#RememberAisha
By Mike Arnold
Aisha Philibus was 25 years old and on the way up.
For the past six years, she survived in a makeshift camp for people who fled their homes to escape an ongoing massacre.
To hide the true scope of this growing humanitarian crisis, her own government calls victims like Aisha “criminals” and “beggars” and refuses to help them.
Aisha was smart. She accepted that nobody was coming to help. But she didn’t complain. Instead, she kept looking up, determined to work her way to a better life. She had a job, a side hustle, and a growing TikTok channel that was starting to attract sponsors. Aisha was excited. Her hard work was paying off, and her future was bright.
In September Aisha came down with a urinary tract infection. Internally displaced people like her are not supposed to pay for medical care. But because of corruption, it never works out that way. She had no real choice but to let the infection run its course and hope for the best.
But without treatment, Aisha got worse. Much worse. When her friends found her feverish and unconscious, they took her to Garki Hospital, near their camp in Abuja, the Capitol of Nigeria.
Corrupt staff there gave her just enough treatment to run up a bill, then stopped until her step-brother paid them a bribe equal to just a few hundred dollars.
Aisha’s loved ones tried to raise the funds but were unable. Desperate, they reached out for help to anyone who would listen. Finally, after several days, they found reason to celebrate. A charity would cover the full cost of her treatment, at a different hospital. Aisha would be ok! They arranged transport, excited she would finally get the care she needed.
But their celebration was short lived, because the corrupt staff at Garki Hospital would not release her for treatment at the other hospital unless their bogus bill was paid in full.
Remember, internally displaced people like Aisha are not supposed to pay for medical care. They are supposed to just fill out a form and the government pays the bill. The staff knew this. They wanted the shakedown money for themselves. Then they would fill out the form for the government to pay the hospital. A simple, evil scam.
Her loved ones felt trapped, powerless to fight back. All they could do was work even harder to raise the money.
In the meantime, lying in a hospital bed, with a treatable condition, yet untreated by corrupt hospital staff - for a scam of just a few hundred dollars - young, beautiful, hopeful, well-loved Aisha … died.
Burials are very important in their culture. Aisha's heartbroken step-brother, her only living relative, built her a coffin from scrap lumber and readied a burial plot nearby.
And yet… the evil hospital staff now refused even to release her body to rest in peace without under-the-table payment of cold, hard cash.
Her step brother raised about half the amount, but they still wouldn’t let her go.
For three weeks, Aisha’s body lay where they had tossed it, like trash, on the floor in the corner of the morgue. They actually tagged this beloved young lady as “unidentified” and “unclaimed” to keep their scam hidden.
When Africa Arise Founder and CEO Mike Arnold heard about this, he just said one thing: “Let’s go get Aisha and bring her home.”
When our team went to get her, hospital staff chained the corridor closed and then assaulted us. They broke our phones and camera equipment. One large male hospital staff member even landed a punch on Arise Academy Headmaster Mrs. D'Grace.
Eventually, Mike was able to talk reason to the hospital administrator. He called off his goon squad, and finally agreed to release Aisha and erase the bogus bill. He even provided a vehicle to take her body home.
After a life and death no human should be forced to endure, bright and buoyant Aisha is finally resting in peace.
They say one death is a tragedy, and a million deaths is a statistic. Aisha’s death is a horrible tragedy.
But it is also a statistic.
Because today, as many as 9 million men, women and children in Nigeria struggle daily to survive after being driven from their homes by bloodthirsty insurgents. For more than a decade these innocent people have been ground down by their corrupt government that actually rewards the killers while turning a blind eye to the victims.
Enough is enough.
Please, help us give meaning to Aisha’s beautiful, horrible life and her senseless, tragic death.
Sign our petition to seek justice and restoration for the internally displaced people of Nigeria.
Remember Aisha. Because her story is their story.
Mike Arnold is founder and CEO of Africa Arise (USA and Nigeria) and Arise Academies (IDP camp schools), Executive Producer of Me & Ms. Hanatu (documentary film), and Mayor of Blanco, Texas, USA.
