In 1999, 48-year-old Roseline Akhalu’s husband, a nurse, was diagnosed with a brain tumour. The pair lived a simple life in a shared flat in Benin. Rose worked in local government and earned N22,000 - at the time about £80 - a year. The doctors told Rose’s husband that he’d need to raise £8,000 (N2,000,000) and go to South Africa or India for treatment. There was no way they could do it. Rose stood by as he lost his sight, then his ability to walk, and then to talk. She watched him die, and it broke her heart.

In Nigeria men used their children’s names as next-of-kin and since they did not have any children (prior to this, Rose had suffered a miscarriage) her husband used his brother’s name. His family took all of his possessions, including his pass book and cheque book. She wanted to challenge them, but was dissuaded by her mother, a traditionalist who told her she should be thankful to God that she was still young and had her life ahead of her. Rose was alone in the world. She set about putting her life back together.

Five years later, she was one of just 23 people to win a Ford Foundation scholarship to study in England. She took a masters degree in Development Studies at Leeds University. Inspired by her experiences, she wanted to establish an NGO to cater for the education of young girls. Back in Nigeria, she'd been helping young girls in her community and trying to give them awareness of their rights to encourage them to return to school, even as teenage mums. Whenever she went back to her village to see her family she would organise meetings under a tree near her house.

Rose began to attend St Augustine’s Catholic Church in Leeds. It’s a little parish about three miles from the centre of town. It’s a poor area, but the church has a buzzing middle-aged community; a mix of immigrants and people who’ve lived there all their lives.

Claire McLaughlin, a fellow parishioner, became her friend: she and Rose attended coffee mornings after mass. “She’s quite a private person,” she says, “But she’s really interested in other people.” The two women began working on community initiatives for young girls. “She’s brave, too,” says Claire. “She works with asylum seekers, and goes out doing street pastoring work in Harehills - she’s never evangelical with the people on the street: she just wants to help them.”

I ask Rose for a few more details on what she does in the church. “I’m a member of the choir and I lead the Bible study group. On Mondays I serve the older people tea, coffee and cake. After food we clean up and play Dominos and Bingo for biscuits. It’s like a day centre for women. They love it and the volunteers love it too. I’ve made so many friends in the church: I spent Christmas and Boxing Day with Paul and Dot...”

That’s the new life she built for herself. Christian, innocent and - though how bitter it feels to use this word in the light of what’s to come - somehow rather English.

One day, Rose went to a routine vaccination appointment and was told her blood pressure was too high. She was sent to a nephrologist at Leeds General Infirmary who ran tests and diagnosed renal failure. She planned to return to Nigeria, but was told the only way she could survive was by going on dialysis, or having a kidney implant. In May 2005, she was put on dialysis three times a week.

In 2009, she had a successful kidney implant. The next year, her consultant, Dr R J Baker, wrote to her former MP, Fabian Hamilton, explaining how the treatment had complicated her residential situation. She would need regular hospital check-ups and immunosuppressant drugs for the rest of her life.

Her plan had been to return to Nigeria. Now, however, it changed. Rose was no "health tourist". But it was her misfortune the medication to protect from rejection of the kidney would cost £10,000 per year in Nigeria - a sum Rose would never be able to earn given the wage differential (85 per cent of the population live on less than $1 a day), high unemployment and fact she is of retirement age in that country. She had no support network there, besides three siblings, all of whom lived in poverty. Moreover, as medical experts - Nigerian and British - have testified, the sanitary and medical facilities she required could not be provided. If deported, she would die within two to four weeks. She began to fight for the right to remain in the UK.

In March 2012, Rose arrived at the UK Border Agency (UKBA) Reporting Office for her monthly reporting when she was told she was being detained. Staff from Reliance – a firm contracted by UKBA – told her she was being transported from Leeds to Yarl’s Wood detention centre (an institution familiar to regular readers of this blog).

Close to Manchester, Rose asked to use the toilet. The female security officer told her she would be taken to a police station where it would be “safe” for her to go. On arrival at Manchester, after another 30 minutes of asking for the toilet she was taken to the Reliance Office for a duty change-over. Her pleas were ignored. She could see a toilet in the office through the van's window. She couldn’t bear to hold it in any longer, and stood up in the van. The officers started to look for a plastic bag into which she could urinate. They couldn’t find the bag for women, so she was given the one for men. The design didn’t work, but Rose couldn’t hold it in any more. She urinated all over her hands and the rest of the van, in full view of the CCTV camera.

She tells me: “I felt humiliated and degraded. I was treated like a common criminal. As if I had no dignity, no rights and no voice.” She was left covered in her urine, as was the van. She claims that as a result she suffered a urinary tract infection: she had to sit in her wet clothes until she arrived at Yarl’s Wood at 10.30pm. There is a civil case pending as a result of this incident. Negotiations are ongoing, but at the time of writing Reliance have refused the disclosure of records and documents required for a claim to be quantified.

The Home Office was attempting to remove Rose from the country. UKBA had decided that she was indeed a health tourist, even though she applied for her scholarship back in 2002 and her renal specialist had testified that her illness three years later was sudden and impossible to predict.

Rose would spend 26 days at Yarl’s Wood. Having been returned home, in May, Rose was then taken back to Yarl’s Wood. The second time round she was not given access to medication for 24 hours. She was then moved to Colinbrooke Detention Centre in London. There was not enough room for Rose in the women’s space, so she was taken to the male secure cell. The room was, she tells me, “Stuffed with cigarette smoke and rubbish. The officer left another woman and I there, so we started banging on the door, asking for him to let the cigarette smoke out of the room. The officer’s boss came and threatened us, telling us we’d be moved somewhere worse. Eventually a cleaner was sent.” Rose spent 16 days on this second detention.

4 Play:


http://www.newstatesman.com/alan-white/2013/01/trials-roseline-akhalu

Absolutely heartbreaking story which illustrates how desperate Nigeria is that a person with renal failure living in Nigeria is on an express train to death...unless of course they've enough money to afford treatment.

Decapo: who is this f00l?

edited DG

pDude: My children will never have the opportunity to ask me, "Daddy, when everybody was hustling and relocating abroad, where were you?" by the grace of God.

Nigeria is a sad and hopeless place.

pDude: My children will never have the opportunity to ask me, "Daddy, when everybody was hustling and relocating abroad, where were you?" by the grace of God.

Nigeria is a sad and hopeless place.

pDude: My children will never have the opportunity to ask me, "Daddy, when everybody was hustling and relocating abroad, where were you?" by the grace of God.

Nigeria is a sad and hopeless place.

KingPradas: There is no place like home.

pDude: My children will never have the opportunity to ask me, "Daddy, when everybody was hustling and relocating abroad, where were you?" by the grace of God.

Nigeria is a sad and hopeless place.

birdman:

I pity anyone who thinks about Nigeria like this. Opportunity shows itself best in chaos. Yes, I know people who have died of ailments that could have been detected if they were abroad. But I also know many more that actually hustled through the system, have decent jobs, at least one house and a couple of cars all bought and paid for. Some even have enough dough left over to send kids to school abroad.

Sorry for derailing the thread. Isnt there a way ppl can contribute money for these type of operations?