…yet, I’m abandoned to fate
A former Assistant Publicity Secretary, Peoples Democratic Party, Lagos Island Local Government area, Lagos State, Mrs. Bolarinwa Awe, has described as unfair, her neglect by the administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan after losing one of her arms during the 2011 election campaigns.
A distraught Awe said in March 2011, she and other women sustained varying degrees of injuries in an accident that occurred on their way to Abuja, but noted that her case was so bad that her right arm had to be amputated.
She lamented that, four years on, despite her passionate appeals for assistance, neither former President Jonathan nor his wife, Patience, on whose behest she and the other women travelled to Abuja, had fulfilled their promises, adding that she had been left to languish in her present condition.
HOW IT HAPPENED
According to Awe, the Chisco Motors’ luxury bus the PDP Lagos Island members hired from Lagos to Abuja was involved in a fatal accident, in which the travellers sustained serious injuries. Not a few persons, she said, were permanently deformed, while she eventually lost an arm.
In an interview with The Point, she recounted her ordeal, saying, “My case was the worst among the party members in the bus. From 10pm when the accident occured, I was not taken to the Lagos University Teaching Hospital, Lagos State, until 5pm the next day. But I had almost lost my right arm because it was already dangling. Blood could not circulate to the arm any longer and it was almost getting spoilt.
“While the doctors were treating me, I overheard them discussing that the only way I could survive was to cut off the arm; else, after three months, it would affect my heart and I might not survive it. So, I told them to amputate it because I thought it would be better if my children were still seeing me alive than to die. The doctors were glad to have heard about my support for their decision.”
JONATHAN’S EARLY PROMISES
Awe said, initially, there was a glimmer of hope for her; hope that Jonathan had not forgotten her after all. She said, “The (former) President sent someone to come and check on me in the hospital because of his presidential campaign rallies that were in progress.
The person said the President asked him to tell me that immediately after the first aid treatment, they should fly me out of the country for better medical treatment. He also said that they should arrange a house for me, where I would be living.
“The first medical bill, a sum of N500, 000, was paid by Chief Bode George. But I heard some people went to the former president to collect money on my behalf but they never came to me. Later, Prof. Wole Soyinka’s daughter, Mrs. Moremi Ijala, stepped into the situation, purportedly sent by Jonathan.”
She added, “At the end of the day, she offered me N50, 000 which I refused. But then, she said that she buy some things for the Muslim fasting that just ended then. But before she left, the landlord of my residence came that I should vacate the house because they wanted to use it. This incident spurred Ijala on, that instead of paying for the house rent, Jonathan should give me N1m to rent another apartment.
“I felt uncomfortable with that idea; so I requested that a house should be built for me instead. And if they would give me N3million out of the N25million they claimed he had promised to give me, I would appreciate it because at least, that would be used to get a small portion of land in a rural area and I would be able to build a small structure where I and my children could live.”
PATIENCE JONATHAN’S ELUSIVE HELP
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