‘I feel bad anytime people mistake me for a beggar’

The first time I met Mr Olanrewaju Garba was when I was looking for a shop to purchase clippers for my son and the search took me to his workshop on the popular Taiwo Road in Ilorin where Igbo electronics traders dominate. As a first-time customer to the area, I was attracted to the endless […]

The first time I met Mr Olanrewaju Garba was when I was looking for a shop to purchase clippers for my son and the search took me to his workshop on the popular Taiwo Road in Ilorin where Igbo electronics traders dominate.

As a first-time customer to the area, I was attracted to the endless flow of customers in and out of Garba’s workshop. But that wasn’t exactly what first caught my curiosity. What did  was that after many minutes of riveting my focus on Garba’s sitting posture on his bench as he manoeuvred to get his working tools, I realised he was physically challenged in the limbs.

Garba is a technician who repairs home and kitchen appliances such as washing machines, blenders, microwaves, electric cookers, gas cookers, fans, stabilizers and iron repairs. He is not into repairing refrigerators and air conditioners, though.

As he narrated his story, he was born physically challenged, the second of five children. All efforts to make him walk as a child proved abortive and that gave his family a serious concern, as he was the only infirm of the lot.

“I was born with this disability some 38 years ago. My parents tried all they could. I learnt they took me to so many places for a solution to make me walk, but nothing changed my condition,” Garba said, as he continued with his repair of a washing machine.

After accepting their fate with philosophical equanimity on their son’s condition, Garba’s parents proceeded to equip him with education to enable him cope with the challenges of life. They enrolled him at the popular Oja Gboro Primary School, Ilorin.

That was, however, as far as he could go. “I would have loved to further my education but my parents could not afford it, so I stopped. But I later decided to learn a trade that can bring food on my table and take care of my needs.

“I decided to do this because of the experience I always encountered each time I went out. Most people usually mistook me for a beggar and offered me alms. Of course, I always rejected the alms and would politely tell them I wasn’t a beggar,” he said.

Garba, who has been his own boss for over 15 years repairing home appliances, said when he was an apprentice at Okesuna in Ilorin, he immersed himself into thorough understanding of the craft.

He said, “I was humble and attentive. They all liked me. Like the other apprentices with my boss, I was also running errands for the senior apprentices, despite my disability. I was using the walking sticks to go about. I have been using them all my life and still use them now. But my humility then paid off and this is where I am today.”

When asked why he is not using a wheel chair, Garba lamented he could not afford one and wouldn’t mind getting one from anybody who wishes to help him.

He has been able to impact some people’s lives in his own way imparting his skills to a number of young ones. He enthused three apprentices had graduated from his workshop, while seven others are still learning the ropes. He added that some of the apprentices live in his house.

Garba said, “My work has helped me in many ways. I have met a lot of good, important people through this work, who, ordinarily, I might not have met if I was begging. Even if I had met them as a beggar, they would only have regarded me with disdain and wouldn’t have accorded me the recognition they do now.

“It may interest you to know that many of the hotels and dry cleaning businesses in Ilorin are my clients. I repair most of their machines and God has been helpful. My customers hardly complain about my work.

When they do, I listen to them and make corrections. I don’t ever argue or exchange words with them.

The physically-challenged chief executive officer of his own business boasts of his own house and a car. He is giving his children, and even some four others not his but living with him, higher education he couldn’t benefit from. “I make sure they learn my work,” he didn’t forget to add.

Garba has five children from his marriage. He recalled his harrowing experience when he was searching for a wife. “It was difficult getting a woman to marry because of my condition. I encountered a lot of challenges.

“But God eventually gave me my own woman, who accepted me the way I am, through my younger sister. She brought my wife and we discussed and accepted each other. We courted for one year before we married. Her family received me with love when we met them,” he said.

Garba lamented what he called government’s neglect of the physically challenged, saying all his efforts to get help from government have not yielded any positive result.

“Government should come to the aid of hardworking physically challenged people like me by helping us. They can even build factories where we can teach others and earn money from the service. I am not begging for money, but I know I can benefit from some of the government intervention programmes. I can help the National Directorate of Employment (NDE) train some of the youths they are training in my kind of work and they will pay. Whatever I get there will still help me in a way.

“For other physically challenged individuals like me, I urged them to learn crafts. A lot of them are intelligent and should not be secluded from the world,” he remarked.

When asked how he was coping in the midst of Igbo traders, he replied they have actually been helpful, unmindful that he was the only Yoruba man among them.

Being physically challenged, according to Garba, does not limit the heights one can attain. “I am a good example. Only my legs are paralysed, not my brains. I am planning to buy my second car very soon, which my wife will be using,” he said.