Due to the lack of a definitive diagnosis, it is challenging to classify Omolola Oluwunmi as having either Down syndrome or cerebral palsy. However, it is evident that she has a disability, which, from this reporter’s perspective, appears to be intellectual in nature. She is unable to speak, though not deaf or mute, as she responds to messages. When instructed to greet the visiting reporter at her ward in Ayinke House at the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH), where she had recently given birth, she gestured with her head and eyes. When told to lie on the bed, she complied promptly without hesitation. Despite her responses, it is apparent that she is still significantly incapacitated.
Her mother, Oluwaranti Okeyemi, actually told this reporter that she walks, though not as smartly and self-assuredly as the average normal human.
However, this is not the news about Omolola, whose mum gave her age as 31. The news, unfortunately, is that she was a victim of rape by an unknown person, which resulted in a pregnancy, that, fortunately, she has been delivered of. According to the mother, throughout the seven months pregnancy – she had to be delivered of the baby prematurely, so that mum and child could live – all efforts to uncover the guilty person proved abortive.
We live in a 10-room ‘face-me-I-face you’ house in Ile-Epo/Oke Odo, and on discovering she was pregnant, I brought all the young men in the compound before her to identify, but all she did was mop at them. No clue whatsoever. And I don’t particularly suspect anybody. Ordinarily, she has her way of communicating. If anybody does anything to her or provokes her, she has her way of explaining and I would understand. That is why I am surprised that she has not been able to communicate this to me. “
Why concentrate on the young men alone? Couldn’t the rapist be an elderly person in the compound? To this, the mother clasped the back of her right hand in the other palm, pouted, and said, “I really don’t know. The whole matter is frustrating. Maybe as the baby grows, he will resemble the father and there’ll be no hiding place for him.
When asked if she leaves her alone at home or lets her wander on her own, the mum said, “No, she doesn’t go out; in fact, she’s always with me at home or in the shop where I do my petty trading. Besides, the distance between where we live and my shop is just about five minutes’ walk. She is always in the shop, and when we are at home and I don’t allow her to go out. All I can say is that there was a time her younger sibling got injured and we had to come to the hospital here in LASUTH. That would be around seven months ago, and if you look at the time she had to be operated on to be delivered of the baby, you would realise that whoever committed the act must have done it at about that time.”
Speaking further on her daughter’s condition, Mrs. Okeyemi said: “Initially we didn’t even know she had any condition; it wasn’t until it was time for her to crawl and walk that we began to suspect that something was not right with her. Many people started calling her ‘imbecile,’ but I learnt later that that is a wrong tag. Before then, she was full of laughter and played a lot. She also rolled like normal babies until when we waited and waited and she didn’t crawl, let alone stand up and walk. Also, she does not talk, but she hears and responds to instructions. She walks, does toileting and carries things. She also eats by herself.
At the initial stage, we took her to different spiritual homes and churches. I took her to Synagogue Church; we went to Oke-tude and several other places. It was in the course of this that I became deep in Christianity. However, we never went to any hospital because we already felt convinced it was a spiritual attack and not something for the hospital.”
That perhaps accounts for why she never got proper diagnosis of her condition.
Mrs. Okeyemi explained their visit to the hospital, saying, “She fell ill during her pregnancy. Her blood pressure became dangerously high at one point. We went to the General Hospital at Ile-Epo/Oke-Odo, where they prescribed medication, but her blood pressure remained elevated. After a few visits, they decided to admit her. She stayed there for two weeks before they recommended a cesarean section because her blood pressure was too high, and they were concerned it could harm both her and the baby. The reason we came here was that the General Hospital didn’t have an incubator for the baby, so they referred us to Ayinke House at LASUTH. The cesarean was performed the same day we arrived.”
Since arriving here (LASUTH), we have been spending lots of money. Unfortunately, I am a widow; I have three of them, and now we have a new born baby to take care of. My husband died ten years ago, and since then I have not remarried or had any help. Not even from their father’s family. If I’m not mistaking, I have spent about a million naira since we got here. I have spent everything I have; I have sold my belongings – fridges, freezers; I have even borrowed interest loans. To make matters worse, we have been given quit notice in our house, and that leaves us in a very bad situation. How are we going to nurture a baby in a homeless condition? This is why we need financial support from well-meaning Nigerians. We need money to get another accommodation; we need money start a new petty trading business, so that I can take care of the mother and the child. As you can see, she is incapable of any kind of work; so the responsibility of both of them rest on me.”
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