By Tunde Abatan
At every point in her chequered history, Nigeria, has never been in short supply of heroins, who rose above feminism to save their fatherland and folks in circumstances hitherto regarded as the turf of men.
The school building, after and before
But since the era of Madam Efunroye Tinubu, Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti and Queen Amina of Zaria, Aba Women Riot of 1922, women have held their own in the faces of tribulation and in most cases they never lived to see the results of their yeoman exploits.
This was the fate that befell brilliant and daring, Dr. Ameyo Adadevoh, the courageous medical consultant at First Consultant Hospital who on August 4,2014 put her life on the line as she stood between Patrick Sawyer, a Liberian national who practically ‘imported’ the dreaded Ebola disease into Lagos from his deadly mission to visit the popular Synagogue Church of All Nations, for a religious gathering that could have spell doom for the nation considering the magnitude of those who would have been inflicted with the deadly virus.
Painfully, Adadevoh who by accident of history came from a family of nationalist having been sired by Dr Babatunde Adadevoh, himself a grandson of late nationalist, Herbert Macaulay.
Though, Ameyo stopped the Liberian from forcefully discharging himself after having been quarantined by the hospital, it was at the price of Ameyo’s life who paid the supreme sacrifice as she died on August 14, 2014 having been infected with the Ebola virus. But Ameyo not only paid the supreme sacrifice, she prevented the escalation of the virus to a country hardly prepared for such epidemic outbreak.
A 1981graduate of medicine and surgery from the University of Lagos, Ameyo went further to horn her skills at the West Africa College of Physician and Surgery in 1983 where she capped it with a Fellowship at the Hammersmith Hospital in London were she studied Endocrinology.
It will be recalled that her father was also a physician and former Vice Chancellor of the University of Lagos and also a great, great grandson of Ajayi Crowther, whose statue adorned the premises of First Foundation Hospital where Ameyo spent her last 21 years horning her skill before they came calling all in a bid to save her country from epidemy which could have been of immense proportion.
Ironically, six years later, Sister Henrietta Uloka, an administrator at Bethelehem Girls College, Abule Ado, in the bowels of Lagos east, also lose her precious life having rescued most of her students from an inferno in her school premises as a result of a gas explosion from a building metres away. Henrietta, as a soldier of Christ, which she was, ensure that the students under her care who were trapped in the building whose roof was blown up by the explosion, were brought out from the inferno in their hostel while preparing for mass but she could not make it.
ALSO READ: She died for her students to live
She died so that students put in her care could live.
As at the time she died, she had rescued about 60 students who were taken away to the Nigeria Navy Reference Hospital at nearby satellite town.
Though, Henrietta lose her life, churches like the Province 3 Headquarters of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG) located on 24 Road fFESTAC Town, almost a kilometre away had its windows shattered while both First Baptist Church near the RCCG Parish and the roof of Living Faith Church (Winners Chapel) located at 7th Avenue,was also blown off.
Now, who will compensate and remember, Henrietta who in the service of God put her life on the line for students in her care!
One only hopes she will not go unnoticed like Ameyo, who served as lead consultant physician and Endocrinology, put her life on the line to save the nation from a virus still ravaging some parts of Africa, but was neither given an award by the Federal Government who was content with integrating Book Haram fighters who have caused thousands of death and shattered many homes in the country, into the military while some will be rewarded for their heinous crimes by been sponsored overseas for education while thousands of family and settlements lay in ruin .What a nation!
