Ever imagine the trauma a blind man goes through daily? Also, ever imagined the pain of the blind man if other people caused his predicament? This is the case of Mr. Isaac Nwabude, of Urunnebo Village, Enugwu-Ukwu, in Njikoka Local Government Area in Anambra State, whose eyes were plucked by robbers.
Narrating his ordeal to Saturday Sun, Nwabude, a former lorry driver, said robbers plucked his eyes, as punishment for daring to run over their barricade and thereby frustrating their operations. According to him, the day the incident happened, in 1992, he was travelling from Jos, in Plateau State, to Onitsha, in Anambra State, with goods and passengers in his Mercedes Benz lorry when they ran into a roadblock mounted by armed robbers, in the night, at Opi Junction, in Nsukka area of Enugu State.
That encounter rendered him blind and has incapacitated his life. On what happened, he said: “At Opi Junction, we ran into a gang of armed robbers, who mounted road block on the way and I had no alternative but to stop because the road block was high and I could not run over it. They opened fire on us and killed four of my passengers, who were owners of the tomatoes I was carrying in the vehicle and inflicted injury on some others.
“The rest of us who were alive and conscious, jumped down from the vehicle and were ordered to lie face down on the road and we did.” Nwabude said that when the robbers discovered that he was the driver of the vehicle, they told him that they would deal with him because he had earlier run over their road block in one of their operations at Ankpa, in Benue State and thereby frustrating their operations.
“When they said that, I concluded that they would either kill me outright or shoot me on the leg or somewhere else to give me permanent disability,” he stated. According to the driver, the robbers tied his hands and legs with the rope they got from his vehicle, and used their sharp knife to pluck his two eyes and left him to his fate. Nwabude said that other drivers came to his rescue when the robbers had gone and took him to the University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital, Enugu.
Since he was discharged from the hospital, he has been going to UNTH on monthly basis for check-up, where doctors wash the artificial eyes they fixed in his eye socket as well as give him drugs to reduce pain and forestall infection. Nwabude’s tale continues after the robbery, when his wife, who got traumatised by what happened, developed hypertension and died. He said: “My wife developed hypertension and was taken to the hospital. The next information I received was that my wife was dead.
Her death compounded my problems, as I was left with our four children to cater for, when I am blind and did not have any means of livelihood.” Nwabude said that a priest later assisted him by getting families who took in two of his four children. Unfortunately, one of the two kids died in Lagos, while the other one is still living with the family. The blind man said he was once given a paper to the Ministry of Women Affairs to seek employment, but regretted that after several visits, nothing positive came out of it.
“Although I appreciate so much the assistance being given to me and my children by good spirited people, I want the government to help me in any way, so that I will be able to feed my children and give them good education,” he declared.
SUN
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