From Rose Ejembi, Makurdi
For the family of Mr. Ibrahim Abu, a native of Ikobi in Apa Local Government Area of Benue State and a casual staff of the Benue State Ministry of Lands and Survey, life will never be the same again, after his 14-year-old daughter got deformed as a result of electrocution.
The incident on July 25, 2020, left the young girl, Chubiyo Abu, in painful throes and she is now a shadow of her old self. Her right arm has been amputated from the shoulder with big wounds on her right leg, left arm and the right part of her head.
Narrating how it happened to our correspondent at his residence last week, the distraught father said, that fateful day, it rained heavily from 4am to 2pm and because of the rain, the weather was very cold.
After the rain, Chubiyo, who was 12 years old at the time, decided to go to a nearby stream to fetch warm water to bathe, since the rain water was very cold.
He said: “She wanted to bathe and decided to move to a stream closeby to fetch water because, due to its nature that it springs from a rock, it is usually warm. She said she couldn’t use the rain water to bathe because it was very cold.
“After fetching the water, my daughter was coming back to the house when she stepped on a live cable wire and was electrocuted.
“It was after the incident that we were told that the live cable had fallen down about four days earlier and the community had alerted the management of JED (Jos Electricity Distribution Company) but they didn’t visit the place and disconnect the power line.
“It was the cry of people in the community that made us to know that she was electrocuted.”
Recalling what happened shortly before the incident, the father said he had just finished having lunch with his daughter and the other children when she said she was going to the stream to fetch water.
Asked how Chubiyo was rescued, Ibrahim said some youths from the community managed to rescue her after which they took her to the General Hospital in North Bank.
“They rejected her (at General Hospital, North Bank). They took her to a private hospital nearby but they didn’t accept her. They asked us to go to Federal Medical Centre, Makurdi, but that time, the doctors were on strike. So, we had to go to St. Theresa Hospital in Makurdi.
“At St. Theresa Hospital, they asked us to go back home that she had died. It was after this that we took her to Benue State University Teaching Hospital (BSUTH), where they started treating her,” he said.
Ibrahim said, three days after, some officials of JED came to the community to carry out repairs on the fallen cable but youths in the community, on sighting them, wanted to lynch them but they pleaded that they would visit the girl in the hospital.
He said, thereafter, the electricity company took over the treatment of the girl to a certain level for some months, after which they seemed to have abandoned them to their fate.
He lamented that the hospital had to amputate the right arm to save her life after it started rotting up to the armpit.
“The doctors said that the arm was rotten and already affecting her because the hand got burnt and looked like charcoal and they said it had eaten into her armpit. So, (doctors) suggested that the best thing to do was to amputate it or else she would die and I had to agree with them.
“We spent seven months at BSUTH after which we were later referred to Enugu Teaching Hospital. But JED officials suggested that it would be better if we were referred to Jos University Teaching Hospital (JUTH) since their head office was there.
“That was how we were referred to Jos Teaching Hospital. Actually, it was the JED officials that came with their vehicle to convey us to Jos. But when we got there, they told us that there was no money in their account that we should source for money to treat her.
“There was a man in their office in Jos who took pity on us and gave us N20,000 and they did not do anything anymore. We had to look for money before we went back but all efforts to get JED to help further in the treatment were not successful until doctors in Jos even advised us to meet human rights activists to help us,” he said.
Abu said he had to get a loan of N80,000 from his place of work to continue with the treatment, adding that other compassionate superiors at his workplace who knew about his daughter’s predicament also assisted him with some money, which he used to take care of her.
“After I went to collect loan of N80,000 from my office, the money finished and I had to sell my motorcycle, my chairs and my wife’s big phone, all in a bid to raise more money for her treatment,” the father said.
Chubiyo’s mother, Janet, a roadside petty trader, said she had turned to a beggar, going from church to mosque, to beg for alms to cater for the girl.
Janet said, before the tragedy, Chubiyo was a Primary 3 pupil of Unique Kids Academy, North Bank, adding that the development has automatically put an end to her education.
Janet, who said Chubiyo still needed surgery in her leg and arm, disclosed that they were advised at the hospital that her daily meals should include six eggs and a lap of chicken but wondered how they would provide such meals for her, considering their economic status.
While thanking everyone that has assisted them in one way or the other, she further begged the state government and all well-meaning Nigerians to come to their aid in ensuring that her daughter gets medical treatment.
Daily Sun’s efforts to speak with the management of JED failed, as Engineer Felix Adamu, JED’s regional manager in Makurdi, said he just resumed work and had no information about the incident.