By Amos Aar
MR JOSEPH Okoliko Amali, popularly known as Bob Joe, has been battling chronic obesity for over twelve years now, a condition that has made him almost completely dependent on charity from benevolent relations, friends and philanthropists for survival.
Due to his condition, Bob Joe, National Record gathered, is prevented from carrying out simple survival chores, some of which he is forced to do under very extra-ordinary stress.
Now 54 years old, Bob Joe’s ordeal started in 2009 when he suddenly began to notice that he was strangely increasing in weight. Like a mystery, the increase in weight continued and he became ultimately incapacitated.
Bob Joe told National Record in an interview held in his residence in Makurdi, Benue State capital, penultimate Saturday that upon his incapacitation, he sought medical opinion in 2012.
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According to him, the result of the diagnosis conducted on him at the Federal Medical Centre (FMC), Makurdi showed that he was “grossly obese” and needed to undergo surgery to suck out excess facts from his body. The challenge for him was that the surgery could not be carried out in Nigeria but only in India.
Joe said after the diagnoses, he went to other hospitals including in Lagos but the doctors could not detect the real medical cause of his condition and therefore did not give him any result.
While a copy of the medical report issued to Bob Joe, dated 10th December, 2012 from the FMC Makurdi, signed by Dr Enokela A. I., showed that he needed to go for “medical intervention” abroad, it however did not indicate the amount required for the trip and surgery.
But Bob Joe told National Record that the total cost of the medical intervention and the trip as at 2012 was N5 million, which included someone that will accompany him.
When contacted on Tuesday, March 5, 2024, almost 12 years after the diagnosis, Dr Enokela said N5 million is no longer realistic. He said Bob Joe will now need more than N30 million for the operation, trip and other out-of-pocket expenses.
Asked whether there exists no hospital in Nigeria since 2012 to handle the operation, Dr Enokela said he was not aware of any such medical institution in the country.
“I discussed with him but there is nobody to help him. That is the problem. The money will be around N30 million now,” Dr Enokela told National Record on phone.
Dr Enokela could not speak at length with the reporter to tell him his position at the federal medical center, Makurdi as he said he was down with Stroke and Hypertension.
Bob Joe’s two sisters; Mrs Mary Onah, a civil servant with the Nigerian Nuclear Regulatory Authority (NNRA), Abuja, and Ms Ladi Umele-Ochigbo, a police officer and widow, appealed to both particularly to the Benue State Government to come to the aid of their brother, pleading that they have exhausted their little resources trying to take care of him and cannot afford the N30 million for surgical operation overseas.
When asked what efforts the family has made to treat Bob Joe, Mrs Onah said they lacked financial strength and that is why they called on the government for assistance.
“As for me, I’m a widow. Taking care of my children alone is a problem. My sister here is a civil servant. We are all civil servants and we don’t even have one million naira talk less of two, three, four, five million. Benue State Government should please help us,” Onah appealed.
On her part, Ms Ochigbo said: “The only efforts we have been making is helping him to eat. We normally feed him. And the issue of rent, some of us help him to pay too. Those ones in Benin and Abuja, they help him to pay rent.
“We, around him here, for me, if he is not having foodstuff again, at times he will call me. If I cannot come, I call this my sister here. So, we do that almost always”.
Bob Joe revealed that his employers, Nigerian Caterers, which he said is now defunct, where he served as a caterer before he came down with the sickness, paid for his house rent of eighty thousand naira (N80,000) for two years in Delta State, where the company operated, offering catering services to shipping companies.
According to him, when his condition failed to improve, the company resolved not to continue with the rent payment and asked him to relocate to Benue, his home state.
Bob Joe said before he joined the services of Nigerian Caterers, he had worked as a caterer with the then Sheraton Hotel and Towers, Abuja (now Abuja Continental Hotel). He said he also had a stint with a freight company in Lagos, also as caterer before his engagement with the shipping company in Delta State, where he came down with obesity.
Bob Joe, now confined to a one-room apartment in Makurdi, rolls or crawls on the ground to cook and only manages to go out and ease himself as the room in which he lives does not have internal toilet.
According to him, his wife, who had a child with him, quit the marriage when his condition became very severe and protracted.
People who are willing to aid Bob Joe, who, prior to his strange ailment, was said to be a very cheerful and likeable young man, may reach out to him through his sister, Madam Ladi Umele Ochigbo (+234 806 166 1715) or Daddy Udeh (+234 803 448 8746).
