Tag: born

MARHAZU SA’ADU, an infant child, became a memory in a single instant. Like the flame of a wicker lamp caught in a tempestuous rainsquall, he blew out right before his parents’ eyes. Sa’adu will never feel the firmness of earth. He will not tread with infirm steps through infanthood to the rugged paths of youth. He is gone. Although he lived long enough to acquire his name and parental love, the day after his naming ceremony, he died of blood poisoning. He was nine days old.

The doctors at Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF – Doctors Without Borders) fought futilely to reanimate him few minutes after he was rushed to their makeshift clinic in Anka but with a blood lead level of 49.6 micrograms per decilitre, tetanus and septicaemia, Sa’adu had definitely exhausted his fragile will to live. The nine-day old infant passed away during the day to the dismay of his parents and their Anka, Zamfara neighbourhood.

There is no gainsaying Sa’adu was touched by death at birth; he was a victim of the tragic lead poisoning that resulted from the impoverished natives’ artisanal mining and deadly lust for gold in rural Zamfara. The MSF doctors could not save him and over 1, 500 children referred to them by local clinics in the surrounding villages. The sad fate of Sa’adu and his peers was caused by ingestion and breathing of lead particles released in the steps to isolate gold from other metals. This type of lead is soluble in stomach acid and children under-five years are most affected. The treatment with MSF starts when blood lead level (BLL) samples reach 45 micrograms per decilitre. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) states that a BLL of 5 micro-g/dL or above is a cause for concern. The cycle of medicines lasts for 20 days. After that, the child’s blood is tested and a new round of treatment is provided. Treatment can last years, as lead is reduced in the blood, but it persists noticeably within the bones, especially if the patients return to the same polluted environment.

Unlike Sa’adu, Naimaatu Surajo, a four-year old girl, suffered permanent brain damage and blindness due to lead poisoning in neighbouring Abare. Her mother, Asnya, struggles through different crucibles of grief over the infant’s sad plight.

Several miles from Zamfara, the Oluokuns struggle through pangs of similar loss. Adenike, 36, drift through each day in a piteous trance. When the reporter visited her home in Lagos, she barely acknowledged greetings and her family’s desperate effort to cheer her up. Bola, her husband, stooped over the cracked, gray-marbled tiles and creaky cot where their daughter used to sleep presented a sorry sight stifling sobs in his desperate bid to heed sympathisers urging, and ‘bear the loss like a man.’ Few days earlier, family and friends thronged their room to peep into the crib and flash heartfelt smiles at their newborn. Two days before the child’s christening, the smiles got thinner and a bit frantic as the couple’s worst fears gradually manifested; their baby may not make it through the night. But she did. The newborn made it through the night and her christening ceremony. She made it through the thanksgiving service at the family church. Then she died in her father’s tricycle on their way back home. Her name was Ododo and she was 10 days old.

Ododo, roughly translates to “Flower” in English and like bruised petal, she presented with slow heartbeat at delivery. Then her breath became too fast and her body temperature rose. The Oluokuns’ newborn suffered seizures few minutes after a local midwife discovered a swollen spot in her belly area. The doctors diagnosed her with neonatal sepsis. Late Ododo, revealed Bola, the child’s father, probably got infected in the dingy backroom of the mushroom hospital where her mother went into labour.

“Ododo would be alive now if her mother had given birth to her in a proper hospital. But things have been very difficult these days. We barely survive from the little I make lifting and cutting wood in the local sawmill. She (Adenike) stopped working when she became very ill. She used to sell fish in Lagos Island…I do not trust the doctor. I think his work is basically trial and error; his hospital is an eyesore but it’s the best that we could afford. My wife tried attending the General Hospital but after two visits, she gave up. The wait was endless and her legs got swollen from walking the long distance. That was why we decided to use the neighbourhood clinic. It’s what we all use over here,” disclosed Bola Oluokun, father of the deceased child.

Behind the Sa’adus and Oluokuns’ tragic realities, some far-fetched consolation perhaps is lurking; at least their deceased kids weren’t clubbed or stabbed to death. Usman Abdullahi wasn’t so lucky. The two-year-old was stabbed to death on his mother’s back. Recounting the tragedy, Saratu, the late infant’s mother, said: “They attacked our home four days after my son clocked two. They woke his father up from sleep and shot him in the head. I tried to escape through the back door but one of our assailants chased after me and stabbed me in the back. He kept stabbing me until I fell down. I felt light and very hot in the head. By the time I regained consciousness, my sister had buried my son. She said he died of knife wounds in the head and on his neck.” The Abdullahis, like several displaced families in the country’s northeast, were caught on the receiving end of deadly terrorist sect, Boko Haram’s bloody campaign in the final quarter of last year.

Hadjara Mahamadou wears a veil that covers her head and shoulders. Hidden beneath this garment, the eight-year-old has a bandaged stump instead of a right arm. When Boko Haram raided her home town of Baga on January 3, Hadjara fled the gunmen with her mother. As they were running away, hand in hand, the little girl was struck by a bullet.

The insurgents were so close that her mother, Hassana, could barely afford to pause. She picked up her bleeding daughter and ran until they found a boat heading to Chad. For the next 12 hours, Hadjara travelled across Lake Chad with a bullet lodged inside her right arm.

“I took off my veil and I used that to bandage her arm,” said Hassana, her mother. Hassana’s prompt action probably saved Hadjara from bleeding to death. Yet by the time the girl reached Chad, her arm was beyond saving. The limb was amputated at the   district hospital in the town of Baga Sola.

In a separate incident, Aishatu Majira, 67, watched helplessly as her four children were hacked to death in the same hour, on the same day. “They killed all of my four children in one night. That same night, they cut of my right hand. It was two days after my eldest son’s wedding. They did not care that his wife was pregnant; they killed her in her sleep. She was eight months pregnant,” lamented Majira. The 67-year-old gin maker recounted with grief and a mien that suggested among other things, a visceral lust for vengeance; her ordeal in the ethno-religious violence that reduced Dilimi, a village on the outskirts of Jos, Plateau state to a ghost town. Then she fell silent, staring ardently into the distance. It was a macabre silence replete with spasms of blood-curdling angst, misery and discontent, one decade old. According to her, the youngest victim of the killings in Dilimi was a three-month-old baby who was beaten with sticks while strapped on his mother’s back. He died while his mother survived, she said.

And in a sequence that continually replays like scenes from a horror movie, gunmen invaded the labour room of a maternity home in Nkwoegwu, Ohuhu, in Umuahia North LGA of Abia State to abduct a newborn baby minutes after the child’s delivery. The abductors struck while nurses battled to save the mother, Eberechi Ihezukwu, from bleeding to death. The child, a boy, was still dripping with blood and birth fluid when the culprits struck and whisked him away.

“I only heard the cry of my baby and I asked the nurse its sex and she told me that it was a baby boy. I have had three girls for my husband and this is the first male child. My heart was joyful as I felt that I have got an identity in my husband’s house… Now, see what they have done to me. My breasts are heavy with milk; it is a burden I have refused to bear. They should please bring back my baby to suck my breasts,” said the child’s mother.

Worst place to be born

The plight of the Nigerian child compels a grisly narrative. For several minors, the path leading to adolescence is dangerously rigged with social, economic and political insecurities that explode like landmines, often snuffing out the lives of the kids even before they make it through infanthood.

At the backdrop of this insecurities, a Where-to-be-born index report which was recently released by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), a subsidiary of The Economist magazine, identified Nigeria as the worst country to be born. Eighty countries were assessed by the EIU but Nigeria was pegged at the bottom of the unflattering report. The report was the result of a survey

in which people were sampled and all the respondents agreed that Nigeria is the least or the last place they would want to be born. From the figures, Nigeria scored 4.74 points which placed her on the 80th position, the foot of the table while Switzerland topped with 8.22 points as the best country to be born in.

According to the United Nations Children Education Fund (UNICEF), about 800,000 children have been forced to flee their homes as a result of the conflict in northeast Nigeria between Boko Haram, military forces and civilian self-defence groups. In a report released one year after the abduction of more than 200 schoolgirls in Chibok, UNICEF revealed that the number of children running for their lives within Nigeria, or crossing over the border to Chad, Niger and Cameroon, has more than doubled in just less than a year.

Children are being used within the ranks of Boko Haram as combatants, cooks, porters and look-outs. Young girls are being subjected to forced marriage, forced labour and rape, and students have been deliberately targeted along with their teachers  with more than 300 schools damaged or destroyed and at least 196 teachers and 314 schoolchildren killed by the end of 2014.

“The abduction of more than 200 girls in Chibok is only one of endless tragedies being replicated on an epic scale across Nigeria and the region,” says Manuel Fontaine, UNICEF Regional Director for West and Central Africa. “Scores of girls and boys have gone missing in Nigeria  abducted, recruited by armed groups, attacked, used as weapons, or forced to flee violence. They have the right to get their childhoods back,” he said.

Paths leading into Borno, Yobe and Adamawa States are littered with ghosts and entrails of lives horridly cut down; dismembered limbs, pierced eyes, ear slivers, jaw splinters, gouged lips, odd tibias, skin flaps, and toes clutter the roads like glowworms and slugs in the wake of bloody bomb blasts.

The howl of infants, teenagers and students maniacally butchered and gunned to death in their sleep and the sorrowful tenor of their parents’ ceaseless cries mutually resonate a macabre plot of civilisation gone awry. Across the States, major townships and villages protrude with burnt-out cars, houses and blood spatters extending grotesquely through terrain that has proved fertile ground for radical ideologies to take root. Amid the mire, the ghosts of underage victims of the bloodbath, lunge horrifyingly from memories and graphic accounts of their deaths by loved ones and witnesses to their end.

Borno today pulsates with discordant anguish; Yobe resonates with gunshots and bloodlust and Adamawa echoes terrifying shades of strife and bloodbath; no thanks to mindless violence perpetrated by terrorist sect, Boko Haram, whose bombs and bullets are responsible for the human entrails, carcasses of cars by the roadside, defilement of the provinces’ ancient glory and more worrisomely, the devastation of lives of the region’s innocent minors.

There is no gainsaying the life of minors across the country has taken a turn for the worse. Until the first multiple bomb blasts and gun shots rocked the cities, residents lived without fear of being blown apart by deadly bomb devices. Today, however, every little sound causes the residents to scamper about in panic with most people leaving their belongings and clutching their kids as they flee their homes for safety.

True; a harmless stroll across the street, attendance at school or quick dash to the neighbourhood grocer has often times resulted in gruesome deaths or abduction of unsuspecting children. Few months ago, the Boko Haram sect killed 59 students of the Federal Government College (FCE), Buni Yadi, Yobe State, while they slept in their dormitory. The attack, which occurred at 2 am, resulted in the death of many students who were either shot or burnt to death as the gunmen torched the hostel after spraying them with bullets.

The child abduction and child rape pandemic…

Child abduction for ransom is an unusually grotesque transaction. In a single instant, a relationship between two people, an adult and minor to be precise, changes to one of captor and prisoner, owner and chattel. One holds absolute power and the other, hapless and piteously defenseless, holds none. Worse, the person in charge knew the moment was coming sometimes for a long time. The powerless captive had no idea.

In the last few months, the traditional press and new media pulsated with random reports about child abductions in the country. Majority of these abductions were perpetrated in Lagos and northeastern part of the country which groaned under the vicious yoke of terrorism inflicted on the region by terrorist sect, Boko Haram.

On the night of April 14/15, 2014, 276 female students were kidnapped from the Government Secondary School in Chibok, Borno State. Responsibility for the kidnappings was claimed by Boko Haram. On October 17, 2014, after some of the girls escaped captivity, hopes were raised that the 219 or thereabouts, remaining girls might soon be released after the Nigerian army announced a truce between Boko Haram and government forces. The announcement coincided with the six-month anniversary of the girls’ capture but it turned out to be a farce. It is over a year since the girls were abducted from their school and international and local civil society groups are worried over the government’s inability to rescue them. The #BringBackOurGirls (BBOG) group for instance, has expressed worry over what it called ‘eerie silence’ on the whereabouts of the abducted Chibok schoolgirls.

While the nation grapples with the horror inflicted on its psyche by the abduction of the Chibok girls, cases of abduction of minors has escalated from sporadic onslaughts to attain a consistency of sort in randomness and the scale of its execution. The case of Orekoya family rankles a jarring and ominous note in this respect. The abduction of the family’s three children aged six, four and 11 months in April 2015, raised a red flag in the annals of crime against minors in the country.

In the same month that the Orekoya boys were abducted and recovered following payment of an undisclosed ransom to the kidnapper, at least four other children have been kidnapped in the state, with some released or discovered in neighbouring states.

Recently a study designed to evaluate the demographic features of individuals involved in sexual abuse and the pattern of presentation of cases at the General Hospital Suleja, was conducted over an 18 month period. The research which was carried out by Okeniyi Isa Abdulkadir and Ladi and their colleagues at the Department of Paediatrics, Ahmadu Bello University Teaching Hospital, Shika-Zaria, Kaduna State and the Department of Paediatrics, General Hospital, Suleja, Niger State, examined case notes of all patients who were diagnosed and managed as cases of sexual abuse a one-year period were manually retrieved from the Medical Record Unit of General Hospital Suleja.

A total of 81 cases of sexual abuse were recorded over the18-month period of review. Seventy seven (95.1%) of the 81 cases were children and all girls while the remaining four (4.9%) cases were female adults over the age of 28 years. Of the 77 sexually abused children, all but one, forced fellatio incidents were cases of penile-vaginal penetration. The age range of the victims was between three and 18 years and the average age of victims was nine years. The age group most affected was three to five years (35.1%), followed closely by adolescents aged between 11 to 15 years.

All the perpetrators were males, known to their victims, and resident within their victim’s neighborhood. Out of a total of 79 perpetrators of child sexual abuse, six (7.6%) were adolescents aged between 12 and 16 years. One of the cases was that of gang rape of a 10-year-old girl by three adolescent boys aged 12, 13, and 15 years. The only case of forceful oral sexual abuse was perpetrated by a 16-year-old adolescent whose victim was a nine-year old girl.

Anchor babies and seeking safe heaven abroad

In the wake of these insecurities, the burden of living exerts a grievous toll on children thus forcing several families to seek refuge for their wards overseas. “I would rather stay here and live as an underdog than live in my country in perpetual fear that my kids may get kidnapped or bombed to bits in any second…Since I relocated my family to the United Kingdom (UK), life has become safer for them. I do not have to look over my shoulder or sleep with my eyes open in fear of what danger might be lurking anywhere,” claimed Oyinkansola Michael. Michael, 49, was a high school teacher in Nigeria but she relocated to the UK after losing four-year old Adetola, her youngest daughter, to gunshot wounds suffered from stray bullets while her neighbourhood vigilante fought to repel armed robbers in November 2013.

While folk like Michael continually seek to relocate their children abroad in desperate bid to guarantee for them a better standard of living, a new culture of migration manifests among the country’s disillusioned citizenry. By the culture, an increasing number of pregnant Nigerians apply for visa to the United States (US) hoping to stay over there until they deliver their babies. The babies so delivered, are called anchor babies and by delivering them abroad, their parents hope to acquire for them citizenship of their birth nation among other privileges. However, unlike before when the culture was principally the reserve of indigent folk, rich, influential Nigerian families have taken a liking for the practice.

“You would think that indigent Nigerian citizens are usually the ones who migrate abroad to give birth to their children. But today, it has become a fad among rich families to send their wives and daughters abroad to deliver anchor babies. “Who would have thought that the daughter of a Nigerian billionaire (name withheld) has joined the ranks of legions of Nigerian women who travel to the USA to give birth to their children so that they can become American citizens at birth? The reasons that motivate this behavior can no longer be attributable solely to the hopes that these anchor babies will one day take their families out of poverty as the involvement of the rich upper class suggests otherwise,” argued Folashade Erinoso, a US-based trader.

According to the American Centre for Immigration Studies (CIS), “Every year, 300,000 to 400,000 children are born to illegal immigrants in the United States. Despite the foreign citizenship and illegal status of the parent, the executive branch of the U.S. government automatically recognizes these children as U.S. citizens upon birth. The same is true of children born to tourists and other aliens who are present in the United States in a legal but temporary status. Since large-scale tourism and mass illegal immigration are relatively recent phenomena, it is unclear for how long the U.S. government has followed this practice of automatic “birthright citizenship” without regard to the duration or legality of the mother’s presence.”

In apparent bid to curb the fraudulent claims and inflow of pregnant Nigerians seeking visa to deliver their anchor babies in the US, the American embassy recently sought to prevent pregnant Nigerians from concealing their pregnancy during visa interviews. The US embassy outlined some conditions which have to be met before such a visa which falls under medical tourism category is issued. This, it said, is necessary to encourage applicants to be truthful during visa interviews.

To qualify for such entry permit, the applicant has to show proof of available funds of at least $140,000 (about N22 million) to pay medical fees, and secondly, the applicant has to show proof of the need for medical attention in the US such as high risk pregnancy.

US Embassy Chief of Consular Section, Carol Cox, disclosed that it would cost at least $60,000 to have a baby in the US. In instances where complications arise from the delivery, the medical bills may go as high as $140,000. Availability of the funds, Cox said, is very important as it is necessary to ensure that American taxpayers do not have to pay such bills.

“We owe the American public who pay taxes to make sure that those who seek medical services in the US pay for such services. This is essential because there are those who have the money and are not willing to pay. It is very frustrating when you see a woman who is obviously pregnant, sometimes seven months gone, tell you during a visa interview that she is just going to the US for a vacation,” she said.

.

“It is better for my baby to drown in the Mediterranean than grow up in Nigeria”

In a desperate lunge for survival that shocked the world, Stephanie Samuel, a heavily pregnant Nigerian migrant, risked her life and that of her unborn child crossing the Mediterranean sea shortly before delivery. The 24-year old claimed it is better for her baby to drown in the sea than grow up in Nigeria. She gave birth  to a baby girl at sea aboard the naval vessel and patrol ship, Bettica, in the Mediterranean, shortly after being rescued by Italian navy from an overcrowded migrant boat. She named her child Francesca Marina. The latter weighed 7 pounds, 7 ounces at birth.

Samuel worked in Tripoli, Libya, as a housemaid for two years in order to raise money to pay human traffickers the required amount of money for the dangerous trip across the Mediterranean.

“I didn’t expect the baby, you know, but she just like, she just came,” Samuel said, explaining why she has decided to take trip just before delivery. “I just wanted to leave Libya. Italy is better than Libya and Nigeria is the worst.”

She expressed hope that her daughter will have better life in Europe: “God decides, not me …but I believe she will have a more good future (sic) in Europe.” Samuel revealed that her husband, who is still in Libya, is ready to take the risk of crossing the Mediterranean to reunite with his family but he needs to earn $1,500 to pay smugglers first.

The death toll for migrants from Nigeria and other African countries drowned in Mediterranean Sea since the beginning of 2015 is already worse than the death toll for the US Titanic catastrophe. More than 1,500 people have met their death in its waters since January, comparing with 96 for the same period of time in 2014.

Politics of citizenship

According to well-traveled writer and author of ‘Longthoat memoirs,’ Yemisi Ogbe: “Dual citizenship of two countries, one Nigerian and the other “Paris club”, is regarded as one of the best investments that parents can make on behalf of their children, a way of solidly keeping one’s options and ones children’s options open…The average cost to the Nigerian to give birth in the US is in the range of $15,000  and this is a modest figure. Often, father must travel to see his newborn child. He, of necessity, will also eat and buy a few new shirts. Sometimes, mother-in-law comes to affirm her relevance.

“Many times, the child has older siblings. If all bills are paid, the figure is closer to between $30,000 and $40,000. Assuming that the couple having the child have had to deny themselves significant luxuries to afford the trip, $30,000 is still money that is beyond the means of any class of refugee.The US only really serves as a backup plan in case the situation in Nigeria takes an extreme turn for the worse,” according to Ogbe.

With 10 million children out of school, Nigeria currently has the highest number of kids in the world without education, the United Nations Children’s Fund has said. According to UNICEF, almost one of three primary-school aged children and one in four secondary-school aged children is not enrolled.

Every day, Nigeria loses about 2,300 under-five year olds and 145 women of childbearing age according to UNICEF. This makes the country the second largest contributor to the underfive and maternal mortality rate in the world.

Underneath the statistics lies the pain of human tragedy, for thousands of families who have lost their children. Even more devastating is the knowledge that essential interventions reaching women and babies on time would have averted most of these deaths.

Although analyses of recent trends show that the country is making progress in cutting down infant and under-five mortality rates, the pace still remains too slow to achieve the Millennium Development Goals of reducing child mortality by a third by 2015.

Malnutrition is the underlying cause of morbidity and mortality of a large proportion of children under-5 in Nigeria. It accounts for more than 50 per cent of deaths of children in this age bracket.

The deaths of newborn babies in Nigeria represent a quarter of the total number of deaths of children under-five. The majority of these occur within the first week of life, mainly due to complications during pregnancy and delivery reflecting the intimate link between newborn survival and the quality of maternal care. Main causes of neonatal deaths are birth asphyxia, severe infection including tetanus and premature birth.

An endless trauma

The trauma of been born and growing up in Nigeria is no doubt, immeasurable on children. The sheer magnitude of psychosocial distress among children of different ethnic backgrounds rules out the possibility of uniform textbook approaches to addressing their plight. Children on the receiving end in such crises situations hardly survive the onslaught, according to Ibukun Faraayola, 44, a consultant clinical psychiatrist.

“Every day, the world descends into a desolate moral vacuum. This is a space devoid of the most basic human values; a space in which children are slaughtered, raped, kidnapped and maimed; a space in which children are exploited as soldiers and orphaned; a space in which children are starved and exposed to extreme brutality,’ he said.

Faraayola noted that in extreme situations, most kids are forced to commit atrocities even against their own friends and families as a way of toughening them up and severing whatever ties they have with their loved ones and community at large. “This often rid them of humaneness. I hope things never get as bad as that,” he said.

“Things wouldn’t get so bad if our leaders, the Nigerian government live up to their promises at election time. The Nigerian child today is born to suffer poor healthcare, substandard education and terrorist attack. The trouble with Nigeria is bad leadership. With bad leadership, there will be economic insecurity. Economic insecurity produces endemic poverty and poor people are liable to committing to several criminal and dangerous acts that endanger lives. Bad leaders do not care to improve the economy through good policies and institute the rule of law.

“They do not care if minors are abducted and turned into sex slaves by a terrorist sect. They do not care to guarantee good standard of living and security for children in the country…Just recently, a paedophile in my neighbourhood got off easily with the police’s assistance after raping five minors in the area over two months. The oldest among his victims was six years old. The police forced the parents to accept N100, 000 each as compensation. The only family that protested got N170, 000. And they all kept shut not minding the impact and posttraumatic effect on the poor kids. In a nation with sensitive leadership, the parents would promptly seek justice against their children’s assailant,” lamented Otaobayomi Sanya, a lawyer.

Sanya argued that if the incumbent President Muhammadu Buhari can institute the rule of law, rid the country of corruption and provide good governance by living up to his campaign promises, Nigeria will become more habitable for infants and young children. The Lagos based attorney argued that sound, progressive economic and sociopolitical policies with determination to implement them, will foster a better society amenable to the health, education, political and economic securities of the Nigerian child.

Perhaps incumbent public officers will hearken to his words; until then, the fear of uncertainty will continue to drive heavily pregnant women like Samuel to brave menacing smugglers and storms of the Mediterranean ocean to deliver their anchor babies abroad. On the flipside, bitterness and pain will continue to mar the peace of the Oluokuns, Abdullahis and Sa’adus among others. Under their roofs, the dispossession is absolute. Besides losing their infant kids, their lives seem bereft of joy and equilibrium, what is left is a kind of theatrical pride and stoic acceptance – the necessary performance of will.