For over six months now, InsideNigerDelta has been on the trail of a 69-year old man who spends his days at a bus-stop. EBENEZER ADEROKIYA, brings you the world of Pa Isaac Ogbunemo, the bus stop tenant, whose condition reminds us of a need for old people’s homes.
His case evokes pity. From a distance, a passer-by will take him for the ubiquitous mentally deranged, but he is not. Perhaps the inclement socio-economic weather had only taken its toll on him. He fastidiously gazes at passers-by, mouth sealed, but his heart longs for alms. With his thick grey hair so conspicuous on his head, moustache and beard; one is informed that he has seen quite some days on earth. His eyes are agedly dim; his set of teeth, revealed at a smile, are multi-coloured, portraying some years of neglect, but obviously stuffed with the remains of every victual that has ever gone under the great human grinders!
This is the pathetic picture of Mr Isaac Ogbunemo, an indigene of Eku near Ughelli, Delta State. For over six months, this reporter has sighted and studied the man along the popular Warri/Sapele Road. His abode is a bus stop directly by the fence of the Nigerian Navy Ship (NNS Delta) and directly opposite Conoil filling station. Fear of whether the man was psychiatrically challenged or not had hindered this reporter from accosting him. His appearance is that of a short man with some mental challenge.
Isaac is often in shorts and T-shirts, which, this reporter learnt, are not got directly from care givers or sympathizers, but from benevolent dunghills. Come rain or shine, his abode is the bus stop that has no windows nor doors. It is open to inclement weather, marauding hoodlums and creeping venomous reptiles. An orphan of a sort, Isaac Ogbunemo is a victim of fate and his existential struggle to make a mark as a farmer, according to him, was defeated at his early effort in life. Call him “Isaac the Obscure,” you may be right as everything about him evokes pathos and, at times, some humour.
His life is fast ebbing away. He has no relation. His parents had died while he was still an infant. With no wife let alone children, Isaac lives in between abject poverty and penury. By his side are nylon bags stuffed with used and worn-out clothes, used plastic plates and cups. A few of the pieces of cloth serve Pa Ogbunemo as bed spread and cover cloth. The cement concrete seat built to serve as temporary seats for passengers is his bed. He said he feels no body pains from his regular sleep on the improvised hard bed.
Pa Ogbunemo does not go to barber’s shops; he does his shaving himself, using razor blade with dexterity. His teeth, though effectively put to use, but badly managed, is a potpourri of rainbow colours. He defecates, according to him, at a nearby bush; takes his bath from the river by the naval base, but urinates just behind his “mansion.”
Meanwhile when asked if he had a roof over his head, Pa Ogbunemo said he had none. “I have no house to live in.” He told Inside NigerDelta that he was living in a house behind the Conoil Plc directly opposite his abode, the bus stop. According to him, he lost his more comfortable abode when the owner, a woman, who had had mercy on him, died July last year.
As an orphan with one sibling except some of his relatives who are resident in the village, the 69-year-old Urhobo said he was really not aware if any of his siblings was still living in their village at Eku, near ughelli. This is because, according him, he left home early 2000.
The thought that indolence might have brought about his suffering may be far fetched. This is because Pa Ogbunemo said he was a farmer who grew yam for a living and commercial purposes. He disclosed that he came to Warri to seek greener pastures, but even at that, he could not rent a house.
How does he fend for himself? Pa Ogbunemo does not beg as others do. While enjoying some goodwill from well wishers in kind and cash, he does his cooking right inside the bus stop-turned residential quarters. “ People usually give me money. I eat any kind of food I see; I sometimes buy, “ he noted. The haggard-looking old man added: “ If I hungry, I buy Gesher, buy some raps of fufu and use the can fish and its stew to eat it or sometimes I buy bread and eat it with groundnut and go to sleep.”
As earlier stated, the old an looks like a mad man from a distance, but this is not true. While engrossed in the discussion with this reporter, passersby could not come to terms with the way the man was responding to questions so intelligently and with a sound mind. He betrayed no sign of psychiatric imbalance; he looked more like a victim of the harsh economic and political weather of the country. He is no doubt one out of thousands of Nigerians wantonly stagnated, neglected and traumatized by unfriendly economic policies.
Unlike several other bus stops dotting Warri/Sapele Road, territorially conquered by youthful but mentally challenged individuals, the abode of Pa Ogbonemo often plays host to other mentally challenged loafers. Beside his corner are some luggage meant for some other lunatics who, due to exhaustion from walking the length and breadth of the ancient town, stop over to take some rest, sometimes even naps.
When asked to comment on how he thought people viewed him at the bus stop, Pa Ogbunemo had this to say: “They look at me anyhow; this does not really concern me; whether they think I am mad or not is their problem, not mine. Everybody has their own life, so anybody can laugh at me, but nobody knows tomorrow.”
The present cold in Warri is excruciatingly taking its toll on the man at the bus stop. While speaking with the old man, his breath was heavy. Often he jerked, coughed and sneezed . Although an addict of alcohol and tobacco at a time, Pa Ogbunemo now lives a clean life only with a longing to have it blissful at twilight.
Pa Ogbunemo’s life is ebbing away into the parlous precipice, but he could be salvaged by well-meaning Nigerians. With old people’s homes being hard to come by in this clime, who bells the cat? He craved a helping hand from the compassionate governor of the state, Dr Emmanuel Uduaghan.
“If I can see the governor, I will ask him to help me; I heard he is very kind and compassionate. I need a home, who knows if I can still have a family of my own? I still fit born now if I get wife,” Pa Ogbunemo stated amid laughter.
Born in the month of August, believed to be a metaphor of ‘a new beginning’, the hopeful Ogbunemo needs a new beginning to have a taste of the sunny side of life from kind hearted Nigerians.
Culled from Tribune