The letter from Ms Chioma Ogbu, the 31-year-old Nigerian lady, born with cerebral palsy (the congenital lifelong motor neuron disease said to have no cure), to Oprah Winfrey, the world-acclaimed TV talk show host, philanthropist, film actress and anchor of the popular “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” before she quitted to launch her own TV network, was as touching as it can get under the circumstance.
Said to be caused by brain damage which happens before or during a baby’s birth, or during the first three to five years of a child’s life, apart from difficulty in walking and holding things, cerebral palsy can lead to other health problems such as vision, hearing, speech impairments, and learning disabilities.
“Dear Oprah, it is with a heavy heart and dejected spirit that I write hoping that maybe my salvation might come from you,” Chioma stated, at the beginning of the letter before launching into the story of her life. A pathetic one at that!
But the letter, written in a scrawl of handwriting, because of Chioma’s ever-shaking hands caused by her health condition never got to Oprah who recently turned 62. It never got to her because it never got posted. And, it never got posted because as the young beauty confessed in a chat with Saturday Sun, she simply did not know the letterbox or e-mail address to send it to.
Report says Oprah receives approximately 20,000 emails each week, though nobody knows how much personal attention is given to each. But there’s no doubt that Chioma’s letter would have prompted Oprah to cry her heart out had it been posted and had she received it. Chioma’s story would have followed the pattern of the stories of some guests who appeared on her talk show in the heydays of The Oprah Winfrey Show, which ended up making not only Oprah but millions of her fans to shed rivers of tears in sympathy!
Chioma’s condition, history and interventions
As indicated in the unsent letter, Chioma, who hails from Idemili North Local Government Area, Anambra State, but, at present, lives in Owerri, Imo State, with her mum, Mrs. Patricia Ogbu, a bead-maker, was, indeed, born with a pathetic medical condition called cerebral palsy.
“I don’t coordinate well,” Chioma informs you in a teary voice. “It has to do with me doing little things like writing or holding a cup of water. Just little things, I find it difficult and I have lived with it all my life. Minus this, my parents separated in 1989 and it has been a bad situation for me because they were the only support that I had. But because of their separation it is like I didn’t have any support from anybody anymore.”
Her mum, Patricia, recalls that she started noticing the problem when Chioma, the last of her six children, was about three years old. “We found out that her legs and hands shivered seriously when she walked or held things,” she says. “She was born in Port Harcourt. But when it started, the case was referred to Jos University Teaching Hospital where specialist doctors discovered what the problem is. And since then she has lived with it.”
She refused to go into the reason she and Chioma’s father separated but admitted, while shaking her head in self-pity, that like Chioma rightly pointed out, it (the separation) has denied the poor girl the emotional and financial support somebody in her situation would have needed from both parents.
As if this experience is not bad enough, Chioma was to lose three of her six siblings, and thereby being further denied of some emotional and financial support, perhaps. “We are six in our family,” Chioma said. “I am the sixth and the lastborn. People say the last one is the one that enjoys but that’s not the story with me. I lost a brother in 1995. He died of motor accident. He just finished his WAEC (West African Examinations Councils) secondary school certificate exams.
“Barely a year later, I lost another elder brother. That was in 1996. I was staying with my step-mum and my father in Onitsha. Then my mum was living in Owerri. They said it was food poisoning. They gave all kinds of diagnoses. But I really knew that he died because we couldn’t afford his treatment. He could have lived if we had the means to seek better options of treatment.”
Three years ago, in 2013 precisely, she lost yet another sibling, her immediate elder sister, one Uju. A waiter with a restaurant in Abuja, Chioma said she died of diabetes. But one thing she will not easily forget about her late sister is her determined effort to make her (Chioma) who lived with her for some years, comfortable from her meagre salary.
“She was living in a place called Jukwoyi in Abuja,” Chioma recalls. “She was doing a minor job. She was a waiter. But living with her, I had peace of mind. She was always encouraging me. She even told me she would sponsor me in my school. I knew it was not possible. But her encouragement alone made me happy.”
But it was while she was living with her that luck smiled on her one day in May, 2006, when she went to Transcorp Hilton Hotel, Abuja, for sightseeing. She ran into Mrs. Oby Ezekwesili, the then Minister of Solid Minerals, under President Olusegun Obasanjo’s administration. The minister was at the place to attend a programme organised by National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP).
“During the break period, I was just sitting there,” Chioma recounts. “I saw Oby Ezekwesili. I knew she was a Minister. I went to meet her. I told her my story. She then called somebody from NAPTIP. They questioned me. They asked me what I wanted to do. I told them I wanted to go to school. They said ok. They took me to WOTCLEF (Women Trafficking and Child Labour Eradication Foundation), an NGO (non-governmental organization) belonging to Atiku Abubakar’s wife (Amina Titi Atiku Abubakar). They asked me, where did I stop? I said, JSS 3. I think I was 18 or 19 years then.”
It was through the financial help provided by the NGO that Chioma was able to sit for both the National Examinations Council (NECO)’s Senior School Certificate exam and WAEC’s West African Senior School Certificate (WASSCE), in 2007 while in SSS 2, a class she said took her a while to convince her sponsors she could cope with, if promoted to the class. Copies of her results with Saturday Sun shows that whereas she made credit pass (C6), in each of the six papers she registered for in NECO, namely English Language, Christian Religious Knowledge, Commerce, Economics, Government and Literature in English, she had the same performance in two of the four subjects she sat for in WASSCE, namely: Government (C6) and Mathematics (C4).
JAMB’s disappointments and Chioma’s metamorphosis
Since then, she has tried about six times by her own record, to secure admission into some Nigerian universities through JAMB’s Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME), but without success. The universities she applied to, at different times, to read Mass Communication, her favourite course, include University of Lagos, Nassarawa State University, University of Maiduguri, Anambra State University (now Chukwuemeka Odumegwu University) and University of Abuja (where she applied to, to read Public Administration). The University of Abuja option came after many frustrating experiences trying to gain admission to read her preferred course, Mass Communication.
Even now, the feeling of frustration still looms large in her mind, she tells Saturday Sun. “It was at the Anambra State University that one lecturer saw me and asked, ‘do you think you can cope? I don’t think they have facilities for you here. Look at your handwriting.’ I was discouraged,” she recalls. “He said there are special education centres for people like me. I asked him where? He did not answer. I told him, ‘well, there’s nothing special about me. I just want to be a journalist. I want to be a writer or a broadcaster and there’s nothing special about that because it’s my passion. It is what I want to do.’
“Then, he said that I needed to have a kind of job where I wouldn’t have a boss that will put me under pressure. I told him I am tired of people telling me what to do. If at this age, I don’t know what I want or what I can do, then my life is a total failure. I’m tired of people dictating to me; it is either you take me on merit or you discriminate against me for what I know nothing about. I was born this way. If I had a choice, I wouldn’t choose it (at this juncture, you notice those traces of tears again welling up her eyes).
“I am wondering why I am getting these 200 and above and I have not been able to gain admission? Meanwhile, some candidates who score less are today graduates, yet they can’t speak good English. Where have I gone wrong? Does the society want me to be a liability? I don’t like being a liability. Rather, I see myself contributing to the progress and well-being of the society. I wake up every morning and I keep thinking about what disability has turned my life into. I don’t know where or who to turn to. And, people have not made things easy for me. Rather, they keep reminding me. At times, they think I am retarded mentally but it is not so.”
Is Chioma retarded mentally? That’s hardly the impression you come away with it after speaking with her. Rather, the lady who speaks perfect Queen’s English with good diction, with good vocabulary/grammatical expressions thrown in in good measures (skills she said she developed while reading tonnes of pages of novels in her lonely moments), exhibits great intelligence, brilliance in such a way that makes you think she is a first-class graduate.
“At times, some people assume I’m a graduate,” she agrees. “I don’t talk to them. I allow them to continue to mislead themselves. There was a time I told one woman who assumed I am a graduate and wanted to know which university I finished from. When I told her I was not, she wondered how I learnt to speak English so well, with good diction and pronunciation. I cried that day. I just left without answering her.”
Acquaintances’ testimonies
“She is a bundle of talent waiting to be discovered!” That’s is the comment of Prof. Ahmed Yerima, erudite playwright, dramatist, theatre director and producer, Eugenia Abu, ace TV broadcaster, news anchor, award-winning novelist and poet, and Dr. Emman Usman Shehu, founder of the Abuja Writers’ Forum, and Director, International Institute of Journalism, Abuja. The aforementioned had the opportunity of interacting with her as a member of Abuja Writers Forum and Abuja Literary Society.
“I have known Ms Chioma F. Ogbu since 2007, the year she completed her secondary school education,” Usman Shehu wrote in a letter of recommendation he sent to Canterbury Christ Church University, Canterbury, Kent, England, which has just offered Chioma admission to read Communication Arts begining from September this year. “From that period to date, she has been a consistent member of the Abuja Writers Forum (AWF) and has utilised the platform to express herself through creative writing. Ms Ogbu has not allowed her physical challenge to pull her back in any way and has sought to improve herself academically.
“I am aware that her effort in this direction has been aborted because the institution that she gained admission into for undergraduate studies did not seem to have the proper orientation of handling a physically challenged student like her. This has brought a lot of frustration to Ms Ogbu.
“I believe your institution offers her a good opportunity to develop herself in the career she has always desired. Apart from becoming self-fulfilled, she would be able to contribute her bit to development in the country in her chosen career, and serve as inspiration to others who may have physical challenges.”
“When I was in Abuja, I belonged to Abuja Writers’ Forum and Abuja Literary Society,” Chioma informs you. “Most of them thought I was a graduate because of the way I talk and the way I argue. I have some skills at arguing. Even if I don’t know what you are saying, if I listened to you attentively, at the end, I would be able to follow your train of thought and argue intelligently on whatever you are talking about. But this discrimination thing on the basis of my disability is what I don’t like.”
“If you are disabled, it is probably not your fault, but it is no good blaming the world or expecting it to take pity on you,” Stephen Hawking, the world-acclaimed British-born physicist and cosmologist, who suffers from the worse form of motor neuron disease called amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), or Lou Gehrig’s disease, that makes it difficult for him to use his hands, legs and voice, says in a newspaper interview when asked for advice for his fellow disabled persons.
Hawking, whose scientific findings have helped to throw more lights on the black hole phenomenon, added: “one has to have a positive attitude and must make the best of the situation that one finds oneself in; if one is physically disabled, one cannot afford to be psychologically disabled as well. In my opinion, one should concentrate on activities in which one’s physical disability will not present a serious handicap.”
Right now, that’s what Chioma wants to do, to study Communication Arts, which she believes she knows very well, at Canterbury Christ Church University. But an education bill just sent to her by the university shows that for her to realise that dream, it will cost her about N31 million for the four-year duration of the course. The money would cover one year foundation courses (N3,570,000), three years tuition (N11,700,000), medical tests (N120,000), books (N300,000), visa fees (N131,100), flight (N120,900), living expenses – feeding, rent, clothing, telephone, printing, photocopying, health, travel, library (N14,688,000) and miscellaneous (N210,000). And, the money is expected to be paid between now and the end of April.
It is because of the amount involved that made Chioma to take her pen and write Oprah Winfrey, asking for financial help. “The biggest adventure you can ever take is to live the life of your dreams,” Oprah once said. “Be thankful for what you have; you’ll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don’t have, you will never, ever have enough. Surround yourself with only people who are going to lift you higher.”
Why Chioma wrote Oprah Winfrey
Chioma believes Oprah can lift her higher by helping her fulfill her dream of becoming either a creative writer, a journalist or a broadcaster. On how she came about the admission thing into the UK-based university, she recalls that it was while she attended in Lagos an education fair organised by the British Council that she ran into one white lady called Laura Spencer, the International Recruitment Officer, for Christ Canterbury University. “I told her that I have not been able to go to school because being a developing nation, we haven’t yet had the kind of facilities that I would need to do a course I want. I explained my condition to her. She said, over there, I can write with my laptop and that they can prepare exams for me on a standardized paper. And, she told me a lot of things. I got interested and I was lifted.”
As the interview drew to a close, curiosity got the better of you and you wanted to know how she got to know about Oprah Winfrey, in the first place. For the first time, since the interview began, she flashes a beguiling smile at you before saying: “I watch TV. I know things. Naturally, as an aspiring journalist, I’m always curious. I listen to a lot of news. Now that most things are on the Internet, I also read about them. That’s how I came to know about Oprah Winfrey. I also know about her charities in Africa, especially The Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls in South Africa, which provides help for young children affected by poverty and AIDS. Not to talk of her Angel Network which provides financial support for non-governmental organizations like “Born This Way Foundation,” established in 2011 by Lady Gaga and her mother, Cynthia Germanotta, to foster a society where differences are embraced and individuality is celebrated. The Foundation is dedicated to creating a safe community that helps connect young people with the skills and opportunities they need to build a braver, kinder world.”
Such strong faith is quite typical of the pretty lady! Who knows, her Igbo name, Chioma, which loosely translates in English as “Lucky” may end up working for her but she is not banking on only Oprah, she says. She is ready to accept help from kind-hearted Nigerians who are touched by her story.
