Punchng:

Community where residents convey sick people
Residents of Maidan Orile community, in the Ikosi-Ketu Local
Council Development Area of Lagos, have been grappling with
many social amenity challenges for years.
From the absence of a community school to environmental
pollution, the residents said efforts to get government
attention to the issues have proved abortive.
But the most challenging of the issues, they said, was the
absence of a health care centre in the community which
reportedly has a population of about 30,000 people.
A resident, Olorogun Afonja, explained that sick people were
usually conveyed out of the community in wheelbarrows
because they also lacked an access road.
He said, “For more than 20 years that some of us have been
here, we have not witnessed any development in terms of
road, school or even hospital. The cables you see on our
electric poles and all the electricity apparatus here were by
community effort.
“When anyone falls ill, we use wheelbarrows to convey them
out before we can get help. This is because we don’t have
access roads and we park our vehicles many kilometres away.
A client of mine, who was sick recently, had to be wheeled out
to the main road to get medical attention.”
It was learnt that some of the most affected people were
pregnant women.
A woman, identified only as Iya Mariam, was said to have
died while being wheeled out of the community.
Her neighbour, Jemilat Wahab, said the 33-year-old
hairdresser and mother of two, suddenly went into labour
pains on the fateful day and died before she could get to a
hospital.
She said, “I was observing my prayers that day when I saw Iya
Mariam. She said she was having labour pains.
“Somebody brought a wheelbarrow and we put her in it. We
wheeled her to the bridge. But before we could get her to the
general hospital, she died.
“My daughter, Kehinde, was also pregnant at that period. Her
labour pain started in the night. We could not get her out on
time because of the condition of the road. But we are grateful
to God that she survived, although her baby died.”
Wahab said at least eight pregnant women had died in a
similar fashion in the area.
Our correspondent observed that the only link to the
community was a pedestrian bridge constructed over a
lagoon.
The partly-wood-partly-iron bridge, had broken down and
residents said they had been maintaining it through
community contribution since the government had left them
to their fate.
When our correspondent passed through the bridge, a man,
who manned its entrance, demanded N10.
It was learnt that he charged more for people conveying
loads into the community.
A resident, Mr. Yomi Odegbami, said, “This bridge is the only
thing that we have as a community. It is what connects Mile
12 to our community. However, it is only a walkway. Majority
of us park our vehicles far from our house. We trek into the
community.”
Our correspondent observed that there were two makeshift
latrines constructed on both sides of the bridge which stood
on top of the water.
Every now and then, droplets of human faeces fell into the
lagoon.

tunwumi:
It is slum that government is trying it's best to drive people out of. But if u chose to live under a bridge is that anybody problem?

Some kids here need to visit lagos and know is bigger than their entire state. If u want to understand the meaning of slum visit ajegunle and other area like that.

2cato:
We have seen ur pain and plight in lagos esp in agege that has never withness the touch of good govnernce.
Continue voting For APC in 2015.
Since we can not make the road motorable again then we are going to construct cable cars tied to ur electric poles to make movement easy. As it was been done in other places in lagos