My Nigeria…

Lessons from Beijing Paralympics

By Sonnie Ekwowusi, Thisday 09.24.2008

The spectacular performance of many of the disabled athletes, sorry, physically-challenged athletes, at the 2008 Beijing Paralympics Games has, for the umpteenth time, made nonsense of the case in favour of the neglect, contempt for and killing of the weak, physically challeged in the society, The 2008 Beijing Paralympics Games has once again shown that there is s joy in living even when one is sick, wretched or physically challenged. It has shown that every human being is unique. It has shown that every human being, no matter his/her condition in life, has a destiny from God. It has shown that no human being, whether rich or poor, physically challenged or not, short or tall, car-owner or leg-owner, handsome or ugly, is useless. It has shown that there is ability in disability. The Paralympic Games, above all, is a great indictment on the men and women of this generation who, contrary to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948, African Charter on People’s and Human Rights, civilized norms, natural law and the law of God, are carrying out a great genocide against the sick, physically challenged, defenseless unborn babies, elderly and the infirm.

I don’t know about you, but I must tell you that I was stunned watching those physically-challenged athletics thrill the world sports-loving fans in wheelchair lawn tennis, 5-a-side blind football, wheelchair basketball etc. For Nigeria , it has been a spectacular outing. I may be exaggerating it, but I think the 2008 Paralympics Dream Team is as good as the Dream Team that featured at the last Beijing Olympics. The wonders Nigeria could not perform with able-bodied men and women at the Beijing Olympics, she has been able to perform at the 2008 Paralympics Games: the gold medal that eluded Nigeria at the last Beijing Olympics showered at the 2008 Paralympics. With her deformed leg suspended on a small platform, Nigeria ’s Eucharia Njideka Iyiazi carted away with two gold medals. From her wheelchair, Lucy Ogochukwu Ejike created a new world record of 130kg in the 48kg power lifting event. With a dangling right arm, Godwin Joseph Mbakara of Nigeria dazzled the world in the men’s 100m-T46 race. He reminds me of the community of disabled beggars in the streets and alley-ways of Lagos . The only problem is that while the Lagos community beggars is content with just begging, Mbakara has gone ahead to prove that every disability is an opportunity to prove one’s mettle in life. But the most impressive was Casy Tibbs, a one-legged American long jumper, who leapt so high in the air in the men’s pentathlon long jump P44. Erin Popvich, 23, an American physically-challenged lady, won many gold medals in swimming. I think, in all, she won four gold medals and two silver medals in swimming. She won 10 gold medals in the last two Paralympics. She is now compared to Michael Phelps who won eight gold medals at Beijing Olympics. Popvich says she is not even thinking of retiring.

Aside from the elimination of poverty, fighting natural disasters, promotion of democracy and human rights, fighting terrorism and environmental despoliation, I think the greatest challenge facing humanity today is the protection of the world’s most vulnerable groups-the sick, physically challenged, defenseless children, elderly and the infirm. It was Mahatma Gandhi who said that all inhumanity is one undivided and invisible family, and each one us is responsible for the other. We must build a new international world order in which the rich and the powerful shelter the weak, infirm and physically challenged. Mankind owes the vulnerable the best it can give. A world not fit for the physically challenged, the sick, elderly, children and the weak is a wicked world unfit for living.

It is a great irony that the United Nations and many powerful NGOs and multinational bodies mouthing great human rights campaigns are scandalously making a volte-face to sponsor the killing of the weak, physically challenged, elderly and children en ventre san mere (in the womb of their mothers). Under the guise of tackling Nigeria ’s high maternal mortality, the United Nation’s CEDAW Committee has been drumming support for legalization of abortion and infanticide in Nigeria . But it is illogical that in order to save women’s lives, their children’s lives are destroyed. Nigerian women deserve better than the violence of abortion as an answer to their critical health care. Nigerian women deserve access to affordable health care and obstetrical services that will save their lives and the lives of their precious children. Sri Lanka reduced its maternal deaths from 550 per 100,000 live births in the 1950s to 80 per 100, 000 live births in the 1970s. Ireland , where abortion is illegal, has one of the lowest maternal mortality rates in the world. Whereas Great Britain and United States where abortion has been legalized for decades, have higher maternal mortality rates.

In many European and American countries, pain, suffering, sickness, physical disability etc are detested. The elderly is seen as unproductive who must be discriminated against or sidelined or even killed. Many elderly people are dumped in Old People’s Homes without care and human affection. Many useless physicians see their role in medicine only from the angle of assisting sick patients or “patients in vegetative state” to die. That is what they call euthanasia or mercy killing. It is tragic that medical doctors and nurses trained in healing and caring for the sick have become midnight merchants of death. Remember the tragic assisted-killings of Ramon Sampedro and Terri Schiavo? What Pope John Paul 11 termed the “culture of death” has overtaken Europe and America today. I think Belgium , Netherlands , France , Switzerland have legalized euthanasia. Medical doctors in those countries are now allowed to give patients an overdose of drug to kill them. I remember reading a very terrible assisted suicide case in one of these anti-life countries. A mother of about four had been ill for a long time. She was rich. Her husband was also rich. But both of them detested illness. So one Sunday afternoon this woman called her husband and four children to the parlour and told them that she was going to commit suicide because of her prolonged illness. So the housemaid prepared a sumptuous last meal for the family. After the last meal, she bid her husband and four children final farewell. Being a medical doctor, her husband took her to the parlour and administered an overdose of drugs and death injection on her to kill. After that he and the children left the parlour. One hour, two hours, the lady was still alive, breathing hale and hearty. Then the man prepared another round of overdose and death injection and administered on his wife. After three hours, the woman was still alive. Then the man and the children angrily stormed the parlour and started pummeling the woman with cudgel and heavy objects. She died later not from the drugs and death injection, but from the heavy pummeling. What a society? What a bestial life? How can a sane husband join his children to kill his beloved wife simply because she was ill?  This is our tragedy.

Gradually this culture of death is being imbibed in Nigeria . Some Nigerian women now terminate the lives of their unborn deformed babies because they don’t want to give birth to deformed babies. We are in trouble. 1,500 years ago St. Augustine wrote that it is never licit to kill any human being, even if he/she wishes it. This truth has not changed today. It is senseless to terminate the lives of the terminally ill, physically challenged, infirm or the unborn simply because we feel that they are becoming a burden or liability to the society. We must have compassion on our fellow physically challenged and defenseless human beings. One of my friends in Surulere, Lagos today is a partially-crippled young man who always directs traffic in front of the National Stadium, Lagos . He is a very cheerful young man who understands the meaning of human existence. Every day he puts smiles on the faces of many angry motorists by waving at them.

If Eucharia Njideka Iyiazi, Lucy Ogochukwu Ejike, Godwin Joseph Mbakara, Casy Tibbs, Erin Popvich and others had been killed in abortion clinics or through euthanasia they would not have been alive today to excel at the 2008 Beijing Paralympics. At an open-air Mass in France recently, Pope Benedict XVI told the sick, infirm and physically-challenged not to despair or long for death in their sufferings and pains because even in sickness their dignity as human beings remains in tact. I agree with the Pope. God does not make mistakes. He has a purpose for keeping the sick, unborn, infirm and physically-challenged alive.