Angela Onwuzoo

A lady with a vision loss who is still trying to figure out the cause of her sudden blindness is Opeyemi Adewale.

Now in her early 20s, the graduate of Political Science and International Relations, University of Lagos, became blind at 13.

The human resource practitioner said, “It all started in 2010. I was 13 years then and I was in SS1. As a science student, I wanted to study medicine.

“On that fateful day, when I came back from school, I was watching a cartoon network and all of a sudden, everything went blurry and blank. Initially, I thought it was an eclipse of the sun.

“So, I remained on that particular spot for everything to clear.  But when my siblings came back from school and started walking around, I became worried.

“At that point, I became afraid, wondering why I wasn’t seeing again. So, I asked them how they were able to walk about in the dark and they started laughing, thinking I was joking.

“They went out to play and left me there. When my mother returned, I told her that I could not see again. She also thought I was joking.

“She stretched out her hand and asked me to touch her. When I could not locate her hand, it was then she realised that I was not joking. That was how I became blind till today.”

Running from pillar to post

She was later taken to different hospitals and eye centres, all of which reportedly told her that they could not find anything wrong with her eyes.

“All the opticians we met told us that my eyes were okay. Others said it was a spiritual attack.  My mother had also taken me to various spiritual and traditional homes, yet no solution,” she explains, adding, “I have handed everything over to God. I believe that by His mercy, I will see someday. I believe in miracles.”

She also confesses that sudden blindness is devastating and that because she had been sighted before, coping with sudden, unexplainable blindness had been traumatic.

She said she had determined not to allow the situation to continue to weigh her down.

Causes of blindness

Experts say cataract, trachoma, uncorrected refractive error, onchocerciasis, childhood blindness, glaucoma, and diabetic retinopathy are the leading causes of blindness globally.

The Nigeria National Blindness and Visual Impairment Survey identified cataract, glaucoma, corneal diseases, trachoma, onchocerciasis and ocular trauma as major causes of blindness in the country.

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