In the World of the Elderly
The journey of life is in stages. It starts with infancy, childhood, teenage years, youth, middle age and then to old age. Attaining the last category is what has eluded many in this country where the average life expectancy is forty-seven years. The United Nations, in its resolution 45/016 in 1990, set aside October 1st […]
The journey of life is in stages. It starts with infancy, childhood, teenage years, youth, middle age and then to old age. Attaining the last category is what has eluded many in this country where the average life expectancy is forty-seven years.
The United Nations, in its resolution 45/016 in 1990, set aside October 1st as the International Day of Older Persons but because the date coincides with our Independence anniversary, it is usually marked in Nigeria on October 2nd. Member states are obliged by the International statue to celebrate the Day as its observance will re-awaken the consciousness of governments of member states and her citizenry, regarding the immense contributions of the older persons to development and to issues related to their wellbeing. Weeks after marking their Day, our senior citizens took us on a journey into what their world is like.
Describing what it is like to be an elderly person, a resident of the Amazing Grace Foundation Old People’s Home, Mr Mba Chuks Godfrey said, “it is a glorious experience and that is why we all wish and pray to attain old age. When you are an elderly person, people love to be around you and assist you. It is also a thing of joy to live long to be an elderly person because people will like to come to you to seek advise, learn lessons of life, seek prayers and blessings and also give you gifts, among many other things.”
Mama Diyi Ogunyemi, another resident, who is 72 years old simply said it is good to be an elderly person.
“Everything about it is good,” she said.
Senator Eze Darlington Ajoku, the International Co-coordinator of Graceful Ageing Fellowship, a faith based Non-Governmental organization made up of hundreds of elderly men and women, said “the elderly are in two categories: the young elderly are those between the age of 50 and 70 years and the older elderly who are 70 years and above. When we look at the life of elderly people in this country you will find there are two categories. Those who can afford the means of livelihood and those who cannot afford the means of livelihood. The first category maybe living a normal life in the sense that they have their needs met but those in the second category don’t lead normal lives, either because of retirement, like the retired civil servants whose pensions are not being paid and are going through a very hard time because their basic needs of food, shelter and medical attention are not being met or those who are living in rural areas.
“Some elderly people go through psychological problem without any one understanding them. People just think that if you give them food you have met their needs. No. You can imagine the life of a man who used to call the shots in a house. Because he is now old and has no money or anything to support any body, and probably living with his children, who may see him as a liability, he goes through a psychological trauma because ignored. In the morning he will be abandoned and if they do him the favor of bringing him to the city, and the man or woman who cannot speak English, is locked in the house with the television. For that elderly person it is a difficult life to live.
“Some of them want to be listened to, they want their children to sit down and listen. Therefore it is important that the youths who live with their elderly persons need to try and live in the world of those people in order to make this people happy. So you need to bend backwards to make an elderly woman or man happy. You need to give him attention, show you are listening to him, be concerned about his welfare, even if you cannot do anything for him, talk to the person. The older persons need to be understood and cared for. The elderly are generally abandoned even when in the midst of people this is an area the elderly suffer in addition to not having his needs not met especially these days that all you hear is embezzlement of pension funds where civil servants who have worked hard all their lives cannot get their money or may only be getting a value that cannot provide for them.”
Hajiya Aisha Suleiman, who is living with her son and his family in Karu, Abuja, says she is about 80 years old and describes the experience thus “I am happy and full of joy to reach old age. I know many of my mates when we were children, but many of them are long dead. It is a very good life, especially if you have children who love and always take care of you. So I will call on children to always take proper care of their aged parents and God will bless them.”
Our interactions with a number of elderly persons reveal that there are a myriad of problems confronting them, ranging from loneliness, poverty, illnesses, neglect and most salient is the issue of the payment of their pension.
Speaking during the event to mark the International Day of Older Persons organized by the Ministry of Women Affairs and Social Development, pioneer Minister of Women Affairs and Social Development, who is also a senior citizen, said many children today do not take care of their elderly ones, such that some children even end up cutting of the head of their parents for ritual purposes or just to be relieved of the responsibility of caring for them.
Senator Eze said one of the problems confronting the elderly is the lack of companionship and there is need to create it for them.
“Some of them have lost their spouses or their children have all left home and are no longer with them. It is important for the elderly people to be brought into an environment where they can socialize with other people in their age category and that is why even though some people have condemned the idea of old people’s home saying that it is an abandonment of your relations we are getting to where the concept of old people’s home may come into force.
“In the past we all depended on the extended family system where our parents care for us when we are young and we are expected to care for them when they are old but that is not happening anymore either due to economic reason or a change in the culture of the younger ones who are trying to imbibe foreign culture, the elderly are no longer cared for by members of their families so we need to have recreation centres for elderly people where they can be dropped in the morning to interact with older people from other places and then picked later.
“There may be language barrier since they are from different tribes but the irony is that when you bring elderly people like one Yoruba, one Ibo, or one Hausa together they will find away to communicate. When my mother visits me and I see her talking to my gate man who doesn’t understand Ibo and my mother does not speak English I will just be wondering what they are discussing. You will and see both of them laughing and wonder how they are communicating.
“My organization is planning to have a recreation centre for older persons in Abuja. We have spoken to Ministry of Women Affairs and I now looking for land to be able to provide a place within that facility for games, medical attention, food and educational things so that when they come we can fellowship with one another and at the end their relations pick them up like you do in crèche school, a starting place for little children.”
Mr Femi Agbebunmi, a retired civil servant and National Financial Secretary of the Association of Federal Public Service Retirees gave us a picture of their plight.
“How many children these days take good care of their parents at their old age? If you go out on a research to confirm how aged people are taken care of you will cry, you will weep, you will be afraid to get old. You birth to a child, train him or her, later he or she forgets you the parents that brought them to life, they go home only in December and buy a bag of rice or tin of turkey oil and dump them there. Is that for the 365 days? You see the elderly always in tattered dress with no one caring for them.”
Speaking on the issue of pension, Agbebunmi describes it thus, “When you retire in this country it is as if you have gotten your death penalty. It is as if you have been sent to go and die. You are no longer seen as viable or useful and any entitlement belonging to you as of the time you are in service will not be accepted for any processing. We pensioners in this country suffer lack of pension payment from month to month. Payment for one month spills either to the third month or at the best the end of the second month. Like I got my August pay last week and last week was already October and it shouldn’t be so. I was in Ghana recently and met my friends from that country and there you see that there is usually a home prepared for retirees and it is a place of the retiree’s choice where they are well taken care of. We are several times bigger than Ghana and any country in West Africa but we don’t do that rather we take joy in defrauding the system. If countries like Serea-Lone that has had war, or Ghana have such facilities, how much more Nigeria?
“Most of the people who are the administrators of our pension only target enriching their pockets and it absolutely wrong. God doesn’t like that. They enrich themselves to the extent that they barricaded themselves with uniform personnel like the MOPOL and soldiers in a country that is not run by military to deny us access to them. Most of us come here in tattered form, when you see them you sympathize with them and don’t know when you start looking for something to give them to transport back to their homes. At the end of the sufferings, the payment they came for they never get them. We have not accessed the consolidated salary given to other civil servant almost two years ago till date. Justice delayed is justice denied. We keep on pressing for things that our are our legitimate right and should be given to us freely.”
Corroborating Agbebunmi’s complaints of none and delayed payment of pension, Mrs Sulaimon Florence another retiree, said “the way our pensioners are being handled in this country, if it is not resolved then Nigeria is in big trouble. Pensioners should be treated the way our counterparts are being treated abroad. I thank God for giving me good children that is what is helping me if not it would have been very bad.”
Special Adviser to the President on Social Welfare, Sarah Pane decried the neglect of older persons in the villages. “Many of their children have gone to town and abandoned their aged ones and don’t care for them. Some think it is a stigma for specialized homes and institutions to take care of them but how much care do we really give our aged ones? Some only go into their rooms to drop food and go out. Let us be realistic and stop being hypocritical about how institutions can take care for our aged people,” she said.
Director of Amazing Grace Foundation Old People’s Home, Mrs Nike Akanbi said those in the country who do not believe in taking their parents to the old people’s homes are only punishing them. She argued: “When they mingle with their mates they tend to be happier and more lively. Some of us keep our aged mothers with house helps, this woman maybe diabetic, hypertensive or cannot control her pee, the house help may pretend in your presence but when you go they let them to stay in their shit, pee on their body, eat their vomit, but in an old people’s home each inmate has his or her own son or daughter. We call people taking care of them that because anybody that pack shit or wee-wee they are more than daughters. Some daughters cannot do that for their parents.”
She further said some children do not understand their elderly ones, especially when they begin to misbehave or loss their senses.
“They will say they are misbehaving and when they are sick they just buy them drugs but in an old people’s home there are doctors who check them regularly,” she added.
She called on government to establish old people’s home and also support philanthropic persons and organizations who have set up homes because they incur expenses, in caring for the food, drugs and general care of inmates of the homes.
Femi Agebunmi, on his part, said it is good for the homes to be provided but it should be optional for the aged to go there.
“Those who believe they can get the best there should be taken there and if otherwise wherever they want.”
He said the homes should also be managed by the elderly themselves, who know their own plight and not left in the hands of the younger generation to avoid a repeat of what is happening in their pension payment.
How then can the challenges of the elderly be addressed?
Mr Mba Chuks Godfrey, resident in the Amazing Grace Foundation Old People’s Home, said the way life can be made better for the elderly is to keep them in an old people’s home. He called on government and organizations to support the homes and on people in the villages or metropolis to bring their elderly ones to the old people’s home.
For Senator Eze Ajoku as we go through a cultural change we may begin to look at old people’s home or organizations that take care of the elderly.
“When you go to America, you find a lot of small organizations in homes with only six or seven inmates in a home at most. The concept of old people’s home used to be like a barracks where you just dump the elderly with nobody caring for them, that concept is very harsh but if we start the home concept where you don’t have more than ten old persons in an environment then we will be able to effectively care for them.
“The medical attention being giving to the older persons in the country is not sufficient. There is what we call aging sicknesses .This maybe non-communicable in nature and it can be problems from the eyes, arthritis, hypertension and diabetics, you find about four or five sicknesses that beseech the elderly, and most of these end up in either stroke or heart attack. Some of them also have prostrate issues. It is time for government to recognize this aging sicknesses and either make drugs on them available to the elderly free of charge or at subsidized rates just as it is helping those who are living with HIV/AIDS and sickle cell. The aged cannot afford to look for what to eat and drugs at the same time. Old age shouldn’t be a burden that is why we teach our members how to age gracefully spiritually, mentally and with physical health such as exercises, eating right among others.”
He said: “My appeal is that government should come to the aid of the elderly because everyone is praying to live long and therefore those who God has answered their prayers and given them long life should not be abandoned either by family, community or government.”
Dr Ogugua Osi-Ogbu, a Geriatrician and Head of the Department of Internal Medicine, National Hospital, Abuja said older persons who are healthy can be kept at home with their children but need to be taken out to meet and interact with their fellow old people from time to time and those are sick should be kept in a facility where there are trained nurses like in western countries there are dementia wards that can take care of them. She said the elderly should not just be dumped anywhere as they could stray away, but a community based residence and forum of trained people that have expertise to take care of them and understand them and such should be established in the country..
On the way out of the pension quagmire, Hon. Geoffery Chima, the National Vice Chairman of the Association of Federal Public Service Retirees (AFPSR) advised government to call for a stakeholders meeting which will involve retirees or pensioners and the Nigerian Union of Pensioners so that they will be able to tell them what they want and how it can be achieved. He also said giving the elderly their own ministry will ensure they are properly taken care of. He called for the eradication of the Pension Task Force System that is presently in place.
In his words, “They should remember that tomorrow they will also retire. So what we are shouting now is to make that place a reasonable place so that when they too retire they will come to find it a good place.”
Ambassador Judith Attah called for the harmonization of pension for retirees, help for the aged and destitute who are forced to beg because of poverty and also assistance for aged people with leprosy living in many parts of the country.
People in other countries like Rush Limbaugh said “I have found it to be true that the older I’ve become, the better my life has become.” While Frank Lloyd Wright stated, “The longer I live the more beautiful life becomes.” Haven travelled through the world of our elderly in this country, is it not time to put a smile on their faces by making it better, so that the younger generation can also echo the word of William Shakespeare “With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come.”