An undercover investigative journalist, Fisayo Soyombo, has been sharing his experience while doing an undercover report about the rot in the rehabilitation center in Yaba Left.
He wrote on Thursday.
“There was this food server at the Federal Neuropsychiatric Hospital Yaba who piqued my attention for her unique manner of announcing her entry to the ward. Middle-aged and fairly physically robust, she always walked with a spring in her steps and jolted patients to life with amusing comments or greetings.
If she wasn’t screaming “gbe body e!”, “gbe soul e!” or “ji, ma sun”, she was greeting “gu moring uncles and brothers”. She wasn’t the only server but she alone got patients springing to the food queue before she had even got there herself.
Despite all the pleasantries, her food was no different from the terrible ones dished to patients by other servers. It couldn’t have been, anyway; I understand all the servers are in the employ of the hospital. But guess what? While patients easily grumbled when served by others, they rarely did, with this woman.
As I stated in Part I of my two-part series, the patients teamed up to write a protest letter before things finally snowballed into a proper protest on my final day at the ward. I often wondered if the protest might have happened earlier had there not been a gbe-body-e server.