The Politics of Polio in Northern Nigeria

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Plate 1. Health worker giving drops of oral polio vaccine to a child during a Sub-National Immunization Day exercise in Zaria City. Photograph by E. P. Renne, 2 June 2009. Plate 2. Gamji Players performing a play called Shan Inna (Polio). A health worker attempts to enter a house to administer the oral polio vaccine but is stopped by the child’s father. The child is subsequently paralyzed by polio. The small boy standing offstage to the back right was incorporated into the performance. Photograph by E. P. Renne, Samaru, 20 July 2005. Plate 3. Painting advertising a bookshop specializing in Islamic literature along the main road to the market in Zaria City. A woman is depicted both wearing a hijab and reading a book titled Hijab, which refers to the expansion of Islamic education for married women, beginning in the 1970s. Photograph by E. P. Renne, Zaria City, 1996. Plate 4. Malam Husseini, a popular Sufi healer, in his study at home in Kano. Photograph by E. P. Renne, Kano, 23 July 2006. Plate 5. Alhaji Garba Hassan, who contracted paralytic polio as a young child in Zaria, traveled throughout West Africa helping to organize associations for the lame. Photograph by E. P. Renne, Yakasai, August 2005. Plate 6. Malam Abdullahi Muhammed and his son, Musa Muhammed, at home in Anguwar Jussi. Musa Muhammed was paralyzed by polio when he was three years old in 1985. Through his father’s efforts and his own initiative, he obtained an education and is now teaching computer science at Nuhu Bamalli Polytechnic. Photograph by E. P. Renne, Zaria City, 16 July 2006. Plate 7. Two physically disabled workers at the Kano Polio Victims Trust Association (a member of PHAN, the Physically Handicapped Association of Nigeria) workshop in Kano, constructing tricycles (keke guragu) designed for those whose legs have been paralyzed by polio. Photograph by E. P. Renne, Kano, August 2005. Plate 8. Shirazu Moru was born in the mid-1970s and contracted polio when he was about one year old; childhood vaccinations were not routinely provided at that time. His parents took him to the Yendi Hospital in northeastern Ghana, where he was given injections, after which he became paralyzed in both legs. Despite his disability, his parents supported him through primary school, although he stopped attending school after their deaths. He was later sent to the University of Ghana Teaching Hospital at Korle Bu for nine months of physical therapy. He now works as a tailor, sewing handwoven cloth strips together to construct the smocks for which the Dagomba are famous, and he regularly takes his daughter for vaccinations during National Immunization Days. Photograph by E. P. Renne, Yendi, May 2009. ...