•Come to our rescue before more lives are lost — Chiefs beg govt, NDDC
By Emem Idio
Okoroba Cottage Hospital, a once thriving healthcare sanctuary, has been reduced to a haunting symbol of governmental neglect and the natives are crying out for help before it’s too late.
The Okoroba Council of Chiefs last week sounded a desperate alarm over the crumbling state of the community’s only cottage hospital, describing the facility as a “ghost hospital” that now resembles “a graveyard” rather than a place of healing.
A community’s dilemma
For the residents of Okoroba and surrounding coastal communities in Nembe Local Government Area of Bayelsa State, the hospital’s collapse represents not just an infrastructure failure, but a matter of life and death.
“What we have today is a hospital that looks more like a graveyard than a health facility,” lamented Chief Douglas Etulankimor Sampson-Eteli, chairman of the Okoroba Council of Chiefs, in an interview with NDV.
Standing beside him, Chief A.O. Etire echoed their anguish: “The hospital that once gave our people hope has been abandoned for years, no doctors, no nurses, no equipment, nothing but empty walls.”
From beacon of hope to symbol of neglect
Built and donated by the Shell Petroleum Development Company on behalf of the NNPC/Shell/Agip/Elf Joint Venture, the hospital was officially handed over to the Bayelsa State Government on May 8, 1997, a date the community remembers with painful clarity.
For years, it stood as one of the finest rural healthcare facilities in the state, serving not just Okoroba but dozens of neighbouring communities that depend on its services. Today, the once-bustling corridors are silent, the consultation rooms empty, and the wards void of patients or caregivers.
The human cost of neglect
The chiefs painted a bleak picture of the consequences facing residents, particularly the most vulnerable such as pregnant women forced to undertake perilous journeys by water and road to access antenatal care; children denied urgent treatment for common but potentially fatal illnesses; elderly residents left to suffer without medication or medical attention and emergency victims who die on the way to distant hospitals due to avoidable delays.
“Every day we hear stories of our people dying needlessly because they cannot get help in time,” Chief Sampson-Eteli said. “Mothers losing their babies, fathers dying from treatable conditions, this is the reality we face.”
Urgent appeal to govt, agencies
The community is now issuing an urgent SOS to the Governor Douye Diri administration, the Hospitals Management Board, and the Niger- Delta Development Commission (NDDC), demanding the immediate rehabilitation of the dilapidated facility, provision of modern medical equipment, essential drugs and deployment of medical staff.
“This is a matter of life and death,” the chiefs insisted, adding: “Reviving this hospital is a humanitarian intervention we cannot afford to delay.
“We are not asking for special treatment, we are asking for the basic healthcare that every Nigerian deserves,” Chief Sampson-Eteli declared. “Our people are suffering. Our children are dying. How many more lives must be lost before someone listens?”
