A 75-year-old blind man has been left to fend for himself on the streets after his children allegedly washed their hands of all responsibility for his welfare, triggering an outpouring of public sympathy following the viral spread of his story on social media.
The elderly man, identified as Mr Olaseni Arotiba, was discovered late at night after a commercial motorcycle rider dropped him off at Omotayo Maternity and rode away, leaving him stranded and helpless. A Good Samaritan, Olapeju Agunbiade, who encountered him there, took him in, provided him with food and a place to sleep, and subsequently shared his ordeal on Facebook.
When questioned about his circumstances, Mr Arotiba revealed that he had been living in a hotel, the cost of which had been borne by his son, Mayorkun Arotiba, for an extended period. However, following a decision by the hotel to carry out renovations, management contacted Mayorkun to come and collect his father — but the son never appeared. With nowhere else to turn, the old man had briefly stayed with a caregiver before that arrangement also fell through.
Staff at the maternity clinic took the initiative to contact his children by phone, but the responses they received were deeply troubling. His daughter was unequivocal in her rejection, declaring, “I do not have a father. I ceased to have a father when I was a child.” His son, for his part, claimed to be occupied at a hospital attending to their ailing mother, adding that both he and his sister were fully committed to her care — with no mention of their father’s plight.
“The long and short is that none of his contacts is ready to care for him or take responsibility,”Olapeju stated in her post”.
At the time of the incident, all Mr Arotiba had to his name was N10,000. Efforts to secure a place for him in a nursing home proved unsuccessful, and he was subsequently taken to the Accident and Emergency Department of Ring Road State Hospital for medical attention.
In a message accompanying her account of the incident, Olapeju appealed to parents to invest in their family relationships while they still can, warning that the kind of abandonment Mr Arotiba suffered could befall anyone. “Let us do all it takes to take care of what we call ‘home’,” she wrote, adding a Yoruba proverb that loosely translates to a caution that children who neglect their duties will one day face consequences of their own.
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