Shere, a relatively small community, with a distance of about 13 kilometres from Bwari town, one of the six Area Councils in the FCT. Inhabitants of the community are living the fate of abandoned people, due to lack of basic amenities, AJUMA EDWINA OGIRI reports.
It was an experience of a bumpy ride passing through a dusty road covered with red earth and filled with bumps and ditches. For a first timer, passing through this road would certainly be a nightmare owing to the constant bouncing over bumps and swerving from one side of the untarred road to the other in order to dodge ditches. This is the vivid description of the road that leads to Shere village, a suburb in Bwari Area Council of the Federal Capital Territory.
For the aborigine and residents of this suburb and visitors alike that ply the road daily, there is little or nothing they can do than to accept their fate, as the road has been in this state for over eight years, and gets worse during raining season.
The Inhabitants of the community are living the fate of abandoned people. This is evident in the lack of basic health amenities, which is supposed to be one of their fundamental human rights as citizens of Nigeria. For a community under an Area Council with one of the highest revenue allocation from the Federation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC), in the FCT; usually ranging from N250m to N350m per month, it would have been expected that Shere ought to have about two or more boreholes to serve the over 9000 inhabitants of the community with clean water, and also have a well structured health care centre with at least two medical doctors attending to patients.
Distressingly, the inhabitants depend on drinking water from a small hole dug by some residents of the community, as they lack a good source of drinking water, which exposes the residents to water borne diseases such as typhoid and cholera. Aside the long distance residents have to walk to get water from this source, the water is also not clean. The healthcare centre, as the one used by the community is an eyesore.
The District Head of Shere Community, Alhaji Ibrahim Jira, while lamenting the ugly situation in a chat with Blueprint, said the water dug by the community also serves about 18 other neighbouring communities.
They include; Sumpai, Kachiko, Alokai, Barama, Kutai, Kulepai, Agwan-Kwara, Paiko, Dabwai, Gudupai, Panda, Dankuru, Galuwyi land 2, Durumi, Sherape, Shere-Gwari and Shere-Koro. As if that is not bad enough, Nomadic fulanis usually go to the same source with their herds to get drinking water almost on daily basis.
“We used to have a borehole, which was donated to the community by Senator Philip Aduda. Since the borehole got spoilt, nobody has helped us to repair it. Although on two occasions, the borehole was repaired through community efforts and contributions, but the repair did not last for up to three months. We have complained and begged the Chairman of Bwari Area Council, Peter Ushafa, to come to our rescue but he keeps promising us. He has never done anything for this community in spite of our plea,” Jira lamented.
A resident of the community, Haruna Musa, who also expressed worry over the plight of people living in the community, said some residents whose houses are far from the community’s only source of drinking water, opt to fetch from the community river. According to him, Fulani herdsmen also bring their cattles to the same river to drink water.
“Most times the cattles end up defecating inside the water in the cause of drinking. In such situations, we have to wait for a while to allow the water flow away, or better still go to the upper bank from where the cattles drink from. It is just God that is saving us,” Musa also lamented.
A recent report from the World Health Organisation (WHO) has put the number of people without access to basic sanitation services at 2.5 billion in the world out of which about 1 billion people continue to practice open defecation.
The report said: “An additional 748 million people do not have ready access to an improved source of drinking water. And hundreds of millions of people live without clean water and soap to wash their hands, facilitating the spread of diarrhea disease, the second leading cause of death among children under five.”
The WHO added that many water-borne diseases, such as cholera, typhoid and hepatitis are prone to explosive outbreaks. Poor sanitation and hygiene can also lead to debilitating diseases affecting scores of people in the developing world like intestinal worms, blinding trachoma and schistosomiasis.
The actions of the residents from drinking stream water, poor hygiene as well as poor sanitation, have always put them at the risk of diverse diseases including cholera. Cholera is a public health problem characterised by watery stool caused by the bacterium vibrio cholera and classified as an ‘acute infectious disease’ by the World Health Organisation (WHO).
Apart from the issue of lack of portable drinking water, light and access road, the Primary Healthcare Centre in the community is an eyesore. The dilapidated building being used by the community and the 18 earlier mentioned communities is in dire need of renovation, as most parts of the roof of the building have been blown away by storm, with the remaining barely covering two rooms. The building which overlooks a football field, does not need a visitor to the area going outside to get a clear view of the field or even a football match due to the large window that has left the entire building hollow, owing to the absence of frames for the windows talk more of protectors.
Yet, it is directly facing the field, and this can expose both the patients and workers in the health care centre to Malaria
As if the state of the healthcare centre is not bad enough, there is also not a single doctor or nurse attached to it to attend to the numerous patients that troop into the centre for medical attention. The best they could get is the services of a Community Health Extension Worker (CHEW) and Community Health Extension Officer.
“We attend to more than 20 patients daily. We do not really have a ward in this healthcare centre, so we do not admit patients, as we are managing just three rooms here. What we do here mainly is Pre-Service Education (PSE). So, in the case of emergency or any serious case, we refer the patient to Bwari General Hospital.
In most cases we look for a vehicle to carry the person to the hospital,” the Community Health Officer, Blessing Ogbe, disclosed to Blueprint.
The provision of health services is necessary for the well being of the communities if any meaningful development is to be achieved.
Currently, the community has virtually been cut off from the rest of the world due to lack of development, and thus refer to their community as a “forgotten community.”
