Rights Of The Lunatics
Underdeveloped villages do not mean underdeveloped villagers – Odimegwu Onwumere .
Enjoyment and sorrow has gurgled through my veins. There is chasm cut deep in my mind, my thought. The storm seems not abating. There is flashflood of ruins caused by our intimidators we regard and call our leaders. The flashflood has caused an indelible mark.
I have always been shocked, shocked to the marrow. Not for the sufferings of our people, not for the injustices in the Ivory Towers, not for the shambled State we call our own, but for the rights of the lunatics, how lunatics are assaulted in our environment on a daily basis.
For profound reason and attraction, in our environment, you see heaps of refuse. If you are a new comer, you might think that our environmental agencies heap them. But you would be dead wrong! They are heaped by our lunatics; lunatics we all see, and they beg for our help, from their look, but we could not help.
We have two kinds of lunatics in our midst: We have those in the Ivory Tower who heap heaps of our money and wealth that could help change the fate of these begging lunatics of ours to themselves. And we have those whose interest concern me so much, those that are walking haplessly on our streets we regard as ‘confirmed’ lunatics. But, they laugh at us in their hearts for abandoning them to the fate they could no longer help.
Some of these lunatics look healthy that if our governments were mettle in taking care of their citizenry, these lunatics could be cured. But rather than help them, they are abandoned to walk in the open, have no home, being scorched by the sun, and rained by rain. Worst, children and adults woe them when they offend, and sometimes, you see them with significant bruises. They feed from the gutters and from the heaps of garbage. They drink from muddy water and wear shreds, so dirty, as clothes.
Lunatics, are they not our people? Are they not sons and daughters of ours? Rarely do you see someone who accepts being a father, mother, brother, sister, cousin, niece or nephew of the lunatics, except when heated by vehicle, you see them come out to claim ownership, because money could be paid by the driver, in the case of death.
We hear of and see psychiatric hospitals built everywhere around us, while a mammoth of lunatics still occupy our surroundings at the contempt glare and abandon of us, to be roaming around.
This contemptuous act is injustice to the rights of the lunatics, or do they not suppose to have rights? What is the reason for the establishment of the lunatics’ hospitals whereas the numbers of lunatics we have on our ways are far greater than those lunatics that perhaps are confined in these hospitals?
If a driver could pack wrongly or un-wrongly on the road and you see crowd of Road Transport Workers or touts bounce on the driver to park well, and sometimes they fine the driver, why cannot these hospitals not in the same spirit arrest lunatics on our roads and keep them until they are rehabilitated?
I am not talking about the hapless destitute on our roads we only give paltry sums as alms. I am talking about madmen and madwomen we abandoned, that are not of any economic sabotage to us; we cannot crave for the heart to render a curing help to. Among the lunatics and us, we can now see who is mad!
The false idea or belief of abandoning the lunatics on his or her own to waste was against humanity; was against the etymology of mankind. This abandonment shows how disorderly our State is. I have not even mentioned a lot of our people in the homes who have not taken to the streets yet, being frustrated by hunger and hardship.
The common belief we have is that any mad person may have smoked hashish, disappointed his fiancé or fiancée and a spell was cast on him or her, was an occult member. We forgot that stress could cause madness. Recently, journalists are asked or admonished to go for psychiatric tests. And one wonders if we have the above beliefs, is it not sane men that impregnate the females’ lunatics? You may call them ritualists, or randy men, or drunks. But, I am saying that lunatics should also have their rights.
Odimegwu Onwumere, an author and a poet,
writes from Oyigbo, Rivers State, Nigeria.
