The Politics of Polio in Northern Nigeria

5. Polio, Disability, and Begging

5. Polio, Disability, and Begging Did He not find you poor and enrich you? So do not oppress the orphan, and do not drive the beggar away, And keep recounting the favours of your Lord. —Qur’an 92:8–11 In the attempt to find work for thousands of unemployed who were healthy and normal, it is not surprising that little was done for the rehabilitation of the handicapped. —Schram, A History of the Nigerian Health Services You are normal only if you are well-educated. —Sarkin Guragu Zazzau Like concepts of disease and medicine, the perception and treatment of those who have been paralyzed by polio in Northern Nigeria reflects Islamic ideals and practices. Indeed, what it means to be disabled, as well as what it means to be “normal” (in the sociological sense used by Goffman [1963, 5]), reflects the larger social and cultural context of a community. In Nigeria, how a physical disability such as lameness is experienced is greatly influenced by ethnicity. In Yoruba society , lame family members were until recently kept at home for fear of the family ’s reputation being spoiled, while in Hausa society, disability was seen as something from God and was not, in and of itself, socially stigmatizing.1 This view of disability has other implications as well. For just as disability is something from God, so is good fortune, so that individuals are encouraged to share their wealth—to give alms (sadaka) to the poor and to those whose physical condition makes it difficult to work. Indeed, charitable alms-giving, both the informal sadaka and the institutionalized zakkat (alms given during Ramadan), is one of the five primary obligations of Islam (Wall 1988, 101–103). A consequence of this principle is that until recently, most parents of children paralyzed by polio expected that their male children would earn their livelihood as beggars. This social dynamic is clarified by an examination of the ways that the lame (guragu), whose disability is often a result of polio (Daniel 1978), have been imagined and treated within the larger Hausa context of alms-giving and begging. Men and women who contracted polio during the early 1930s had different experiences, reflecting local gender mores. For boys, growing up lame at that time often meant learning how to beg and traveling in Nigeria and beyond as part of the Hausa trade network, which was facilitated by the building of the colonial railroad and Polio, Disability, and Begging 69 road system. For girls, it meant staying at home until marriage brought them to their husbands’ houses, as the social mores of seclusion discouraged married women from appearing in public to beg. While colonial government officials in Ghana within the Department of Social Welfare and Community Development were concerned with begging and generated an official report (Anonymous 1955), little was done in Ghana or in Nigeria, either during the colonial era or soon after Independence, to train the physically handicapped for other types of work (Rehabilitation of beggars, Nigerian National Archives). However, in the 1980s changing perceptions of begging and alms-giving and new opportunities for the lame, especially education, led the parents of some polio-disabled children to place them in schools. The possibility of getting an education and subsequently a job—of leading a “normal life” (zaman daidai)— muted the possibility that stigma (abin kunya; literally, “something shameful”) would be associated with lameness and begging. In recent years, these educated individuals themselves have sought to fund the schooling of more disabled children , to form new organizations which advocate disability rights, and to promote business schemes for the polio-disabled which would allow them to earn enough money to stop begging. These changes, as well as the social welfare programs supported by the federal government and NGOs which make these changes possible, are then considered. By seeking education and regular forms of work, the polio-disabled have been able to avoid the social stigma which is associated with begging but not with lameness itself. Programs specifically for the polio-disabled have been expanded to include vocational training and microcredit loans. Polio-disabled people also participated for a time in the Polio Eradication Initiative, when programs such as the USAIDsponsored Community Participation for Action in the Social Sector (COMPASS) shifted their strategy to include more community input in the campaign, setting up and registering organizations such as the Polio Victims Trust Association with state governments. While the COMPASS program provided resources for polio victims, it also made those...