AMIDU ARIJE
While many of his mates were all over the town begging for alms, Wale Alake, a cripple since childhood, keeps himself busy cleaning the dirt on Ikeja -Along Bridge and feeds his family from the daily returns
Fate, like they say, has two sides; it works for some while it stands strongly against others. That’s exactly what the story of Wale Alake, a 37-year-old man from Osun State is all about. As a child, his mother told him that he was a lively child, who also made his parents and everyone around him happy. He was neither a boring nor a dull child.
Unfortunately, much as everyone thought he would have impacted on his world, fate had decided to play a fast but contrary one on him. It inflicted him with an illness that made him grow to be restricted to the corners of the roads where he has to struggle to do what he would have done swiftly should he be an able – bodied man like his contemporaries.
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Wale Alake, according to his pathetic story, which he related to The Nigerian Xpress, became crippled not by an accident or other fault of his but to the attack of polio disease that dealt a devastating blow on him when he was 12 years old.
“I was not born crippled; it happened as a result of polio I suffered when I was 12 years old. Before that time and before the death of my father, I was schooling at Eleye, Ibadan in Oyo State. After his death, my mother came to Lagos and I joined her later; that was about 12 years ago. Though she had gone back to Ibadan, I chose to stay back in Lagos and I rented an apartment where I stay now,” he stated.
Resigning to fate, the father of three children took to cleaning of the stair cases of the pedestrian bridge at the Ikeja-Along bus stop in Ikeja area of the state. This effort of his, however, does not go without a reward. But while some passers-by appreciate him by dropping what could pass as their widow’s mite, some others reel out hot abusive words on him for assuming a duty that was not assigned to him.
He said: “Some people like what I am doing but we have others who look down on it and abuse me as they pass. They see no reason for what I am doing. Rather they hiss and say all kinds of things, as they pass. Some would be angry and ask why I am sweeping on their bodies but like I said, there are some who appreciate what I am doing and would say ‘you are trying o for doing this’ and would give me money.”
When asked why he has chosen to do this job, Wale Alake told The Nigerian Xpress that he enjoys what he is doing and that he prefers it to going round to beg people for a leaving.
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“I just like to do something, I don’t like to sit down in one place and be begging for alms from people. I know that if I am doing this and I do not beg people, they will give me something for what I am doing. One thing about this that has made me continue is that If I had left it undone the place would have remained dirty because it does not look like there are sweepers assigned to the place.” he said.
With the daily returns, however, Alake runs his family. According to him, he goes home daily with at least between 2,000 and 2,500.
“I receive from N5 -100 and above. At the end of the day, sometimes, I go home with between N2000 and N2500 per day. I have three kids; this is where I get the money to send them to school and feed the family,” he said.
Alake appealed to the government to absorb him into the state’s Environmental Ministry where he can sweep and get a steady monthly income. “If government can help by employing me to sweep and be paid, I will be very happy. My family will be happy; my children will be afforded the opportunity of a better and normal life that I am denied of,” he pleaded.
