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THE NATION, SATURDAY, APRIL 28, 2012
•Other albinos at the workshop
•Jake Ekpele
M
OSES Wasah is 28 years old, but he has not been able to complete his secondary education because of his medical condition. Moses, an indigene of Kajuru Local Government Area of Kaduna State, is one of the five children of his parents and incidentally, the only albino among them. The mere sight of Moses with his oversized dark eye glasses tells you that there is something wrong with the young man. He was one of the few albinos who attended a sensitisation workshop on how to handle an albino by teachers and educators, which took place at the St. John’s Hall in Kachia, Kaduna State under the auspices of the Albino Foundation with support from the Education Sector Support Programme in Nigeria (ESSPIN), a DFID funded intervention programme in the education sector in selected states in the country. Moses told The Nation that he was forced to drop out of school when he started having problem with his right eye and could not see properly with it. Before the
Tony AKOWE, Kaduna
problem began to manifest, he had enrolled for the National Business and Technical Education Board (NABTEB) examination as an SS 3 student of the Government Technical College, Kajuru. But destiny had something different for him as he could not sit for the exams. With the help of his mother and brothers, Moses said he was admitted at the 44 Army Reference Hospital in Kaduna for treatment. “They did the first surgery on the eye last year at 44 Army Reference Hospital in Kaduna and it cost us about N200,000. Since then, the eye has not opened and we don’t have any money to go back to the hospital because my brothers are not working. I lost my father in 1996 and my mother is a farmer. So, we cannot raise the money to go back to the hospital”, he managed to say in not too coherent English. From his spoken language, it was evident that he barely managed to pass through school to
‘Why albinos deserve special treatment’ the level he claimed to have reached. He is, however, grateful to his family for their care and love, saying: “My family has been very good to me. We are five children in the family and I’m the only one with this colour. They don’t give me hard jobs to do. They only give me those jobs that I can do. I really want to go back to school and I need help because of my eye”. There is hope for him as the Albino Foundation has taken up his case and are ready to sponsor his treatment at the National Hospital, Abuja. The President of the Foundation, Jake Ekpele who was moved by Moses’ plight said that the foundation will undertake to treat him free
at the National Hospital. Ekpele attributed the eye problem to unnecessary exposure to the sun, pointing out that the major problem of an albino is skin cancer which is caused by over exposure to the sun. According to him, “it takes a non-albino about one hour thirty minutes to get burn from the sun when exposed to it. But for an albino, it is just thirty minutes and that can cause skin cancer. The problem you are seeing in this young man is cancer of the eye which can be caused by the sun. The situation is pathetic, but there is hope for him because worse cases than this have been handled before. We are taking care of the treatment at the Na-
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It is something that should get the attention of the Federal Government because the situation of the albinos is extremely bad. Cancer is our major problem. All albinos are susceptible to skin cancer...
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tional Hospital where our members are treated free. “For now, he is not a member, but I will register him from my pocket and send him to the hospital. The only problem is where he will stay because I don’t have a place for him to stay, but if he can be accommodated, things will be easier because it will take a process of about two weeks for the diagnosis to be made before the treatment can commence. But I will go to the CMD and try to shorten the process. We are sending him to the hospital free of charge. Once the treatment starts, he will not pay for anything. He will not pay for, water or bed. All these will be provided for him free at the National Hospital.” But where will Moses stay in Abuja before his treatment will begin? He told The Nation: “I have discussed with my brother and they are going to find a place for me to stay”. Ekpele told The Nation that there are several albinos with similar problems with Moses even though theirs may not be eye related. According to him, the Al-