Sour tale from downtown Abuja

RESIDENTS of Gofidna, a sleepy, rustic community in the Abuja Federal Capital Territory (FCT) wish things were a little better for them than at present.
Of Gbagi ethnic extraction, the Gofidna community of about 1100 prides itself as being more than 100 years old, is also home to abject poverty.
Though rightfully qualified to be described as a suburb in the FCT, nothing of the good life the territory is associated with, has trickled down to Gofidna people, whose men folk are predominately farmers.
They grow yam, beans, and corn, millet, cassava and soya beans while their women mainly trade in firewood, which they take to Zuba, another suburb in the FCT, about 25 kilometres from Gofidna.
Because of ravaging poverty, life in Gofidna is marked by hardship, disease and early but avoidable death.
Nowhere does this reality stand out stark naked as in the areas of water supply, health care and education.
According to the Atakpamuze Garkawa or spokesman of Gofidna, Abdulahi Adamu, people in the community rely on a pond for the water they need for domestic use.
Located in a wooded grove a short walk from the community, the almost-stagnant pond of grayish water, Adamu told The Guardian, is beneath a huge tree.
From the tree and boughs all around, leaves, bird droppings as well as waste from other animals drop into the pond below, which is also used by domestic animals such as sheep and goats.
This, of course, makes the pond a very questionable source of water safe for domestic use.
“Before they drink the water, they will boil it, but not everybody does this as some drink it like that,” Adamu said.
He continued: “Many of our people here fall sick often but there is no hospital except in Zuba, about 25 kilometres away.
“When our pregnant women are due, we take them to Zuba but some of them die on the way before reaching the hospital.
“From here to Zuba is a very long distance. Only three days ago, a woman lost her baby on her way to Zuba to deliver.
“The woman survived, she is okay but very sad that her baby she had carried for nine months died like that, as she was going to hospital.
“Sometimes, when the signs of delivery start at the night, we start looking for a vehicle to take the woman to Zuba.
“Sometimes, we are not lucky to get a vehicle in time and the baby and mother may die.
“There was a time, not long ago, when our children were dying so frequently because they were ill very often.
“We do not know the reason behind such deaths,” Adamu said.
But the absence of a primary school was the reason Adamu could identify for the many deaths among Gofidna’s children of school age.
“Until recently, there was no primary school in our community.
“All our children used to go to school in Zuba and many were killed by cars and trucks as they tried to cross the expressway.
“These are very small children and when going to or coming from school, they would want to cross the road and are crushed by fast-moving vehicles.
“Being small children, they do not know how to cross the expressway as adults do, as a result of which about 15 of our kids have died on the way to or from school.
“But that kind of death for my people has been reduced.
“Now, we have primary school so the small and young children go school here while those in secondary school still go to Zuba.
“Vehicles do not crush those ones as frequently as they killed our smaller, younger kids.
“No government official comes here to see what we are going through except our municipal chairman.
“Politicians come when they want us to vote for them during elections during which they tell us they will give us all that we need.
“We vote for them and after the election, we do not see them again.”
He explained that the intervention of a good spirited non-governmental organization that built two blocks of classrooms for the community helped put an end to the deaths of their children along Zuba expressway.
That gesture by the non-governmental organization must have induced the Municipal Area Council to build three other classroom blocks.
Almost in tears, Adamu appealed to the government to rescue his community from the burden of lack and poverty.
He pleaded with President Goodluck Jonathan, the FCT administration and development agencies to come to their assistance and to empower them,  especially their women, whom he said, were very hardworking.