Seated at her desk at the Welfare Department of the Ministry of Women Affairs and Social Development in Abeokuta, Ogun State, she welcomes a first time visitor to the office with a wry smile. Her eye balls are wide open like those of any other able-bodied person. But until you approach her for assistance, then you’ll discover she has a sight challenge and unable to see!
Welcome to the world of 48-yearold Miss Toyin Laose.
Laose lost her sight, at a tender age of 10 some 39 years ago, to glaucoma and ever since then she has lived in the dark, but not oblivious of developments around her.
Inspite of her condition, but like every able-bodied person, the woman with almost four decades of sight challenge, is gainfully employed. She currently works with the Social Welfare Department of the Ministry of Women Affairs and Social Development in Abeokuta, Ogun State.
Owing to her experience in her failed bid to get the necessary medical and spiritual cure for her blindness, she has, however, lost hope of any miracle that could restore her sight.
Infact, she’s of the opinion that no miracle performed by any pastor or prophet could bring back her sight!
A definitive verdict delivered on her case by a New York, United States of America-based institute she was flown to for the treatment of her eye problem, affirming that her sight could no longer be restored, initially forced her to seek spiritual healing from pastors and prophets.
According to her, she visited so many churches for the solution to her eye problems, but all to no avail, as most of the prophets and pastors she had consulted for the cure had ended up disappointing her, because they failed to perform the miracle they had boasted about, in her own case, though.
Her condition is, therefore, making it difficult for the 48-year-old woman to effectively perform her duty of dealing with family matters, especially in handling the welfare aspect of children whose parents are divorced.
Laose, who is also the Woman Coordinator, Joint National Association of People Living With Disabilities in the state, expressed worry that divorced couples sometimes attempt to take advantage of her lost sight when dealing with them on the financial aspect of the welfare of their children, especially when her partner in the office is not around.
She, however, said she had devised a means of tackling the antics of such cunning and dishonest couples.
She said, “It is not so easy; the reason is if I’m the only one in the office and somebody brings money, I will not take the money from that person. You know why? He may bring N500 in N100 denomination and tell me it’s N5000. How will I know how much he has truly brought?
I will not take it from him until my colleague is around, because he’s the one who can count the money and write the receipt. “The only thing I do most of the time is, when a woman comes to report her husband, we give her a letter to invite her husband; both of them will come, so, she will say what happened to her and why she left the house.
We will later advise them on what the man should be doing to the children, but when it comes to collecting money, I don’t do that.”
The physically challenged woman also lamented that her challenge had robbed her the opportunity of getting married to an able-bodied man, because many of them had turned out to be insincere and not trust worthy.
She, however, added that Godfearing able-bodied men, who would be sincere and would not take advantage of her lack of sight to cheat her, could be very hard to find. “You see it is not so easy. What really disturbed me is that I was at first thinking I had to wait for a sighted person, but many of the sighted men are not good. It is only those that are God-fearing, but how will you get them? Now I’m dating a physically challenged person,” She said.
Narrating how she lost her sight, Laose explained that she was not born blind. She said when she clocked 10, she started to notice that her sight was failing, especially in the night, adding that the inability to be taken to the hospital for treatment led to the late detection of the glaucoma ravaging her eyes. Laose said that by the time she was taken to the General Hospital in Abeokuta, doctors confirmed her already blind.
“I will say it’s from childhood; it did not manifest immediately I was born. It started when I was around 10 years old and I was taken to the hospital.
At first, they said they found nothing, but by the time I went back a year later, they then said it was glaucoma. I was living with my grandmother, who first noticed it, because whenever we were at home at night and she sent me to go and fetch something, I would be groping.
She later took me to the General Hospital, Abeokuta. Though they advised that they couldn’t find anything; that we should go to UCH at Ibadan,” she said.
Laose, who later attended Pacelli School for the Blind, Surulere, Lagos, and the Network Institute for Special Education, however, said that her blindness could not be attributed to a spiritual attack, adding that if her parents had not divorced, she wouldn’t have been struck by the disease which led to the loss of her sight.
“It is not spiritual, it is natural. When I was small, people were saying it was spiritual. It was glaucoma. Sixty per cent of the blind have glaucoma; it was not spiritual, it was natural.
Let’s say the first time I went to the hospital, they discovered what it was, they would have stopped it.
It wasn’t that they could cure it, because it has no medication. But they could stop it, because the extent to which I was seeing then, if they gave me treatment, I could maintain it,” she said.
She, however, condemned the act of begging by physically challenged persons. According to her, “It is an individual thing to beg; for me, it is a shameful thing to be begging on the street, since God has blessed my family a little.”
She also expressed her disappointment at some pastors and prophets, who told her they had the powers to heal her of her blindness, saying that she now believed in direct healing from God through prayers and reading of her Bible.
“I am a Christian and I believe in healing. I don’t believe in prophets, because I had tried so many. I had gone to ori oke (prayer mountains). I believe we still have God’s prophets, but they are rare.
As individuals, we are prophets on our own. Read your Bible and pray, study what is in there and pray. I go to church every Sunday and also attend weekly servicesg when I have the time, but for me, going from one prophet to the other, I don’t do it anymore. I used to do it, but for now, I don’t even believe in most of them. But I believe in my God, “ she said. Laose, who is also a graduate of the Vocational Training Institute, Oshodi, Lagos, further called on the Federal Government to give women living with disabilities the necessary support by providing them money to start businesses of their own.
She commended the Ogun State Government for providing her a job in the past 20 years. She said, “My advice is, we have so many women living with disabilities, who have their certificates in different areas and they don’t have jobs.
The Federal Government can help and some are trained in different areas, they don’t have money to start business, the Federal Government can give us empowerment.
“Moreover, in Ogun State, we need empowerment. It is not easy for the able-bodied women to manage children without their husbands; now compare that to the physically challenged women having children and abandoned by their husbands. We really need help from the local, state and federal governments,” she said
