A road crash while on election monitoring assignment in Gombe State has left Peter Okosun, a human rights activist, crippled, his family shattered. He needs help from anyone who can give it, VINCENT OHONBAMU reports
Since the accident, Peter Okosun has been feeling as though the world was crashing down on him. He cannot walk except aided by a pair of crutches, one under each arm. Even then, his movement is laborious and painful. The wounds did not heal properly when he was first taken to hospital. Why? He lacked the money to undergo a comprehensive surgery. His family is a shambles. His wife, a nurse, is buckling under the weight of daily responsibilities. Their children have been withdrawn from school for their serial fees defaults.
Okosun has no viable means of livelihood, but he would not sit and groan all day. Sometimes he hobbles to motor parks to pray for those about to travel, asking God to spare them what he went through on the road. Moved by pity and also in hopes that God will answer the prayers, they would hand him some small amounts of money. Okosun will hobble back home and hand it over to his hard-working wife. Still, what he brings home is not enough. So sometimes the wife and the children go out to beg.
Okosun needs N2m for a surgery that will help him walk again, he told The Nation.
A human rights activist, and coordinator of Pan African Peace Initiative, a Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO), Okosun left his family in 2010 to monitor an election in Gombe State. He neither completed the assignment nor has been able to fend for his family ever since.
He was lucky, though. Three others in the vehicle he was travelling in died. Okosun came away with very severe wounds that left him unable to walk but which were not properly treated.
Okosun who hails from Uromi in Esan Northeast Local government area of Edo State said he would welcome death as a relief, but since death will not come, he is now appealing to the general public for donations to enable him carry out the recommended surgery that would enable him regain the use of his legs and lead a normal life again.
The ghastly accident that crippled him occurred in the course of monitoring elections for the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in Gombe State.
Okosun visited the Correspondents’ Chapel Secretariat of the Nigerian Union of Journalists (NUJ) in Gombe to solicit the journalists’ help in publicising his predicament so that help may come from anywhere, including corporate bodies and government.
Relieving his ordeal, Okosun said he met his fate along Gombe-Dukku Expreeway in August 2010. The NGO he coordinated was accredited by the electoral body to monitor Gombe North Senatorial by-election as an election observer.
He said they were on their way to Gombe metropolis when their vehicle had a head-on collision with another. The driver and two female colleagues died immediately. It took the intervention of the Nigeria Television Authority (NTA) crew which was following closely behind to get him to the now Federal Teaching Hospital (FTH), Gombe alive, where the doctors battled and administered the preliminary treatment to keep him alive.
He was discharged since the facility at the time lacked the requisite expertise to make his limbs work. He thereafter went to the University of Benin Teaching Hospital (UBTH) for expert treatment. But the treatment did not hold because he could not afford the required N2m charged at the time.
Okosun said he wrote to INEC and the Presidency asking for help, considering that he was on national assignment. None responded positively, he said. While the Presidency kept mum, INEC under Professor Attahiru Jega reportedly said election observers were not captured under their insurance scheme.
Inquiries at the Gombe arm of INEC also confirmed that the commission has no obligations whatsoever to election observers. Has INEC helped Okosun in anyway whatsoever? No. Is the body aware of Okosun’s plight? Yes, our source said, confirming that the ex-human rights activist was indeed in Gombe to observe an election conducted by the commission when the accident happened.
Okosun is now seeking help wherever he can find it.
“My children are now withdrawn from school because I cannot afford their school fees and my wife is fast wearing out under the burden of the family responsibility she has now assumed,” he said.
“Look, the worst part of it all is not just being limp; I feel pains all over my body, especially injured parts and areas around. The pain gets more excruciating by the day; to the extent that moving my body is so laborious, not to talk of trying to do something. As it is now, I would gladly welcome death so that I can rest in peace, but death too has refused to come.
“The reason I am here (Correspondents’ Chapel of NUJ, Gombe) is to beg you to please help me reach out to INEC, the Presidency, kind-hearted people and groups out there to please come to my aid and help me financially, to at least facilitate my treatment. That is my greatest appeal now,” said Okosun.
Asked how to reach him, should succour come, Okosun said he could be contacted through Edith Okosun, his wife on 07065553301 or his daughter on 08034574392.
