A Facebook user, Jaafar Jaafar
shared this touching post written by Hafiz Bobby Usman:
"That was
also how Monica was hit by a car on the road to Gwarinpa just after the Life
Camp roundabout here in Abuja, and her body left in the middle of the road with
roadside traders going about their businesses and some cars actually driving
over her body. When I drove up and saw the situation, I parked my car, stepped
onto the road to halt the traffic and asked some of the people there to help me
get the body off the road.
"That was when everyone started rushing to help. We managed to get in touch with her family who live just across the road but had no clue what was happening a few metres away, and the Life Camp police station who sent two of their officers to accompany us to the hospital. "We took the body in my car to the Wuse General Hospital and that was where another drama ensued.
"The mortuary attendant demanded we pay
N25,000 to, according to him, buy chemicals to embalm the body, etc before he
would accept the body. I told him and the doctor in charge point blank that we
would not pay a kobo since the government had already provided for that in the
hospital's budget! I raised so much hell in the hospital that night that they
eventually had to cave in and accept the body just so peace could return! After
that, we went back to the police station where I wrote a statement.
"I was so disturbed that night that I
couldn't sleep so I got the day's Sunday Trust newspaper to read. That was when
I saw that my Oga, Tope Fasua's Global Connections column that day was on the
menace of pedestrians being knocked down by motorists on Abuja roads. I sent
him a text message narrating that night's incident. The next morning, I
received a phone call from one of her brothers to inform me that they had
retrieved the body from the morgue and were already on the way to their
hometown of Zangon Kataf in Kaduna State for the funeral. "The following
week, I stopped in Zaria on my way back to Abuja from Birnin Kebbi.
As soon as I
switched on my phone, text messages asking God to bless me, etc started coming
in in torrents from numbers I didn't know. Not knowing what was happening, I
bought a copy of the day's Sunday Trust only to discover that my Oga above had
published my text message to him the previous week in his column of that week!
"The point is when you see something wrong being done, try as much as
possible to change it. Don't wait for someone else when you can do it yourself,
because everyone else is waiting for someone else. And in the end, nothing gets
done while everyone keeps complaining about how bad things are"
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