"Love Is The Cord That Binds Us" – Deaf And Dumb Couple Reveals

In a society where there are growing cases of divorce among couples, many of which are attributed to differences, Leadership Weekend ran into a couple who are both deaf and dumb but understand themselves almost perfectly. For Mr and Mrs Innocent and Tosin Anosike, life can be defined as what you make out of it. The two are both deaf and dumb but they have not allowed their disabilities to weigh them down. For them, love and understanding is what binds them. Mr Anosike owns a flourishing shoe cobbling business in Lugbe, a suburb of Abuja. His wife, Tosin, is one of the best hairdressers. Many women in Lugbe always insist only Tosin or nobody else would dress their hair.

It was gathered that Anosike who is from Orumba in Anambra State met his wife, Tosin, who hails from Olamaboro local government area of Kogi State in 2006. They were both students at a special school, Special Education for the Physically Challenged, Abuja. While Anosike was learning shoe-making, his wife who was also a student at the time was learning hairdressing and though they were in different departments in the school, they worked together and assisted each other, a relationship that ended in their marriage.

“Tosin was doing very well during her training in hair dressing just as I was also doing well in learning shoe-mending in the school and it was while we were doing this that we met and became friends, and later fell in love with each other,” Anosike told Leadership Weekend through an interpreter, Mrs Amaka Onwuma.

He said he was attracted by the beautiful looks of his wife, Tosin, while both of them were students. “I was attracted to Tosin when I saw her because she was a very beautiful young lady. I couldn’t just let the beauty go like that so I courted and married her,” he said. On her part, Tosin described her husband Anosike as a handsome and hardworking man, saying these were the qualities that endeared him to her.

Presently, the couple has two children, a boy and a girl who unlike their parents, can speak and hear and are fluent in both English and Igbo languages. Anosike said that he was not born deaf and dumb but lost his speech and hearing senses at the age of six after he suffered from measles though he was later treated.

Mrs Amaka Lucky Onwuma, who happens to be the founder of the special school where the couple met, said that there are more than 50 of such students who have graduated from her school, adding that they are all doing well in the society.

“They have been taught in school how to relate happily and peacefully in the society. They were equally taught not to be hostile and to be peace makers so that they can progress in the society and to avoid hostile attitude,” she said.

Onwuma lamented that physically challenged persons in the Nigeria are often neglected, saying, “I have noticed that many physically challenged persons are being neglected and abandoned though so many of them are very intelligent.” She called on people to desist from such practice.

Source: The Leadership