Dr Patience Osaro-Ejiji is a dedicated female politician who never stops speaking on issues concerning women. The respected Eleme, rives State daughter is very concerned that many Niger Delta women are facing health challenges because of prolonged oil abuse and unregulated oil exploration activities. She spoke in Port Harcourt with National Point’s managing editor.
Excerpts:
Onempowerment of women supporting political parties
Everybody cannot get appointment;prepare packages to empower everybody at the end of campaigns. Don’t dropcampaigners; give empowerment to those who worked.
Whatdo Nigeria Women want?
Nigerian women are looking for somebody to make them happy. Some homes can’t provide even indomie; some manage one meal a day. Even the ones that went to school, there is no job. The long ASUU strike a woman said is a blessing to keep our children at home, away from being used by politicians as thugs. Mothers talk to your children, keep them away from evil.
Women are looking for somebodythat will create jobs, bring our children, give them jobs; our husbands aresitting at home without jobs.Women are suffering so much running around waking upearly to get to the market to sell, rush back home to provide food. We arelooking for someone to take our youths and men back to work and empower women sothat they will be able to stand; someone with a vision and desire to makeNigeria work again like Atiku promised.
Health Challenges of Women
Right now the health challenges are many. Do you know that more women have health issues because of this soot thing and change in climate? Like where I live in Eleme, you get up, your nose is filled with black substance; sometimes they flare gas in the night so you wake up in the morning with your chest congested, you can’t breathe. Most of the time when rainfalls, the water, even the water from the borehole is contaminated.
We buy water from these boys that push trucks and the mama them, they can’t even afford that. The borehole water condemned by the UNEP, something smelling of fuel and kerosine, they use it to bathe. I think that is why this cancer thing is so much now-breast cancer, uterus, cervical, cancer and kidney problem all over. And we don’t even have good health facilities!
Our hospitals are naked.We don’t even have good health facilities. It is only those of them who have enablement that go overseas to go to big hospitals. So at the available health facilities for women, a woman registers in the healthcare care facility,if it is a case of caesarean section, there is no doctor in the midnight. Before they will transfer her down to where she will deliver? There was a case of a woman who was trying to deliver and the head of the baby could not come out, before they found a car to carry her down to Braithwaite Memorial Hospital, BMH and do the operation,the baby was almost suffocating and died.
And there (BMH), when you get there they won’t even look at you. They will say, ‘Since na now you know say you go come here? Our nurses should have some feelings because the reason why you are there is not for the money. You are there for the health of the person and the doctors should be on ground so that immediately these cases come they should transfer the patient to the theatre and bring out the baby and let the mother and the child live.
Most of our women too, don’tunderstand, they say they want to deliver like Hebrew women. I don’t know wherethey brought that idea from, waiting till the last moment, waiting like womenand for Hebrew women you die, the baby will die; what is the meaning of allthose things?
People like me, they laugh at me when I say I have had caesarean sections six times. They used to ask, “How did you do manage?’ If I didn’t do that I would have been dead by now. So, I think they need sensitization from time to time and these churches are deceiving them so much. Pastor will tell that if you deliver by caesarean section you did not deliver like the Hebrew women. It’s wrong because the most important thing is for you and the baby to be alive, that is when you have succeeded. But if you carry pregnancy for nine months and at the end the baby dies or you die what gain is that?
So that’s it, they should improveour hospitals and equip them so that when these women get there, they can getwhat they want especially in those oil producing areas.
Onthe environment
Let that be for another day. Our lands are polluted, things you used to do you can’t do them again. If you go to the land and plant something, it will not yield as it used to.
# GAP
# Kebetkache
Interview by Constance Meju the publisher of the Port Harcourt based National Point Newspaper and committed women’s and children’s right advocate.
