In a corrugated iron building at the edge of Nembe Town in Bayelsa State, 29-year-old nurse Anikio Spero has turned her living room into a free counselling centre that has quietly served over 300 clients in the past 18 months — all without a single government kobo.
Anikio, who trained at the University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital and worked briefly in Lagos, returned to Nembe after losing two childhood friends to suicide within the same year — both of them young men who had no one to talk to and nowhere to turn.
"Mental health doesn't exist here officially," she told Naija Delta Voice. "People say 'you're just being spiritual' or 'pray more'. But depression is real. Anxiety is real. Trauma from oil spills, from losing your livelihood, from watching your community destroyed — it's real, and it needs real care."
Using personal savings and small donations from the diaspora community through social media, Anikio has furnished two counselling rooms, trained three community volunteers in basic mental health first aid, and set up a WhatsApp line that clients can use to reach her at any time.
She is currently seeking NGO partnership funding to hire a second qualified counsellor and expand the facility to handle group therapy sessions for oil spill survivors — a rapidly growing demographic in Bayelsa's coastal communities.
The story of Anikio Spero is a reminder that the Niger Delta's most transformative forces are often its own people — young, determined, and building solutions in the spaces where the government has never shown up.
