I Lived In Public Toilet For Four Years — 38 Year-Old Blind Graduate

Alone in the library of the Nigeria Society for the Blind, Lagos, a young man sat, deeply engrossed in reading a textbook on public relations practice in Nigeria. Except one moved closer to him, one might never know that the man, who was reading the words so fluently and swiftly, is blind.

Abioye Suraj was born on July 1, 1977, but in 1980, he lost his sight, after suffering from measles. Two years after this incident, when he turned five, his father died. In 2004, his mother – one of the six his father married – also died, but he was not aware of her death until 2006.

In 2003, a year before his mother died, he was pushed out of the home – by his own brothers. Suraj, the last born of his mother’s six children, told Saturday PUNCH that they complained of being ashamed associating with a blind person.
“So they pushed me out of the home and I became a nobody. They were ashamed that I am blind, and my mother could do nothing about it,” he said.

Suraj indeed suffered a great deal – first, he had no place to call a home, so he took to the streets, living in a public toilet in Obalende for more than four years; second, since he had no one to take care of him, he resorted to begging so as to put food in his stomach.

But instead of lamenting about his plight all day long, Suraj said he was determined to make his life useful, so he took to interacting with sighted and learned people around him. Through that, he developed a passion for education. The result is – he sat for the General Certificate of Education, and he passed. He sat for the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination, he passed. And today, he owns a Higher National Diploma in Mass Communication.

Unfortunately, he has been denied employment by most organisations he applied to.

He said, “My father died in 1982 and I lost my mother in 2004. Since then, things have not been easy. A year before my mother died, I was pushed out of the family by my own siblings, so I was not at home when she died. I later heard in 2006, three years after she died. My father had six wives and my mother was the second in position. I was just abandoned somewhere – by my own blood brothers. They also shared my father’s property, but I have not been given what is mine – all because I am blind.

“When my brothers pushed me out, I took to sleeping inside a public toilet in Obalende because there was no place to go again. Everyone abandoned me. I was living in the toilet until it was demolished by former Lagos State Governor Babatunde Fashola.

For more than four years, I stayed there. I took to begging, but I knew that was not where I was going to end my life.
“When the toilet was demolished, I heard about the Nigeria Society for the Blind and I traced it.

I discussed with the people here and I was admitted. I wanted to write the GCE and so I came to the NSB to use their library, and I met the librarian, Mr. Clement Obasoro. He had pity on me and since then I’ve been living with him. He taught me how to use the Braille system to learn and thankfully, I learned.

“I used the library books here and thankfully, I learned a lot. I sat for the GCE and thank God, I made it. I sat for the UTME and I passed and I schooled at the Lagos State Polytechnic, where I obtained an HND in Mass Communication. I have always determined to become someone useful in life, even while I was living in the public toilet in Obalende.”

Suraj added that this determination kept him going in life.

“I always thought that if I committed suicide, nothing good would come out of it. So I endured and kept myself busy. I mixed with the sighted people and never saw myself as a useless person. I have always believed that with life, things can get better. I entertained myself a lot, even when I was in the toilet. I didn’t and still don’t get bothered much. Things can improve, I always think,” he said.

The librarian of NSB, Obasoro, said on the day Suraj walked into the library, he knew he would go on to make his own life useful, “perhaps this might not have happened if the public toilet he was living in had not been demolished.

“You could see him reading when we came in. He reads a lot and also listens to music a lot. He is not distracted,” Obasoro told Saturday PUNCH.
He also narrated how Suraj had been living with him for the past eight years – without any of his family asking after him.

He said, “They pushed him out and he was living a miserable life, until he met us. He has been with me for eight years now. For the past 15 years in his life, nobody has ever asked after him, because they pushed him out themselves. He was abandoned, neglected and dejected.

He is from Lagos Island, a Lagos indigene. His parents were well-to-do before they died. And even now, his brothers are living big. But they did not want him to live with them – because he is blind. When I heard his life story, I was baffled.

“They were six born of his mother, but two are dead, remaining four. He is the last born; his three siblings are still out there, doing well. They see him outside, but they can’t greet him, and unfortunately, he can’t see them – that’s the irony.

“At a point in time, I asked him to take me to his relatives, just to know them, in case anything happens to him. He took me to his mother’s elder sister’s family and when I introduced myself to them, they pretended as if they had been looking for him. So they asked him where he had been living and he told them he was living with me.

I confronted them, ‘You did not even take time to look for him.’ They all kept quiet. ‘Well, why I came here is just to let you know he stays with me and perhaps if anything happens to him, you wouldn’t say I have used him for rituals.’

“I dropped my address with them and we exchanged telephone numbers. Since then, they have never called. And the reason for that visit was that he was sick at that time. It was only God who spared his life. I took him to the hospital and he was admitted. He had high blood pressure and the doctor told me if I had delayed for 10 minutes, he would have died.

“He has been to the Ministry of Justice because his family have shared his father’s property and refused to give him what belongs to him. Instead, his own inheritance was shared by his own people. He has been referred to the Citizens’ Mediation Centre and hopefully, he plans to go there to make complaints soon.”

If Suraj gets employed, he said one of the first things he will do is to get married. He had had broken relationships in time past by women who couldn’t wait for him, not because he is blind, but because he is yet to be gainfully employed and get an accommodation of his own.

“I don’t feel like the world is unfair to me at all. Reading using the Braille system has helped me a lot to survive. I had lovers, but they could not wait, because I am not yet settled. I believe if I have a means of income, I will get a wife to settle down with for the rest of my life. My next plan is to have a family. That aspect is missing in my life,” he noted Obasoro also confirmed this to be true.

“There were ladies who showed interests in marrying him, but he needs a good job and a place to settle down. I got two companies for him who want to be paying him N20,000, but because of his disability, they advised that he looks for a place where he can function well, but they will be paying his salary. So he needs a job,” he said.

The Chairman of the NSB, Asiwaju Fola Osibo, told Saturday PUNCH that it was unfortunate that the Nigerian society discriminates against the blind, and generally, the physically-challenged.

“It is a pity that in Nigeria, members of the public still do not assist the visually-impaired and in many cases, people tend to treat them as unwanted persons.

In other countries of the world, even in countries close to us as Ghana, most people have been exposed to public enlightenment programmes and, therefore, they know their responsibility to the blind,” he said.

The computer teacher of the school, Mr. Adeolu Adeleke, said he was amazed when he met Suraj in the school. Unlike some of his students who depend on special software to use mobile phones, he said Suraj is different.

“He uses a normal phone, without any speech recognition software or any other special software for the blind,” Adeleke said.

Hearing all these about him, Saturday PUNCH asked him to type the words ‘Welcome to my world’ using the typewriter.

“We don’t type here, we braille,” he corrected, and in less than 30 seconds, it was done.

Before our correspondent would part with him that day, he was told to braille his curriculum vitae.
“I will do just that,” he said.