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Years ago
when I was a little boy in the Niger Delta of
Nigeria, personal and community health and
happiness were highly prized values. The land
provided food and the rivers provided fresh
water and fish that fed us and made us healthy.
Then I left home for the United States where I
have lived and studied for many years.
For all of my
years in the Diaspora, my only sources of
information have been my family and friends back
in Nigeria, who often told of changing
agricultural fortunes, hunger, and general
hardship. They recounted rampant deaths from
violence, malaria, typhoid fever, and HIV/AIDS.
Media reports frequently provided graphic
details of pipeline explosions, fires from oil
spills, acid rain, dying fish, and ruined
farmlands. Instead of being a blessing to the
people, oil has brought ethnic and communal
violence, abject poverty, sickness, and deaths.
The delta that I heard about from my family and
read about in the media from the United States
sounded like a besieged and haunted mythical
community from outer space.
In March
2007, I had the opportunity to travel back to
the delta as part of my postdoctoral fellowship
at the HIV Center for Clinical and Behavioral
Studies at Columbia University (NIMH Training
Grant T32 MH19139, Anke A. Ehrhardt, Ph.D.,
Director) I was officially invited
by the University of Uyo's international link
program headed by Professor Imoh Ukpong. The
visit provided me an opportunity to interact
with HIV/AIDS researchers in the University of
Uyo, an institution in Akwa Ibom State. I
learned about the state of HIV/AIDS research in
the region and worked with local researchers to
identify
relevant research topics and questions grounded
in a community-based participatory methodology.
The visit became an excellent occasion for
laying a foundation for future collaboration
with Niger Delta researchers and community-based
groups who provide HIV/AIDS services to the
citizens of the region. It also provided an
opportunity to interact with the people and
experience what the region has become since I
left Nigeria.
When I was a
primary school pupil in Akwa Ibom State, schools
provided comprehensive learning alongside
training in practical skills for living and
surviving in the mostly rural,
agriculture-dependent Niger Delta region. In
those days, teachers taught us to farm the crops
that had sustained our people for several
generations. We were divided into groups of
threes and fours and assigned small pieces of
land to cultivate maize, okra, green beans, and
peppers. The adults in the communities also
planted banana, plantain, tomatoes, fluted
pumpkin, cassava, yams, coco-yams and many other
food crops and fruits. Agriculture was central
to our way of life, and social status was
measured by wealth in farmlands and farm
produce. Since then, so much has
gone wrong in the Niger Delta.
Several years
ago, before I left, there were already signs
that the fortunes of the community were
changing. The banana trees were dying and the
plantains were no longer doing well. Cassava and
yams, the staples of the people, were no longer
yielding enough to feed them. The communities
were beginning to be alarmed. There were
suggestions that the changing agricultural
climate had something to do with the gas flaring
that perpetually lit up the night sky in the
distance. Traditional priests, Christian
pastors, and the people, terrified by the new
developments, offered prayers and sacrifices for
better food yields that sustained life.
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During my trip, I visited the University of Uyo
Teaching Hospital, a facility with 250
beds serving a population of over 6 million in
the Niger Delta. The hospital, which has 21
departments, was accredited in 2002 for training
of house officers and intern pharmacists. The
medical director of the teaching hospital, Prof
Emmanuel Ekanem said that it was the only
referral center for the treatment of patients
with HIV/AIDS in the area. According to Dr. Mfon
Edyang-Ekpa, the chief medical officer and head
of HIV/AIDS unit, the antiretroviral (ARV)
program in the teaching hospital was begun in
2002. In 2007, approximately
300 patients are seen per day, including 30 to
40 new patients. Since its establishment, the
program has seen about 10,000 clients (not all
of whom are on ARV) and 2,000 are currently on
the waiting list. Some patients die while on the
waiting list and others get tired of waiting and
seek alternative treatment. Dr. Ediang-Ekpa also
identified challenges such as the dilemma of
HIV/AIDS patients who seek to become pregnant
and the persistence of skepticism about the
existence of HIV/AIDS.
When I left
Nigeria in 1995, the decline of agriculture was
already causing major concerns in the rural
villages. The communities, once bustling with
life and festivities, were witnessing massive
migrations of youth to Port Harcourt, Calabar,
Aba, and Lagos where they sought employment with
oil companies. Rural life was dying. The harvest
season was no longer marked with festivities.
New yams were no longer celebrated because the
yields were failing. Hunger and malnourishment
were around the corner and many youth fled the
villages. A new society was evolving, shaped by
oil that put money and power into very few
hands. As the impoverished majority became
desperate in seeking survival, every means was
employed to keep families alive from day to day.
Sex was becoming cheap, and sexually transmitted
infections (STIs), unintended pregnancies, and
illegal abortions were rampant. Oil money was
redefining the sexual values even as oil
exploration was changing the environment and the
ways of the people.
On my return to the region,
I barely recognized
the community in which I was born. Most people
that I knew had long since died from malaria,
typhoid fever, or HIV/AIDS. The community was
mostly populated now by youth under the age of
30, many of whom have become unemployed heads of
households. In the Niger Delta that I met upon
my return, roads were non-existent and the once
vibrant community river, where we used to swim
and fetch drinking water had dried up
completely. Clean potable water was scarce,
poverty was everywhere, and inflation was
shooting through the roof.
I
met several malnourished and hungry children and
orphans with dusty naked bodies and distended
stomachs. I met widows who struggled to raise
five or six children with less than US $40
monthly income. They received no help from the
government or the community. Many children could
not attend school because they were either too
sick or could not afford school fees, books, or
uniforms. The billions of dollars of oil money
that were pumped from under their communities
was not used to alleviate their bleak
conditions. The frequent funeral ceremonies for
young and old were evidence of a community on
the brink of the precipice.
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