It was a Friday, one of the days that the sky emptied its bowels on mother earth, obstructing all human endeavours in its wake. It was a day that Muslim faithful suspend whatever business they had for the day to hurry to their worship centres. It was a day after the Eid El-Kabir holidays.
The reporter had taken a stroll to the campus of the University of Uyo, then he stumbled on one Umar Muhammed, a northerner hopping on one leg, yet hastening down in the rain to observe the Juma’at prayer.
Saturday Tribune walked up to Muhammed after he was through with his prayers to let us into his world. How has he been surviving amid his physical limitation?
Muhammed was definitely not born with crutches. He wasn’t born with a broken leg, neither. The walking aides only came into his life in the course of eking a living. He was a business man who traded in onions, yams and beans in the streets of Uyo, Akwa Ibom State. The source of his wares was the northern part of Nigeria via trucks.
The 39-year-old hails from Shinkafi in Zamfara State. His relocation from his home state was ingloriously facilitated by the prevailing insecurity in his state. He had to abandon his village as a result of bandits’ destructive activities in Nigeria’s northwest.
To the rampaging marauders, who came calling uninvited, Muhammed had lost his first wife and only younger brother. The bandits had attacked his community some years ago, destroying everything in sight. Muhammed and his kinsmen were rendered homeless; uprooted from their ancestral home. That was how he found himself in Uyo, the Akwa Ibom State capital, to start a new life.
Narrating his ordeals in Hausa language with the assistance of an interpreter, he said: “My name is Umar Muhammed. I’m from Zamfara State and I am above 39 years, but I don’t know the exact date of my birth.
“Bad things are happening in Zamfara State. The killings there are too much. As I’m talking to you now, I don’t know where my first wife is and my younger brother was killed by bandits some years ago.
“Some of my cows were stolen by rustlers, while others were killed. My people can’t go to farm because of banditry. If anyone ventured into the farm, he or she would be kidnapped and heavy ransom demanded.
“The problems we are facing in Shinkafi Local Government Area as a result of banditry are too much and I had to leave Zamfara because of that. I wanted to travel to my village for this Sallah, but couldn’t because the place is deserted.”
Muhammed also spoke on how he was reduced to just one leg and the begging vocation, which he said he loathed. Speaking further, he said, having arrived Uyo after escaping from the Zamfara hell, he began his onions, yams and beans trade. But fate played wicked on him again! He got involved in a ghastly accident on his way from Uyo to Gwagwalada, Abuja, in 2020 during one of his business trips which eventually claimed his left leg.
Having expended all his savings in fixing the fracture via surgery, he had to return to Uyo and pick up the pieces of his life by engaging in alms for sustenance. The-father-of-four children decried how his condition has made him unable to cater for his new wife and children to the extent of not being able to enroll them in school.
Hear him: “I was living and doing business here before now. I used to sell onions, yam and beans before I got into an accident in 2020.
“In 2020, I left Uyo for Gwagwalada, Abuja when I had an accident that broke my leg. The leg was cut off at the Gwagwalada General Hospital.
“When I came back to Uyo, life was never the same again for me. I had to turn to begging to eat because I couldn’t do my business as a result of having one leg.
“I have four children and I want to send three of them to school because they have attained school age, but I can’t because of my situation. My children are in another village in Zamfara, and I can’t even afford their cheap school uniform and enrol them in school, let alone buy their school books.
“Now I’m looking for, at least, N3,000 or N5,000 to send to my wife so that she can use it to take care of the children.”
He explained that he earned very little from alms and would want something tangible to take care of himself and his family. He, therefore, appealed to the government or good-spirited Nigerians to help him either with the acquesition of a shop for him and some seed money he could return to trading in yam, beans and onions, or a shop where he could put his wrist watch-repairing skills to use.
Muhammed also called on the government at the federal and state levels to improve security in Zamfara State and make it safe again for the return of fleeing indigenes and residents.
“Life is very difficult because I don’t even make up to N1,500 a day with this alms begging; the highest I have gotten from begging alms is N1,000.
He said: “I also want the government to look into banditry in Zamfara State. You would be in your house with your wife and children and gunmen would just come in and ask you to leave. If you don’t leave, they would kill you instantly. So, I want the government to come to the aid of the state in the aspect of security,” he pleaded.
“I know how to repair wristwatches and wall clocks. If I can find help, I would like someone or the government to help me get a shop where I can stay and repair watches. Before the accident, I knew how to hustle.
“I was in Anambra in 2007. where, I did Okada (motocycle) business before coming to Uyo in 2017.
“I can’t stay in one place and not look for what to do that can fetch me money, but now, it is no longer like that. My body is here, but my mind is with my family. I’m looking for the money to take care of my family, I have no idea where to get it.”
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