With the advent of the internet and the various social media platforms have come unprecedented interconnectivity amongst people, friends and businesses; even lost and far forgotten ones. The WhatsApp app group platform has been particularly good at this, as it has helped a lot of old friends, classmates and colleagues get back together albeit virtually. With this coming together has also come a humanitarian aspect, where friends and colleagues rise in support of one another in the face of challenges, especially health and other social issues. Gboyega Alaka reports.
Back in the early 2000s, Abbey, a young promising boy once joined other exuberant boys in his neighbourhood to give armed robbers, who had come to rob a grocery store in his neighbourhood one early evening a chase. The robbers, feeling threatened and annihilated, turned and shot at the chasing group. Abbey was hit, but not immediately fatal, as he survived another full week. The medics at the hospital where he was rushed to said Abbey needed an urgent surgery to get another chance at life, even as they stressed that the chances were bright if they got money in time. But both his parents were old and poor. Even his elder brother, whom he stayed with, was of very little means, struggling to keep his family together with his welder job and mini chalk production business. The hospital demanded N300,000, which in the year 2000, was a fortune, and all efforts to raise the money in their Ajegunle neighbourhood, fell flat.
In the end, Abbey died; a sad loss to family and friends. From all indications, he could have lived, having survived a whole week, but poverty said no.
Many more have gone Abbey’s way due to lack of timely financial help. Mr Sanni (surname shielded due to lack of permission), a retired customs officer years back developed kidney problems. Being a good man in his Ikotun, Lagos, neighbourhood, neighbours rallied with their token support, just so he could access treatment. But being a community of low and average income earners, not much was generated. This culminated in the eventual sale of one of Egbe’s two properties in the neighbourhood. However, circumstances forced them to sell cheaply. Aside from the fact the money realised was still not enough, it turned out a bit too late, as the respected ex-customs man eventually died.
The above are just two examples of instances where lack of money has culminated in deaths.
In lesser instances, people have been evicted from their homes; forced out of school or made to lose or sell off their valuable properties, due to situations beyond their control– all because they could not get support.
WhatsApp group platforms to the rescue
Compare the above instances to the case of Hassan Adamu, a modest businessman father of two who got involved in an accident with his two kids on Saturday, September 10, 2022, when an articulated vehicle veered off the road at Iyana-Isolo Bus stop, Lagos, catching him unawares and putting him in a situation where he had to struggle between saving himself alone, which would have been a piece of cake, or saving himself and his two children, a boy and a girl. In the end, like a true father, he chose the latter and ultimately lost his four-year-old son, while he and his daughter ended up at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital LUTH, where it was confirmed that he had serious injuries – a dislocated hip, and a broken right leg; while his daughter also suffered serious leg and head injuries.
Hassan and children had been coming back from an overnight church service that Saturday morning.
From the moment they were admitted, it was a countdown to how quickly they would get treatment, if the family was not to lose any of them. Immediately family and friends swung into action, pooling funds together, as they had been told by doctors and officials at the hospital that they (Hassan and daughter) would be okay, if they could spend the money. Hassan, it was said, would require up to three surgeries while his little girl also required multiple surgeries, including a skin graft, as she sustained injuries to the head, hand, amongst other minor injuries. Even the bed spaces were to cost a lot of money.
Even though the family wasn’t particularly beggarly, it was not as if they had such huge money starched somewhere. So it was going to be a trying time for all, they imagined.
But thanks to the social media, and especially the WhatsApp old schoolmates group platform of Oshodi Secondary School, Tolu, Apapa, Lagos, where Hassan schooled and to which he was an active member, the news of his situation soon went viral among his old school classmates.
According to Blessing Adamu, Hassan’s immediate younger sister: “True, the family had started making calls and pooling funds together; we had even made a deposit of N700,000 for the hospital to commence work. What, however, surprised me was how his old school set platform responded. First they sent N400,000, just the day after the incident. Then they sent a representative to come over to ascertain the situation; and in no time, they sent another N700,000. Next, some of his classmates who had the wherewithal started visiting and making huge donations. In the end, they made things so easy that no treatment dragged. In all, I’d say we spent nothing less than N6million for both father and daughter’s treatment; and I can tell you it was majorly thanks to my brother’s old school Whatsapp group association.
Speaking of the incident, Hassan himself said the incident made him realise the importance of friendship and the power of social media. “Although I wasn’t in fantastic condition, my sister kept feeding me with information on how the donations and support were coming in.”
“Apart from me, the platform has helped several other classmates in distress; so if you ask me, I’d say it’s a great initiative.”
Set for eye surgery
Adeleke Adebanjo, an active member of the Tin-can Island High School, Apapa ’87 set WhatsApp association, recently started having problems with his eyes. He lamented how he suddenly could not see well any more to those close to him. An electrician by profession, he complained that he could no longer read text messages or even work with screws, and expressed fears that he may be going blind.
Unlike Hassan, who had his family to rely on as first line of support, Adebanjo practically has nobody, having recently been divorced from a childless marriage. Picture a mature single man, blind, without any means of livelihood or help.
Fortunately, he shared his story with one of his old classmates, Jelili, who happened to be an executive of their WhatsApp group association. Pronto, he shared his story with other Executive members, who immediately swung into action.
First they raised funds to send him to see an optometrist at a PHC, but when there was no improvement, they urged him to visit a General Hospital, where it was confirmed that he had advanced cataracts and would need surgery to extract them. Again they rallied mates in the diaspora and immediately raised the sum of N350,000 for him to undergo the surgery.
So now, Adebanjo is on medication and set for the surgery. The doctor has given him a date in the coming month, and all that is left is for the surgery to be successful.
Need one say that it would have been a story of desperation, hopelessness and maybe blindness for him, if not for the intervention of his old classmates’ group enabled by the Whatsapp platform?
More stories
Many more stories abound. Esther Lami, who is Welfare Officer of her class set of Ajeromi Ifelodun High School, Olodi-Apapa, Lagos, spoke of how their WhatsApp group platform has intervened in so many critical health and other cases of classmates, sometimes, going as far as donating blood for immediate transfusion to critically ill members.
“For lack of permission, I will not mention names, but since I assumed that position, we have supported our colleagues, too numerous to remember. On one occasion, the husband of one of our classmates got critically ill and needed huge sums of money for treatment. In no time, we raised money, I can’t recollect exactly how much now, but it was a handsome sum. And it wasn’t even once. Unfortunately, we lost him; but we still went ahead and contributed towards the burial and even gave money to his widow. Much later, we put money together to rent an apartment for the widow, being our classmate, when she started having accommodation challenges. Not long after, she again cried out to us about the schooling of her child, until she began insisting on private school, which, to us, was bothering on abuse of the opportunities.
“Can you believe that she even swore never to allow her child to attend the school she attended? Based on our impact on our alma mater, we had offered to talk to the management to get her son a placement.
“On another occasion, we repeatedly contributed money to save a classmate who was diagnosed with cancer of the anus. On several occasions, we contributed huge sums of money, because the husband kept telling us that she needed to undergo one surgery or another. I even personally donated blood.”
Even workplaces
This is not forgetting how even old and current workplace colleagues have used the platform to raise money to support colleagues in the face of ill health, even accommodation challenges.
Two years ago when Yetunde Oladeinde, Woman Editor of The Nation weekend titles passed, her former workplace colleagues, even of the rested Concord Newspapers, where she worked almost two decades before pooled over a million naira for her children. It was the same with her The Nation workplace, where well over N600,000 was raised. This was to enable the children adapt to their new situation and meet urgent needs.
Abused
Unfortunately, like every opportunity, it seems Nigerians have devised ways of abusing this laudable help avenue.
Aside the case of the widow classmate who became selective and started insisting on premium choices, such as insisting on a self-contain apartment, as against a single room, and insisting on a private school for her child, even when she had no solid means of livelihood, Lami stated that many members have now made it a habit to bring every bit of their monetary challenge to the platform, expecting classmates to raise money for them.
Another of Lami’s classmates chipped in that many of the classmates have now constituted themselves destitute, even though they have no visible disability, coming to the platform to announce their problems and expecting immediate help.
“Can you believe some actually go and call their friends who had not been part of the group to come over and announce their problem? One actually joined one day, and the first post she’d make was, ‘Please o, everybody, I have been going through difficult times and I will like you to help me,’ as if the platform was created for help.”
Lami would go on to relate how at a point, it became clear that the ‘husband’ of the classmate who had cancer of the anus, was fleecing them, as he would nudge the classmate to announce that she was to undergo surgery every now and then, until the platform Exco got fed-up and ordered her as Welfare Officer to be visiting the hospital to verify.”
On another platform, a member narrated how one of their colleagues came on the platform to lie that his wife was ill and hospitalised and members quickly contributed money for him to pay hospital bills. The cat was however let out of the bag, when another classmate who lived in the same neighbourhood with the member told a member of the Exco that he saw the same wife at a grassroots party meeting hale and hearty.
On another platform, a member narrated how one member created a big quarrel on their platform, picking on some of the officers and blaming them for not attending to his situation, while attending to others’. He had developed a nagging leg injury and decided he wasn’t going to see a doctor but a local medicine man in his village in the Southeast, whom he believed was the only person who could treat him. He also told the representative who visited him that all he wanted from the old school association was to pay his transportation for him to go to the village (from Lagos), money for the local medicine man and feeding money for two months. Of course the Exco members considered his requests outrageous and ignored him.
The matter got so heated up that one of the Exco members had to ask: “Wasn’t there a way members were sorting out their challenges before this WhatsApp platform thing came up?”
Some have even gone to the extent of calling members in diaspora, because they now have access to their phone numbers, sending them all sorts of SOS messages and literally fleecing them.
According to Lami, “What such members don’t know is that they are inadvertently chasing those diaspora mates away from the platform. Let’s face it, the people that donate huge sums are usually those in the diaspora or those with lucrative jobs or businesses; but if we keep going back to them for every problem, they will pull back, and we would have messed up the great initiative.”
This story is made possible with support from Nigeria Health Watch as part of the Solutions Journalism Africa Initiative
