Joy among the residents of Umudioka Community in Awka South Local Government Area of Anambra knew no bound on that day when a widow, Mrs Rose Anene, alleged to have suffered a slight mental disorder, suddenly located her home and was re-united with her family.
A re-united family (Photo: Red Cross)
Some residents of the community recall that her daughter, Mrs Ifeyinwa Uzozie, in her mid-40s presently, was barely seven years old when medical personnel discovered that Rose suffered from post child-birth complications that resulted in her condition.
Following the complications, her husband, Anene, who is now late, took her to a healthcare provider for treatment after which she was treated and discharged.
Having recuperated for a while, Rose a native of Ilorin, Kwara, took excuse from her husband to visit Ilorin and see her parents, a community member said, pleading anonymity.
She noted that Rose stayed for a while in Ilorin and the last information passed to her husband was that Rose claimed to have left Ilorin for Umudioka Awka, her husband’s home town.
According to the informant, since then, Rose has disappeared, leaving the community members to insinuate that her mental balance might have waned.
Her daughter, Mrs Ifeyinwa Uzozie, said that she had never enjoyed motherly care, except by her father who died some years ago.
“My other siblings and I believe that our mother is not dead and in our prayers, we always pray that God shall make her to return.
“It was like a dream when I received a telephone call from my younger brother recently that our mother was brought back to my father’s house by the officials of Caring Family Enhancement Initiative,’’ she said.
Mr Chukwudi Anene, the first son of Rose, appreciated Mrs Ebelechukwu Obiano, the wife of Anambra governor and the founder of the Caring Family Enhancement Initiative that treated and rehabilitated her mother.
“The tears rolling from my eyes are not of anger, but that of joy. How I wish my father who died some years ago could be alive to witness this,’’ he said.
Telling how Rose was discovered, Dr Victoria Chikelu, the Anambra State Ministry of Social Welfare, Children and Women Affairs, said that records of she showed that she was brought from Lagos to Anambra in 2004.
“Since I was appointed Commissioner for Women Affairs in 2014, Rose had been speaking only Yoruba language and had refused to say where she came from.
“But some days ago, she eventually spoke Igbo language and told us that she came from Umdioka Awka.
“We traversed the length and breadth of Umudioka Awka, following the description of her house she gave, before we finally located her family and she was reunited,’’ she said.
Sharing the community members’ happiness, Mr Leo Iwoba, Chairman, Awka South Local Government Area Transition Committee, said that the treatment and rehabilitation of Rose were not only a gesture to the family of Anene and Umudioka community, but a relief to the people in the area.
“I assure the residents that my council will make sure we support the family of Anene through visitation to ensure that Rose fully recovers from her challenge’’, he said.
The re-union of Rose and 10 other inmates of Mental Rehabilitation Centre, Nteje, was the highpoint of the 2018 International Women Day in Anambra, co-organised by Mrs Obiano and the state Ministry of Women Affairs recently.
Addressing guests at the event, Mrs Obiano said that she was delighted that the 2018 International Women’s Day was marked with the recovery of 11 inmates of the centre.
“I am delighted that some of our brothers and sisters who were once seen as incapable of meeting their obligations, due to various degrees of mental challenges, are today stronger.
“I must not forget the special case of our sister, Rose, who was once assumed lost but now found and physically fit to rejoin her children and other family members,’’, she said.
According to Mrs Obiano’s, more than 62 inmates out of which 47 have been treated and rehabilitated have passed through the centre since its inauguration in 2014.
She noted that some inmates of the centre were drawn from different states, including Abia, Ebonyi, Edo, Oyo State and Anambra, and were picked up from the streets for treatment and rehabilitation.
The governor’s wife explained that the inmates were sponsored to a corrective surgery as well as treatment of injuries sustained at the peak of their mental illness.
“The surgery funded by my centre is usually carried out at Chukwuemeka Odimegwu Ojukwu Teaching Hospital, Amaku, Awka; and we are happy to state that most of our inmates who go for the surgeries come out successfully’’, she said.
The governor’s wife also mentioned other achievements of the centre to include building of houses for indigent widows, toilets to promote hygiene in rural markets, training and empowerment of women, among others.
Mrs Obiano called on the public not to stigmatise the treated and discharged inmates of the centre, but to rather support them in taking their medication and other meaningfully engagement.
“I am using this opportunity to call for both financial, food items and other equipment to support and sustain the treatment and welfare of these inmates’’, she said.
She said that the International Women’s Day usually observed on every March 8 is a global day to make a call to action for accelerating gender parity.
“I am using this opportunity to call for the acceleration of the drive for gender parity as means of harnessing the strengths of women who are actively involved in ventures for societal progress’’, she said.
Participants who witnessed the re-union of eleven inmates at Nteje note that if other state governments across the country will replicate the development in Anambra, cases of mentally ill persons will reduce.(Francis Onyeukwu, News Agency of Nigeria, NAN)
