears are too dull to make a clear distinction between healthy and unhealthy sounds emanating from the tiny babies. Consequently, no alarm could be raised, and no action taken in the nick of time to save them. Before long, undetected serious symptoms take their toll and lead to the death of these precious puny creatures.

Tragic losses of this nature, however, have taught these married or cohabitating parents to ensure that an elderly and experienced woman of their families come over to stay and live with them and become, not only their ears, but their private nurses and  private teachers in the art of child rearing. The method has helped many an unlettered deaf mother not to count their babies in the annual harvest of infant deaths caused by multiple factors in our town and cities. Some illiterate deaf moms are presently proud and happy to see their children surviving and growing up under their eyes. In situations where uneducated deaf couples go to hospital with their babies without third hearing parties, some careful doctors have to depend more on experience, prayer and instinct to save the babies than on scanty, discordant, obscure and incongruous explanations of ailments of the child by frightened deaf parents.

 The immediate lack of Deaf Clinics or Deaf Units in both our public and private hospitals across the country has succeeded in upgrading these people, somewhat, as among the worst hit first rate frontline casualties of the war mounted against humanity by germs and viruses. Many babies have fallen and been wasted; some have been rudely slain by the hasty prescription of drugs by doctors who do not take pains enough to explain details of drug administration over and over again to these helpless deaf illiterates. Drug administration procedures not having been made in comprehensible and clarifying signs, death hastens to brandish sadistically its harvesting scythe and enjoy a field day. And to their unutterable chagrin poor illiterate hearing impaired parents and their relations have had to ferry wheel-barrowful of dead babies to old and abandoned cemeteries.

MISSING MEDICAL DOCUMENT CAUSES DEATH OF A DEAF LADY’S BABY

An unwed teenage deaf girl gave birth to a baby girl somewhere in the south, a zone where a significant percentage of the hearing-impaired community lives held to ransom under the thick heavy covering of illiteracy and disunity. Several months after the delivery of her baby, illness walked in; and the new young mom and her child were taken to a hospital, luckily accompanied by a volunteering Good Samaritan with some good knowledge of Sign Language and ability to translate from Sign Language to speech. For this young mom and the child, providence granted grace that much of the treatment would be administered almost free. A sound recovery of health began for the baby, quite to the extreme ecstasy of the Good Samaritan who had on several occasions watched unschooled deaf mothers lose their young ones so soon. But somewhere along the way, the young mom, Miss Affion Ekpo, probably traumatized by the harsh turmoil and bitter experience of teenage pregnancy and early motherhood lost the prescription form of her little daughter, Imeh.

On the next return to the hospital, she was without her medical document on which the very generous and compassionate doctor had carefully outlined step-by-step treatment procedures for Little Imeh. Since not more than 2/4 of the treatment had yet been given, the symptoms in Little Imeh’s body dared to resurface even while the doctor insisted on immediate search and timely recovery of the document. But all desperate hectic searches for it proved a failure. The development threw the doctor into an expensive dilemma because his overloaded memory and over-wrought mind could not least conjure up the smallest fraction of the case of Little Imeh, whom he had yet lately attended to. True, his observations and the interpretations as well as the additional personal observations of the Good Samaritan combined to lead to a proper diagnosis of the disease of the child. This was well put on paper, which unfortunately could not attract the curiosity of the interpreter enough to make her attempt to read it. For she too was illiterate yet blessed with a remarkable ability to use and understand Sign Language well. Her expertise in the language was the enviable reward for her interest in and time-tested interaction with the deaf.

What medication to give next, the doctor could not recall, his expensive dilemma held him yet the more to ransom most fatally because he had failed to make a duplicate of the now missing prescription form of our little child. Unwilling to waste more time on this little patient alone, he chose to remain neutral while moving forward to attend to other waiting patients equally groaning under pain. Young mom, Miss Affion Ekpo, was told to wait, but this was a resolution that he was not going to treat the child independent of the form which detailed the next medication, even if little Imeh should die. If she should die, let it be. And to the consequences of that resolution Little Imeh complied: she whined, yelled, sneezing awfully now and then, and falling into small swoons occasionally because of pain. Then finally she became still---forever dead.

“Hold me!” screamed the Good Samaritan, “Imeh is dead!” she wailed. Her scream that announced the departure of the ghost of Imeh sent all the pregnant and nursing women springing briskly to their feet and hastening to the corner where Miss Affion Ekpo held a lifeless little corpse. She became a public spectacle amidst high-pitched wailings and sharp grief-laden squeals from many women. Miss Ekpo dropped herself onto the floor, screaming and rolling to and fro beside her deceased child. There was indeed “a great and very sore lamentation” and “the gall of bitterness” (Genesis 50:10; Acts 8:23). The doctor ground his teeth in remorse, but he consoled himself with the thought that it would never be said it was his medication that murdered the little girl.

The high level of illiteracy among deaf women makes them not to value documents, literature, etc. upon which their lives and those of siblings and friends depend for long-term survival under the most severe or otherwise strenuous circumstances of life. When such documents go missing or get damaged, it becomes “bitterness in the end” (2 Samuel 2:26). They have to be taught to see the importance of preserving vital documents such as Local Government Area Certificates of Identification, testimonials, identity cards, health certificates, etc…

Illiteracy has robbed them of multiple opportunities for survival, elevation, marriage, breakthroughs, knowledge of the Bible, salvation through Christ Jesus, and escape from dangers in their immediate environments. Illiteracy is the worst enemy of the deaf. But it is probable that worse than illiteracy is literacy without creativity, imagination, and astuteness. Some of them have literacy without ambition despite desire to fight off marginalization and social retrogression. The available literacy has not been used for in-depth drive and search for the appropriate key to their elevation in society. Thus, both literates and illiterates continue to go and get bound to the stakes of misery and protracted sojourn in the labyrinth of desperate struggles for survival, in the labyrinth of chafed interpersonal relationships, in the labyrinth of greed and corruption---and in the labyrinth of impossible backwardness.

It has been observed rightly that “illiteracy is a milestone around a nation’s neck”. When we are illiterate we sink to the bottom of the sea; and when we are literate without being creative, we decay. And if our chief objective is to employ our literacy to go for further education in order to get diplomas, degrees, etc. that would fetch us more money, better positions, and prestige instead of opportunities for service to humanity and the liberation of others, we dwarf ourselves generally and are not better off than the uncivilized mountain people of Koma Land in Adamawa State of Nigeria.

 Across the Federation, partly as a result of serious illiteracy, many hearing-impaired people are at great disadvantage medically. The ignorance of vital issues relating to the maintenance of good health is quite disagreeably stupendous. And the total absence of Deaf Units in public hospitals and private clinics has emboldened this monstrous problem to assume a disproportionately ugly dimension. The establishment of medical Deaf Units could have allowed for the conception and implementation of variegated health seminars specially tailored to the health education needs of the deaf. Lame leadership in the community of the deaf has not been able to venture anywhere near canvassing before the Federal and State Ministries of Health for the ear-marking of the nation’s deaf population for special medical attention and enlightenment. Health seminars, symposia, workshops, etc. held grandiosely in our towns and cities with sponsorships from the World Health Organization, the British Council and other health education outfits do not come anywhere near the doorsteps of the deaf community.

IGNORANCE HOLDS DEAF LADIES TO RANSOM

A significant proportion of deaf girls do not know why as they grow older they develop breasts, attractive body contours, pubic hair, and why they menstruate. And many do not know the health tips for pregnant women, the danger inherent in premarital and extra-marital sexual intercourse, breast cancers/pains, and poor breast- feeding. Lack of education on the possible causes of and remedies for impotency and infertility has turned the married life of some deaf couples into an unlimited hellish nightmare.

One of our dynamic leaders in the deaf community once lamented: “We have many beautiful deaf ladies who, unfortunately, do not know how to take good care enough of themselves to be attractive”. Their consciousness of the importance of personal hygiene is poor---poor because in view of their peculiarity as deaf persons, they don’t have good health educators, good schools set up for them by private or government  health education outfits. Sometimes it should be considered a miracle of nature where unlettered deaf people have survived through terrible sickness and disease with little medical attention to reach middle age.

A survey of this very sad scenario by one Miss Titilayo Ogunleye in Yoruba land threw her mind into deep thinking in an attempt to conclude whether we should entertain more and more pessimism and less optimism as to the feasibility of the deliverance of the deaf from restricted or poor medical attention and other problems. A deaf teacher of the deaf, Miss Titilayo Ogunleye bared her mind to a friend through the Internet on 27^th April 2005, with a tiny glowing spark of optimism that “I know help is coming for deaf people”. Pessimism loomed large, unavoidably large; but amidst it all she saw a hardly visible spark of rising optimism, which led to the above prediction.

Close conversation with Miss T. Ogunleye yielded an exposure in details of what lay in her breast and what she would do for the embattled community of deaf youths – if equipped with the essential tools for the job. Her declaration that contained that forlorn spark of tiny optimistism sounded like a prayer. And so, refreshing news, like snow falling during the heat of summer, broke out from the fertile womb of Gifted Hands International Ministries---on Friday, 22^nd April 2005---through the Internet. The disseminated news held invitation out to recipients to attend a special program for the deaf:

Health Fair for the Deaf

“Health Fair for the Deaf Community: Greetings in the precious name of Jesus. On June 7, 2005, we are hosting a Health Fair for the Deaf Community. On this day, medical missionaries from America will be joining local health professionals to serve the deaf community. We are excited about the many deaf people who will have the opportunity to receive proper medical attention and obtain vital health information (breast cancer, malaria, child immunization). We are expecting health professional with various specialties (dentists, gynecologists, ophthalmologists, pediatricians, etc). If you would like to join us in planning or volunteer for this big day, please come to our first meeting on April 30, 2005, Saturday…You are wondering if you are qualified to serve on the [planning] committee. I will answer YES. The committee is not reserved for medical or health professionals. We need deaf and hearing people

·        (1) Who can help us tell what the health and medical needs of the deaf community are,

·         (2) Who can interpret in Sign Language for the meeting and for the Health Fair,

·        (3) Who can assist in giving out hand bills,

·        (4)Who can sponsor or donate some of the medical items needed,

·        (5) Who can sponsor or provide refreshment,

·        (6) Who want to make a difference. Please feel free to contact us if you have any further questions or need additional information”¹.

The conception and realistic initiation of the Health Fair for the Deaf is an appropriate engine for tackling the negative effects wrought disastrously upon parts of the Deaf Community by meagre medical attention and penury of health information. The Federal and State Ministries of Health should have, since independence, thought up the health program now introduced by Mrs. Sable Badaki.

It is against this backdrop then that health workers in Government and private employment will do well to heed the suggestions, ideas, initiatives and appeals of those committing themselves to the development of the deaf – with regards to the need of good health service delivery. The leadership experience of health professionals, both public and private, is not complete or ripe until they allow themselves to be led into the community of the hearing-impaired in order to see health needs hitherto undiscovered by them. There is a wide chasm between them and the deaf as the result of absence of Sign Language. And their profession in this country should not be accorded all the noble honour it deserves until most health institutions sponsor some of their staff to Deaf Schools, Centres and Ministries to interact with the deaf and learn Sign Language.

If this wished-for project is accorded due consideration much would be achieved in minimizing the crisis deaf people go through in some hospitals and clinics. Additionally, there will be a better emergence of interest in nursing among the deaf. There will begin to rise hearing-impaired nurses, midwives and assistants to doctors in health institutions. Of course, very many deaf ladies have desired to become nurses and midwives; they know they can be and can make it there. But the avenues for their entry into that profession are lacking or have not been put in place. The news release by Gifted Hands International Ministries really pin-pointed most accurately two significant fundamental stumbling-blocks in the deaf community which led to the realization of the need to create opportunity to:

1.                  Receive proper medical attention

2.                  Obtain vital health information

In looking between the lines of the news release we see a mind beginning to see what really obtains in the community in question. We are given to understand yet further, though we already know that, indeed, hitherto many deaf people have not yet received proper and vital medical attention and information respectively in their own country.

6

EXCLUSION GAGS AND ANGERS THE DEAF

Absence of Sign Language or possession of its knowledge by elements in strategic key Government offices explains why the deaf, more than any other category of disabled people, are becoming victims of exclusion syndrome. This is visible during national conferences.

During the Oputa Panel (a kind of South Africa’s Truth & Reconciliation Committee sitting), for instance, the deaf were not represented in any of the meetings where, yet, there was a great deal of emotional release of deep-seated pain; none of them was there to attempt to let the audience know that they too have deep hurts and wounds as well as grievances against groups, companies and individuals that exploit them in many ways. And on the eve of National Political Reform Conference, held in February 2005, it became obvious that again the hearing-impaired people were not going to be part of this landmark conference, although they knew the significant import of the event to their political relevance. The exclusion led to outburst of anger among some of them across the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

Deaf Demand Confab Seats

They Allege Preferential Treatment for the Blind, Lame

“Further protest against the list of nominees to the National Political Reform Conference welled up with deaf persons querying their exclusion from the list. President of the Organization of Deaf Businessmen and Women in Nigeria (ODBMWIN), Mr. Afolabi Dahunsi in a statemen on Friday expressed anger at their exclusion. According to the president of the deaf persons’ organization, their anger stems largely from the fact that there are two blind representatives and one cripple to the Dialogue kicking off tomorrow in Abuja but no representative representing his own interest. Mr Dahunsi queried why there were no deaf persons among the names sent by the physically challenged people to the organizers of the conference.

“The protest by the deaf is the first publicly known by physically handicapped persons since the dialogue was announced by President Obasanjo. Requesting the organizers of the conference to immediately rectify the oversight, the body insists that as bonafide citizens of Nigeria, its members should not be denied the right to be included in the deliberations of the confab which, it said, could shape the future and direction of the organization’s country.

“Pained by the members’ exclusion, Mr. Dahunsi maintained that even though disabled, its members traverse all professions, including law, accounting, academics, business and commerce and pharmacy.

“He therefore asked, ‘What do the other groups included in the conference have that the deaf people don’t have?’ Sunday Champion learnt that the right body to choose representatives for the disabled is the Joint National Association of People with Disabilities (JONAPD), and not the ‘physically challenged people’. Consequently, the deaf people are defiant that its members may soon resort to other means to protest their displeasure if their members are not nominated for the conference”¹.

.

And was any apology tendered to the deaf for the unkind exclusion of them from the conference of so tremendous an importance to their deliverance and development? And did the confab organizers in respect of the right of the deaf to be included in the national political gathering ever embark upon any radical amendment? We have not heard of any request for forgiveness, let alone any show of repentance and amendment up till date, no, not from the print or electronic media.

THE HYPOCRISY OF THE DEAF:

THEY PLAY A DIRTY ROLE IN THEIR OWN EXCLUSION

“The strains of environmental pollution, political corruption, and social alienation make for a sad song”, says Rev. Tim Holwerda. However much one would commiserate with the deaf over what looks like deliberate exclusion them from political participation, one should as well be fair in directing displeasure and reproof at them for failing to make Sign Language an acceptable “miniature vernacular” in much of the principal offices and agencies of Government and private companies. With this failure staring them hard in the face and calling for rectification, they (the deaf) have always run ahead of Sign Language. They have not thought of planning sufficiently well enough to sow the knowledge and practice of their language in and among their hearing counterpart. Yet they want to go and reap where they have not sown. When they get there, the absence of Sign Language leads to the immediate tendency to put off communication with them, or scurry and   then briskly snap off ongoing written communication for want of time. This serious impediment seems to serve as one fundamental factor in that inevitable tendency toward the withdrawal of full-blown consideration in respect of the hearing-impaired in economic and political planning. They are suffering from the effects of communication gap. Their language is still very unpopular in high offices. They play too much of the hypocrite.

The deaf are apparently more economically productive than all other categories of disabled people. Their mobility rate is as high and unhindered as that of their productivity rate on almost any job. Their opportunities to change from one job to another are much almost the same as those available to the able-bodied, but unavailable to the blind and cripple. The debacle of the deaf is the existence of communication gap, loss of speech and hearing for effective and rapid communication. These do not negate their comprehensive participation in tremendous political and economic resourcefulness. They have very many advantages over the blind and cripple, yet as victims of communication gap, as a result of the unpopular use of their language, they are a restricted economic force, a caged political might, a diverted social force, a people gagged through exclusion.

Few days to the beginning of the 2006 population census exercise, President Olusegun Obasanjo convened a stakeholders’ forum. During the forum that held on Thursday, March 16, for about three (3) hours, the issue of the use of Sign Language by census enumerators to communicate with the deaf was raised. Amazingly, the issue of Sign Language became “the central focus of attention during the forum” where, unfortunately neither the Nigerian National Association of the Deaf nor any other State organization of the deaf sent representatives to parley with the president with the aim of soliciting him to have Sign Language included in the nation’s schools’ curricula.

Census

Cry of the Physically Challenged

“The intention of President Olusegun Obansanjo in convening a stake holders’ forum for next week’s National Housing and Population Census was unmistakable. He wanted the forum, which held on Wednesday [sic] (March 16) at the Banquet Hall of the Presidential Villa, to serve as the platform for building a consensus to ensure the success of the exercise. As it turned out to be, some Nigerians were still to be fully informed about the ABC of the census. Questions and comments freely made during the interactive forum that lasted about three hours. At the end of the parley, it was not in doubt that heavy loads of tensions had been doused. The coast has thus been cleared for the exercise to begin in earnest from next Tuesday, March 2 to March 25.

“However, the central focus of particular attention during the forum was the peculiar group called the physically challenged. The national co-coordinator of Disability Aid Service in Action, Mr. Amadi, in a position paper presented at the forum, stated that there were certain special needs to be met if the blind, deaf and people suffering from other disabilities would be relevant to the head-count.

“Among the needs is request for education and enlightenment materials produced in Sign Languages that they can read and digest. Also listed is the raising of enumerators that can communicate with the deaf and dumb during the exercise. In other words, they want to be regarded as active members of the society.

“President Obasanjo, while appreciating their peculiar needs, urged the Chief Samaila Makama-led National Population Commission (NPC) to look at what could be done to help this special category of Nigerians so that the physically challenged too may have a voice in national planning”².

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Chapter 1

1. Sunday Vanguard newspaper, September 25, 2005, p. 13.
2. NIGERIAN PATRIOT--Nation above Self--newspaper, Monday, June 6, 2005.
3. Daily Sun newspaper, Wednesday, March 29, 2006.
4. Saturday Champion newspaper of February 5, 2005.
5. Tim Lahaye in Spirit-Filled Family.
6. David Barton in Original Intent: The Courts, the Constitution, and      Religion (Aledo,TX: Wallbuilders,1996), p. 335-337.
7. Jeanne Griffin, Director, Deaf Friends International (USA), via E-mail, July 2, 2005.
8. Ngugi wa Thiong’o in Devil on the Cross (Heinemann Educational Books Ltd, Kenya, 1982), p. 39.
9. Alexander Pope (1688-1744) in Who Wrote That? An Instant Guide to Literature (Red Fox Edition, 1992) by Terrance Dick, p. 19.
10. Ibid.
11. National Agency for Prohibition of Traffic in Persons (NAPTIP) and Other Related Matters contained in the Trafficking in Persons (Prohibition) Law Enforcement and Administration Act, 2003. p. 12 -13.
12. Joint National Association of Disabled People-Circulated Handbill, July 2002.

Chapter 2

1. Time Magazine, 28 June 2005.
2. Whoop Goldberh, ibid.

3.      Tiziana Gulli (Italian deaf girl) via E-mail, Wed., July 19, 2006.

4.      Defleur/Dennis in Understanding Mass Communication, p. 38.

Chapter 3

1.      Ngugi wa Thiong’o in Devil on the Cross (Heinemann Educational Books Ltd, Kenya, 1982), p. 15.

2.      Ufot Ekaette, Secretary to the Government of the Federation, in June 2001, when he was adorned with an honorary doctorate degree by the University of Uyo, Nigeria.

3.      Sporting Champion newspaper, Friday, Dec. 30, 2005---Jan. 5, 2006,

            p.15.

     4.  Sir Adolphus Egba (Niger Delta handicapped poet) in Songs of the Ants, p.13-14.

     5.   Steve Ogan in Starting Rainbow Initiative (High Calling Outreach                            Publishers, 2006), p.

     6.   Defleur/Dennis in Understanding Mass Communication, p. 39.

     7.   Ellen Gould White in Universe in Conflict, p. 56.

     8.   ibid.

     9.   The Light Bearer newspaper, October 2005, p.16.

Chapter 5

1. Sable Badaki, Director, Gifted Hand International Ministries (Ibadan, Nigeria), via E-mail, Friday, April 22, 2005.

Chapter 6

1. Sunday Champion newspaper, February 20, 2005.
2. Saturday Champion newspaper, March 18, 2006.
   
    

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