In this piece, SULAIMAN SALAWUDEEN captures his encounter with a teenage girl with slight mental disorder who loitered around Jibowu-Yaba, Lagos, and was eventually rescued by the Lagos State Health Emergency Services.
The odd joy some derive from watching psychotic bursts of the mentally challenged is what I consider weird and sad! Occasionally drenched in decades of dirt and filth that cake all about them and oozing terrifying odours, how they worst into the condition and why they are mostly left unattended are worries I continue to deal with personally.
But the picture of the girl sitting down on concrete stump close to the railway crossing adjacent Ransom Kuti Memorial Secondary School, Empire fraction of Jibowu-Yaba, Lagos one morning a few weeks ago was more than sad. It was ghastly! Clearly in her early teens – 16, according to her(!), Dabira (this was what she called herself, though she later changed it to another name, yet another) had unmistakable stamp of psychotic disjuncture – head shaved and slightly unkempt, dress pronouncedly dirty, muttering inaudibly, occasionally looking further on blankly, blandly!
Although she spoke clean English, the girl had forgotten where she was coming from and was not going anywhere(!). And when she declared yours sincerely looked like her biological dad, I knew I had a task to undertake.
The exchanges were partly captured:
What is your name?
After some time, she produced ‘Dabira’.
Where is your daddy?
You really resemble my daddy.
Where is your daddy?
I don’t have daddy before, but now I have daddy (smiles).
Where is he?
You now!
Where is your mum?
My mummy?
Yes, where is she?
My mummy has travelled.
Where did she travel to?
I don’t know. Won travel naa ni (she just travelled).
Where are you coming from and where are you going?
I am going to byee.
Where do you want to go?
I want to go to your house.
To my house?
Yes (emphatic).
I don’t have a house here, but I can take you to your house. What is your daddy’s name?
Dalman
Why are you here now?
I just want to go to where I can write, and then move.
You want to write and then move?
Yes, it’s writing about moving, good moving (pronounced clean, clear).
Can I go now?
No. You cannot go.
Where do you want to go, Dabira?
Carry me to London.”
Her intermittent dance moves and lyrics of popular hip-hop stars she waxed requested just one thing: people’s care! By the time I was done with my inquisitions, it was obvious only an equally ‘unbalanced’ individual would attach much substance to ‘Dabira’s’ drivels!
What immediate redemption could be done this fledgling spectacle of sorrow? I filmed her with my handset and engaged her verbally, precisely to ascertain the extent of her condition and possibly secure some name to establish her familial links!
I soon sent the video to Facebook, and added comments, pleading watchers should ‘share’ and ‘like’, to bolster chances of her being discovered by a family member. This was around 11 am. I thereafter headed off to pursue personal concerns for the day, even as I continued to tinker with the handset regarding Dabira.
I returned at about 5pm same day and discovered the girl had altered her location, now on the other side of the railway crossing, coming from the Mushin end, closer now to Jibowu flyover under a tree and in standing position, gazing in the horizon at no specific object. I greeted her, but no response. I understood.
Occasionally muttering inanities, even as passers-by and traders nearby continued to feed on and enjoy (!) her theatrics, she now looked fagged. I resumed my filming and inquisition, purposely to freight her upon the social media the second or third time. Perhaps, just perhaps someone – a family member – would notice her and act.
I went and checked the post(s) I did earlier in the day and discovered people were just VIEWING and never REPOSTED or SHARED – the options to cause more views and possible succour. Why were they just viewing and how do people enjoy such scenes? My mind lighted first upon Mr. Gbenga Omotoso, my overall editor while in active journalism, now Commissioner for Information and Strategy, Lagos State. He did not pick. I called again, and again, yet no answer; an unusual occurrence, as he would always pick his calls or return same soon as he noticed.
Thirty minutes, one hour, two, no call from the commissioner! I wondered where he could be, and what would have taken his attention away for that long! I summarised the spectacle in writing, and sent him a text message, repeating same on Whatsapp, adding videos to the latter, so he could appreciate the urgency and emergency.
I pointed at a food vendor selling rice, and she said “rice”, gesturing in the direction of the seller! I brought her a plate which she emptied quickly, requesting another and another. I solicited help at a point and a woman offered – perhaps, she had not eaten days! It was now about six in the evening, and already getting dark: “this girl must not be at such a dangerous spot while I advance,” I said to myself.
I knew if any help would come at all, it would be through calls. Unfortunately, fate had already made me light on call credit, and the phone battery draining fast too. I remembered a police link, male, and called. Counselling me to look other ways, he urged I should call toll-free Lagos emergency numbers 767 or 112.
I dialed immediately and the responder, a female, promised his agency would get to the point in maximum 30 minutes thence. While still waiting, I called Mr. Olakunle Abimbola, who picked and offered pleasantries. I pleaded he should just call me back, and, on relaying the encounter, he, not surprisingly, referred me to Mr. Omotoso. I informed I already did!
Disturbed, he suggested getting her to the nearest police station. Again, I said I had made some attempt, but met a brick-wall. The day was already advanced and the emergency had to be handled as it was.
Mr. Olakunle kept calling for updates on Mr. Omotoso and the Lagos emergency services. Neither by then had responded, although I told him the emergency people might already be considering me a nuisance, as I did not stop calling them, and each call took me to a different contact point, and they all kept promising!
Joyfully, a little after 10 pm, Mr. Omotoso’s call came in, expressing his regrets for not responding on time, and asking regarding the infirm. I recapped the situation, and the efforts I had made so far, specifically mentioning how the Lagos Emergency workers made pledges whole two, three hours, without delivering! He promised to link his colleague at the Health Ministry and call me back.
Unfortunately, the power on my phone had by then drained to just 3 per cent. I had to plead for help nearby to recharge, and upon returning, Omotoso expressed his worries as he had been trying to reconnect me, noting the emergency people in the ministry already got my number and would speak with me shortly.
They did, and few minutes past 11 pm – after over five hours of waiting – succour came Dabira’s way! The all-female team of responders had to play up games to trick her into a standby, fully-ACed, tastefully furnished Lagos State Emergency Ambulance – she displayed unbelievable intransigence, giving excuses why she should not obey instructions.
But after some minutes, she was conquered, entering a white, roomy van and into preliminaries of state-sponsored treatment right there in the glare of all, and soon the ambulance left with her! The feedback is that Dabira has been responding to treatments, though yet to remember anything or recall names. But my efforts to access her physically to personally assess situations like a ‘dad’ has so far been rebuffed by minders. Their excuse: “YOU KNOW SIR THAT THE GIRL IS STILL A MINOR AND YOU ARE NOT HER FAMILY MEMBER”!
Indeed, one often wonders at a society wherein human participants seem terminally shredded in centrifugal atomism, of leaders leading in lewdness, teachers teaching errors, writer-thinkers elevated in thoughts, but basal in conducts! What a world: mutual care, camaraderie and genuine fellow feeling often strangers to social relationships, interactions – official and personal! How did humans worst into such and why are those willing and ready to respond usefully to emergencies and distress conditions ever quite scarce and why do those officially engaged and paid to remedy situations often act unencouragingly?
What would have befallen Dabira if un-minded at that point, and if no Gbenga Omotoso complemented decisively, after calls to designated stations had failed? Why did those who made promises never delivered? There was the case of this woman, backing a baby, followed by another child, who bumped upon journalists while I was still in journalism in Ekiti, way back 2013. They simply told her to wait somewhere, as the person to attend to her – I – was not around! For how many minutes or hours she had waited before my arrival, I would not know, but her face lighted when I told her I was the one she had been waiting for! She explained, through an interpreter, she came from Maiduguri and that her husband died during one of Boko Haram bombardments. Wasting no time, I linked my contacts and soon we left together, and she got eventually resettled – given accommodation, alongside feeding allowances – through the ministry of women affairs! indeed, many situations like Dabira’s arise daily across locations in Lagos and elsewhere and people often look away, when simple care would have done remedies!
One recalls quite sad legacy of Kevin Carter, whose camera captured a girl dying of hunger while a real vulture waited by to devour its remains once dead, as famine ravaged Sudan in 1993/94. Of course, Carter took his own life, aftermath of granting a TV interview where he was told “There were two vultures that day, and one carried a camera”, precisely for failing to redeem the girl rather than simply placating his professional lust – for which he won the Pulitzer Prize – for an “incredible photo!” I have often been appalled at videos of individuals who re-enact Carter in various way: those who steal from dead accidents victims, those who film them and doing selfies as they burn, trapped in wreckages, those who record deranged females dancing naked in the streets, among other despicable indulgencies! Indeed, far more genuine misfortunes do occur across locations within and elsewhere outside Lagos than ever get reported/captured, thanks to I-don’t-care inhumanity of most humans today, including and especially those primarily saddled with the task to rescue! Is it not one thing for a Governor Babajide Sanwoolu to create and fortify Emergency Centres, but another for its workers and the common people to have requisite volunteerism mindsets to act on-the-spur to make the Centres work and give them relevance?
