Help us… unemployed parents of triplets cry

THOUGH the birth of children should bring joy, to the family of Kumaga, their latest triplet is something else.

After losing his job, 32-year-old Mr. Derrick Kumaga, an unemployed welder and his wife, Susan were blessed with triplets. But instead of rejoicing at the birth of the trio, he is now in pain and agony following the births.

The triplets were at Olabisi Onabanjo University Teaching Hospital, Sagamu, Ogun State for three weeks after delivery. The triplets as well as their mother, were sound after delivery but Derrick could not pay their hospital bill.

Kumaga lost his job five months before the birth of the babies. Paying the N70,000 hospital bill after  the birth of the triplets was an herculean task. He ran around to raise money for the hospital bill in vain.

Kumaga in a pathetic and heavy emotion-laden voice said: “When we did scan, it showed that it was twins before birth,” he said, while talking with us  in their dim-lit one-room apartment in Mowe, Obafemi-Owode local council of Ogun State. To him two would have been manageable but three was not in the picture. Already the family has began to feel the impact.

“It’s triplet. My only son who is just six years old has stopped school because I can’t pay his school fees.

“I don’t even have money to feed them. Their mother cannot even breast feed the babies. I manage to buy one baby food ‘NAN’. It has finished. There is no more for them tonight”, he said, holding back tears.

Kumaga told The Nigerian Compass on Saturday: “my wife was at Olabisi Onabanjo University Teaching Hospital, Sagamu for three weeks, until the Chairman of Owode Local Government Council, Ogun State,  Alhaji Nuru came to my aid. He gave us N20,000 out of the N70,000  and put a call to the hospital with the promise to pay the balance.

It was after then that my wife and the triplets were discharged from the hospital. It was a tortuous three weeks for me and I’m still pained as a man that couldn’t cater for his family.”

Kumaga was a welder in the work force of a firm named Ziatech in Lagos before the company closed down operation about five months ago.

The man said he found himself in a state of confusion in his present situation saying, “I need help from the government and the general public. I’m now a beggar that lives through friends help. For how long will they continue before they get tired of me? If the government can assist me to take two of these babies, then, I will struggle to cater for the other two and my wife”, he pleaded.

According to him, the situation has pushed him to the extreme. “I’ve been going out daily to do menial and minor jobs to take care of the family. But I have to come out because the job could not adequately cater for the family. It is affecting the triplets and they are not looking too healthy because the mother is not feeding very well. How can the mother breast feed the triplets when she wasn’t feeding very well?”

He passionately appealed for assistance from government and the public so that he would not lose the triplets as a result of his condition.