Paving my Journey of life by taking hard decision to checkmate negative narrative

By Godson Oledibe

On that fateful afternoon of March 10th, 1964; I decided to discharge myself from the Hospital after one of the Doctors Slapped my Father, for pleading with him to check me very well, as to ascertain why I wasn’t recovering. To him my Father was the problem because he was starving me and therefore, undermining his effort, and why dare him ask, that he should examine me properly. He said it with such audacity and even queried if my Father’s Family can train a Doctor. At that time, I had been sick for over ten days, wasn’t eating, looking frail and more sickly than recovering.A rain of anger fell on me as to why, my Father could be so inhumanely treated and insulted because of my inability to eat occasioned by loss of appetite and all other things that go with acute malaria. I was highly infuriated.

At this juncture, I jumped out of the bed in tears with my mind made up that, I was not going to continue in the Hospital, I told my Father “Papa bia kayi la ahum amigo nma” My Father let us go home I am fine and will not be sick again. My Father’s pleading fell on deaf ear, as I continued begging him in tears. This created a scene in the Hospital and my Father narrated what happened to everyone that gathered. As, their plea could not pacify me, my Father was allowed to take me home contrary to the Hospital policy. I was five years old, at the time but this incident, helped me to prepare me to stand up for my right and also became a voice for anyone, that, is unfairly treated, oppressed or abused.

From this point, I began to aspire to become an advocate for others and refuse to be unfairly treated by anyone. I made up my mind, I was not going to be a source of pain to anyone. For this reason, I decided to be become keenly interested to become a lawyer and a Journalist.

It therefore, goes without saying, that my coming to this professional Journalistic training, can only be called,” an Act of God ” God Who being all knowing and ABLE God is bringing my aspiration and ambition to a reality. I can only say, that, beyond the sky is my limit. I am very grateful to God, and COPDEM and DDM media for making this training possible and also free of charge all round.

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