Doctors confirm me medically blind, but I can see, Mbaka claims

The spectre of avoidable blindness looms large in Cross River State as the entire state’s civil service parades only two qualified Optometrists to serve over four million residents across 18 local council areas.

The Nigerian Optometric Association (NOA), Cross River Chapter, raised the alarm yesterday, warning that the acute manpower shortage has left millions, especially in rural communities, at the mercy of quacks.

The association chairperson, Dr Ogechi Cecilia Chukwu, who disclosed this during an advocacy visit to the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) Press Centre, Calabar, ahead of World Sight Day 2026, said the situation is a public health emergency.

“Cross River State today has only two Optometrists in state government employment. How can two Optometrists serve four million people? It is impossible. Blindness is looming if nothing is done urgently,” Chukwu warned.

She said the lack of qualified eye doctors in general hospitals and rural health facilities has created a thriving market for quacks who hawk glasses, conduct fake eye tests, and prescribe wrong medications in markets, motor parks, and churches.

She appealed to Governor Bassey Otu to declare a state of emergency in the eye care sector and urgently employ and deploy more Optometrists to health facilities across the three senatorial districts.

MEANWHILE, a Catholic priest and founder of Adoration Ministry Enugu, Nigeria, AMEN, Rev. Fr Ejike Mbaka, has recounted what he described as a “medical and scientific mystery” after doctors reportedly found that his eye condition had deteriorated to the point of blindness, despite his ability to see and read without assistance.

Mbaka disclosed this while recounting his experience at Passion Centre in a video, saying he underwent extensive ophthalmological and optical examinations after years of stress and sleeplessness.

According to him, the examinations involved several tests using modern medical equipment, with results that reportedly left the doctors surprised.

He said the medical findings indicated that both eyes had deteriorated beyond the level of legal blindness, yet he could still see, read and move around without assistance.

Mbaka said the doctors initially assumed members of the Ayanwu family had brought him to the hospital as a blind man.

“But I said, ‘No, I came by myself.’ They said medically and scientifically, it is not possible for a man whose eye issue has reached the fifth or sixth level of blindness to see, not to talk of coming by himself,” he quoted the doctors as saying.

He said the doctors’ disbelief increased when he opened his Bible and began reading before them.