Living with a disability in Nigeria has meant navigating inaccessible public spaces, costly prosthetic limbs and gaps in rehabilitation. Olamide Francis is a writer, author and former Nigerian journalist who now works in the media and communications sector in the UK. At five, he was knocked down by a commercial vehicle (Danfo) in Lagos, and mismanagement of the injuries led to an amputation at nine years old. Decades later, he says the system, which wasn’t designed with him in mind, hasn’t really changed, and he is now working behind the scenes to help people living with disabilities. This is Olamide’s story, as told to Orame.

I was five when the accident happened. It was a Sunday afternoon at Oke Ayo bus stop, just past Iju-Ishaga bus stop in Lagos, Nigeria. My parents had gone out, so I was left with a neighbour who could pass for family.

I was big for my age and behaved older than I was. People thought I was eight or nine then, and I think that was where my confidence came from. Looking bigger than others made me think I could dare and do everything older children did. 

The neighbour’s children were going to fetch water across a busy road, and I wanted to go with them. They didn’t want me tagging along, so they sent me inside to get my slippers because I was barefoot. By the time I came out, they had crossed the road and left me. I realised sending me to wear my slippers was a trick. They had no plan to take me along.

I chased after them. I made it past the first lane of traffic heading towards Iju Ishaga, but as I tried to cross the return lane, a commercial vehicle (Danfo) knocked me down. My leg was trapped underneath it. I lay there shouting and groaning.

Good Samaritans picked me up and took me to two nearby hospitals. They all turned me away for fear that I might die in their facility. My legs were dripping blood, and I was getting less and less conscious. I don’t remember arriving at the third hospital, but when I opened my eyes, my parents were beside me. The hospital gave me first aid and told my parents they couldn’t admit me. I needed to go to a general hospital, and fast.

At the general hospital, they put my leg in a Plaster of Paris (POP), and that was it. There was no real medical intervention. I was lying on that bed, literally dying.

A matron who was going on leave advised my parents that my condition was getting worse and that if I didn’t get better care in a few days, I might not be alive when she returned from her leave. Shortly after, a young doctor who used to stop by my bed to play with me and cheer me up came around. He looked at me and told my parents I needed a blood transfusion, and that he didn’t think I would survive another day if I didn’t get blood quickly. He also advised my parents that if they had any chance of getting me somewhere else, they should act onit. My parents took the advice. 

My parents rushed me to the National Orthopaedic Hospital in Igbobi, Yaba, Lagos. When the doctors cut the POP, the stench filled the room. My leg had rotted so badly that it no longer looked like a leg. It was more than deformed. Four of my toes were gone, and only the big one (hallux) remained. That was the beginning of my medical trials.

At Igbobi, they did a skin graft first to cover the rotten leg and then tried to see if I could walk on it. It was impossible. I spent many months in the hospital before I could even put that leg on the ground. Even then, the pain was unbearable.  Eventually, I was told the permanent solution was amputation, and that I needed to decide quickly because if I waited too long, I might lose the chance of a below-the-knee amputation.

My parents couldn’t bring themselves to do it. I was five, then six, and they kept thinking about what my life would look like as an amputee. I was discharged and went back to school with a walking stick, with wounds that never fully healed, and on painkillers. I was lean and exhausted. It took my parents almost four years to decide on the amputation, and I lived in severe pain all through that period. When they finally saw that the pain was unbearable for all of us, they agreed to the amputation. I was nine. Thankfully, we returned to the hospital in time for a below-the-knee amputation.

Escaping Self-Pity

When you are nine years old and realise you’re now an amputee, your world collapses inward. My confidence took a massive hit. I became terrified of socialising.

Children can be casually cruel. Every single day in school, my disability became the go-to for insults. If someone couldn’t win an argument with me, they brought up my leg. I remember hiding my prosthetic limb and my crutches because I didn’t want anyone to see them, but sometimes classmates would deliberately pull at my trousers to expose the prosthetic limb and laugh; as I grew older, I began to care less. I developed a thick skin. 

As time went on, something switched in me. I discovered the power of knowledge. I started reading everything I could find. I felt like my mind was in a prison, and knowledge was my way out.  

I remember reading about a US president who used a wheelchair and still led the country. I decided that if I knew as much as anyone who wasn’t disabled, my life would be easier and better. Knowledge was my way out of whatever prison this situation could put me in.

I wrote about some of my experiences navigating this phase and more in my recently published memoir, Orchestrated: Living Against The Odds. People ask me why I waited this long to tell my story. It is because I had become so comfortable in my own skin that I forgot my story could mean something to someone else. I had built a whole life around applied knowledge, and it had worked so well that I stopped thinking of myself as a person living with a disability. 

What I hated most was being treated differently. People saw my disability and assumed I was useless. So I never asked for special treatment. At school, if the teacher made late-comers kneel, I knelt. If the teacher flogged us, I took the same strokes as everyone else. I wanted as much independence as I could get. I wrote in my book that before rushing to help a person living with disability, ask them first if they need any help. Sometimes, they don’t see your gesture as help. I just wanted to be treated as equally as possible. 

Surviving an inaccessible country 

Mobility is important for an amputee, especially a child amputee like I was. And for most people, a prosthetic limb makes it better. But a prosthetic limb in Nigeria isn’t something you are given after amputation. At the government hospital, they hand you an invoice before measuring your stump. It’s cash and carry. My first one, around 2005, cost over ₦100,000. When I went back for an adjustment a few years later, I was still paying almost ₦100,000. The last time I priced one in a Nigerian hospital, it was over ₦250,000. I can’t imagine what the price will be today. Just last year, I helped someone get a simple polio calliper at a government hospital. We spent over ₦200,000, and it still wasn’t designed properly. I don’t think the person could use it.

Many people who want a prosthetic limb can’t afford it, so they just get crutches and get on with their lives. When I walk the streets of Lagos and see people with limb loss who could have been more mobile with a prosthetic, I tell myself the difference between them and me is technically just a prosthetic limb. Some street beggars resorted to begging because a lack of mobility aids left them with no choice. 

Let’s even say you get a prosthetic limb. Medicare care should not stop there, but it unfortunately does for regular Nigerians. What about rehabilitation? From my experience, there was no rehabilitation structure, no weeks of sessions on how to walk with a prosthetic limb or care for it. There’s also no one thinking about your mental health or that of your family. At best, they put you in front of a mirror after fitting; you walk up and down and get sent home to figure the rest yourself. I even learned to repair parts of my prosthetic limb myself when minor repair costs were unaffordable. 

In my book, I wrote that nobody should rush an amputee into a prosthesis because they have to be mentally ready first. Nobody in Nigeria was thinking about that. The health care system and people want you to just snap out of it after losing a part of yourself. I am currently working to fix this gap in care and support, especially for child amputees.

A world of better possibilities

I only understood how much was missing when I moved to the UK. Here, a prosthetic limb is free and optional if you get it through the government. They measure your stump, you go home, and it gets delivered to your house. They even ask whether you would love to swim or run with it so they can design it accordingly. There is also a rehabilitation programme to help you in that phase. Public buildings have lowered counters for wheelchair users. Buses and trains have ramps. In London, disabled people ride public transport for free and have priority public parking spaces.

It’s not perfect here, as there is still a lot to be done with policy implementation. But if Nigerians had even half of it, we would probably praise the government for decades to come.

Back home, you go to some banks, and there’s no ramp. Many public buildings have no ramps either. Some places are even designed with stairs only. Let’s not even go too far. The Nigerian High Commission Office in London has no provision for persons with disabilities. Not from the entrance or through the stages of service delivery. It is because it’s not ingrained in our national consciousness. 

Nigeria has a law against discrimination against persons with disabilities, but it only sits on paper. I think the real problem is orientation. We don’t see people with disabilities as something we have to plan for at every level. Very few things are designed with them, with us, in mind. A law means nothing if there are no consequences. If you build a bank or a school without a ramp, you should be forced to tear down that section and rebuild it, no matter the cost.

We should also look at the national budget. If allocations are not going in that direction, then it’s not a government priority. Charities and NGOs can only do their best. Only the government, directly or indirectly through an enabling environment, can change lives at scale.

The system can surely be better, but I have never let it limit me. I worked as a journalist, covering crime, protests and conflict, and many people never knew I had a disability.

I have worked at reputable national newspapers and media organisations and thrived. People told me I could never drive, and I am now a certified driver on the right (Nigeria) and left (UK) sides of the road.  Everything people doubted I could do, I have done. And many more to tick off my bucket list.

If I could speak to a nine-year-old me, I would tell him he will thrive and not let his physical condition place a stamp on him. It is just one chapter from his life’s voluminous book, and he shouldn’t let the current page decide the next chapters. And if he is in Nigeria, I would tell him not to let the system decide how far he goes.