A cursory look at her will not betray the daunting challenge she daily lives with as she walks with a spring in her steps, boisterous, full of life and witty. But lo, Grace Atukpa is Nigerian Institute of Journalism’s fresh blind graduate set to take on the world. BABAJIDE OKEOWO reports for your weekend treat.
Grace Atukpa is a pretty lady with a sound fashion sense, highly intelligent and with high hopes and aspirations. A victim of circumstances, Grace recently graduated from the Nigerian Institute of Journalism, where she did very well despite her challenges.
An indigene of Ogoja in Cross River North Local Government Area of Cross Rivers State wasn’t born blind: fate played a crude one on her at the tender age of 14.
Grace had just finished her senior secondary school examination, written the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board examination which she passed with flying colours, secured admission into the prestigious University of Calabar to study Accounting and was waiting for school to resume when her world came crashing, irretrievably; like a pack of badly arranged cards, Grace became stone blind.
“I was always complaining of headaches some years back, but my step mum always thought would say it was a ploy to avoid house chores. She would say, ‘Grace doesn’t want to work, she is lazy, she is a drama queen’ and was always quick to rain all sorts of invective on me,” Grace told The Daily Times.
When it became obvious that she wasn’t pretending, Grace was taken to see a doctor who diagnosed her of being short sighted and prescribed some drugs with the assurance that all would soon be well.
Instead of getting better, Grace’s health deteriorated further and she had to pay the doctor another visit. After series of tests, the doctor changed the story and said she was suffering from Cataracts, and that she needed to undergo a surgery that would cost some N30,000. That was a huge sum for her family over a decade ago, yet after spending this sum on the operation, the situation still did not improve.
At this point, it became obvious that something serious was happening to Grace. Her godmother, Dr. Sandra Achums, who also doubled as a big sister to Grace’s mother, stepped in and went looking for solution.
The quest eventually took Grace to an eye specialist who diagnosed her of advanced level Glaucoma; (a degenerative eye condition), and that all the wrong treatment and surgery had made her case irreversible.
Thus began young Grace’s journey into perpetual darkness.
Few years after she became blind, her mother who had hitherto been her pillar of support passed on, leaving Grace alone, heartbroken in a cold world.
Her father who should also have been there for her too, in the course of her challenge, lost faith in her and took to his heels, leaving the poor little girl alone. As if that wasn’t enough, Grace and her younger brother were chased out of the house her mother left behind. For Grace, it was double jeopardy.
“I practically cried for death. I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t drink water. It was a dark period in my life. The will to live was not there anymore” she told The Daily Times.
Just then, divine intervention knocked on her door.
“One day, my brother came to meet me in the balcony of Dr. Sandra Achum’s house because that was where we were living immediately after my mother died and her family chased us out of our mother’s house. He cried and hugged me, and said, ‘look, we have lost our mum, I can’t afford to lose you as well; you are the only one I have left in this world.”
That brotherly love jolted her back to life and gave her reasons to continue living. Then she heard about Pacelli School for the Blind. Initially, she wasn’t aware of the availability of any special school for the blind.
If she and her parents, particularly her mother while alive, had been aware of the existence of such a school, she might not have stayed that long at home without any formal education.
“Prior to that, I didn’t even know a
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