Padawa, Sinsi and Wagu: Three Niger communities joined in misery find succour

The last and only ever government project in Padawa, Sinsi and Wagu communities of Niger State was done in 1980. With no medical facilities and bad roads, the communities have suffered losses of lives, high infant and maternal mortality rates . . . until recently. When in the rainy season of 2015, sixteen year-old Sanusi, […]

The last and only ever government project in Padawa, Sinsi and Wagu communities of Niger State was done in 1980. With no medical facilities and bad roads, the communities have suffered losses of lives, high infant and maternal mortality rates . . . until recently.

When in the rainy season of 2015, sixteen year-old Sanusi, and his friend left their homes in Padawa, Niger State, to attend school in Lambata, they had dreams of becoming something great in the future. They and their dreams were swept away in a flood and their corpses were discovered days later down the river.

Malam Muktar Aminu, Sanusi’s father recalls that it there had been a heavy downpour that Wednesday.

The resultant flood caused the youngsters to lose their track while crossing the river and were washed away.

Such tales are common in Padawa, Sinsi and Wagu communities in Niger State.

The three communities in Gurara Local Government, and like most rural communities across Nigeria, they suffer extreme deprivation and neglect by all tiers of government in terms of basic necessities.

Although located about five kilometers from the burgeoning Lambata, the nearest town in Gurara Local Government area, Padawa is entirely cut off . The only access road to Lambata is a bush path which, this time of the year, is overgrown with grasses, making it difficult for locals to travel even with a bicycle.

Communities around the area had come together to construct makeshift bridges which hardly withstand the currents at the peak of the rainy season and always get washed away, according to the Village Head of Padawa, MalamTanko Musa.

They have to create an alternative route to avoid the river altogether, stretching the distance to Lambata. Even this suffers the fate of the main access road during the rainy season as it is always covered by shrubs, while parts of it get washed away.

“Without a hospital for the sick, a market to sell our farm produces; and schools for our children, we have to depend on Lambata for these needs,” the Village Head explained.

Daily Trust learnt that the community last benefited from a government in 1980. Yet political office seekers troop in during campaigns, where they make promises, win elections and never return until another election year, Musa lamented.

They depend on traditional birth attendants with consequent high maternal and child mortality rate.

He reels out names of such women, while counting on his fingers. With the assistance of his Waziri, Malam Suleiman Mohammed, they arrive at a figure of nine women who have died between 2014 and 2017. They have however lost counts of the number of stillbirths.

The Village Head of Wagu Community Malam Muhammed and representatives of Sinsi also recount the same tales of woes and deprivation.

Wagu, like Padawa, presents a pathetic state despite its closeness to Gawu-Babaginda, Gurara Local Government headquarters. Unlike Padawa, water sources are few and far, forcing residents, mostly women and children to trek long distances in search of water.

The Village Head said that children get to school very late as they have to travel to access water before returning to prepare for school on week days.

“It was a stressful undertakings,” he said.

School provided no respite. The block of three classrooms was in dilapidated condition with the roof almost caving in, the community leaders said.

The classrooms were inadequate, prompting the school to run two shifts.

“Our people have to travel as far as Gawu-Babaginda and even Lambata and Suleja for medicare,” Malam Mohammed said.

However, fortune seems to be smiling the way of the communities and others like them through the Community and Social Development Project the (CSDP), a World Bank assisted Development Project in partnership with the Niger State Government that supports the provision of infrastructural facilities to the rural poor.

CSDP, according to the Acting General Manager, Niger State Office, Alhaji Yusuf Ahmed Usman, is intervening in 30 States of the Country and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).

He said the Agency has provided such supports to more than 300 communities across all the 25 local government areas of Niger state.

At Padawa, the Village Head took Daily Trust on tour of the six-kilometer road linking the community to Lambata with an enthusiasm which portrays the depth of his feelings and gratitude.

“We can’t thank them enough,” he said, “We don’t need anybody’s money. All we crave is to better our lot through infrastructure such as this.”

Daily Trust observed that apart from grading the road, CSDP also reconstructed the mini bridge and culverts to channel the flow of flood water.

Padawa will soon also boasts of a healthcare centre.

However the boreholes projects have been completed with three interconnecting hand pumps in three locations to meet the community’s water need.

The same micro projects are replicated in Wagu and Sinsi communities.

“We are now enjoying clean portable water at our door steps; we can fetch the water any time of the day with no difficulty at all and our children don’t go to school late any more,” Mrs  Ladi John, women leader of Wagu, said.

Daily Trust learnt that the choice of projects of need was made by the communities’ members themselves.

For the late Sanusi and his friends, this life saving intervention might have come three years too late, but the others still living in these places, their lives will never be the same.