38 Year-Old Blind Graduate Explained How He Lived In Public Toilet For Four Years

Alone in the library of the Nigeria Society for the Blind, Lagos, a young man sat, deeply engrossed in reading a textbook on public relations practice in Nigeria. Except one moved closer to him, one might never know that the man, who was reading the words so fluently and swiftly, is blind.

Abioye Suraj was born on July 1, 1977, but in 1980, he lost his sight, after suffering from measles. Two years after this incident, when he turned five, his father died. In 2004, his mother – one of the six his father married – also died, but he was not aware of her death until 2006.

In 2003, a year before his mother died, he was pushed out of the home – by his own brothers. Suraj, the last born of his mother’s six children, told Saturday PUNCH that they complained of being ashamed a$$ociating with a blind person.
“So they pushed me out of the home and I became a nobody. They were ashamed that I am blind, and my mother could do nothing about it,” he said.

Suraj indeed suffered a great deal – first, he had no place to call a home, so he took to the streets, living in a public toilet in Obalende for more than four years; second, since he had no one to take care of him, he resorted to begging so as to put food in his stomach.

But instead of lamenting about his plight all day long, Suraj said he was determined to make his life useful, so he took to interacting with sighted and learned people around him. Through that, he developed a pa$$ion for education. The result is – he sat for the General Certificate of Education, and he pa$$ed. He sat for the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination, he pa$$ed. And today, he owns a Higher National Diploma in Ma$$ Communication.

Unfortunately, he has been denied employment by most organisations he applied to.

He said, “My father died in 1982 and I lost my mother in 2004. Since then, things have not been easy. A year before my mother died, I was pushed out of the family by my own siblings, so I was not at home when she died. I later heard in 2006, three years after she died. My father had six wives and my mother was the second in position. I was just abandoned somewhere – by my own blood brothers. They also shared my father’s property, but I have not been given what is mine – all because I am blind.

“When my brothers pushed me out, I took to sleeping inside a public toilet in Obalende because there was no place to go again. Everyone abandoned me. I was living in the toilet until it was demolished by former Lagos State Governor Babatunde Fashola.

For more than four years, I stayed there. I took to begging, but I knew that was not where I was going to end my life.
“When the toilet was demolished, I heard about the Nigeria Society for the Blind and I traced it.

I discussed with the people here and I was admitted. I wanted to write the GCE and so I came to the NSB to use their library, and I met the librarian, Mr. Clement Obasoro. He had pity on me and since then I’ve been living with him. He taught me how to use the Braille system to learn and thankfully, I learned.

“I used the library books here and thankfully, I learned a lot. I sat for the GCE and thank God, I made it. I sat for the UTME and I pa$$ed and I schooled at the Lagos State Polytechnic, where I obtained an HND in Ma$$ Communication. I have always determined to become someone useful in life, even while I was living in the public toilet in Obalende.”

Suraj added that this determination kept him going in life.

“I always thought that if I committed suicide, nothing good would come out of it. So I endured and kept myself busy. I mixed with the sighted people and never saw myself as a useless person. I have always believed that with life, things can get better. I entertained myself a lot, even when I was in the toilet. I didn’t and still don’t get bothered much. Things can improve, I always think,” he said.