A Promise Made and Kept by Rotary
Penultimate week, the Rotary Club of Lagos moved its weekly fellowship to Ita Marun village, which is about two hours away from Victoria Island in Lagos State, where the club commissioned water and electricity projects donated to the village. It also gave
It was a day they won’t forget in a hurry. For the people of Ita Marun, a sleepy village of less than a thousand people in the Free Trade Zone axis off the Lekki-Epe Expressway, it was a promise fulfilled by the Rotary Club of Lagos and a new lease of life that could not have come at a better time. Penultimate week, the club commissioned a water project and solar-powered street light it had donated to the village. And for the people of the village, whose main occupation is fishing, perhaps, life could indeed be more meaningful beyond exploring the watery contents of the Atlantic Ocean.
Apart from the solar-powered street lights and water scheme, Rotary also partnered with a micro finance bank to give women in the village interestfree micro-credit loans to boost their respective businesses. Cheques were presented to maiden beneficiaries of the scheme during the ceremony.
Gladys Modupe Sasore, a lawyer by vocation and President of Rotary, told THISDAY that the club was happy with the commissioning of the projects and that it was a personal joy for her to see how elated the people of the village were as the projects were commissioned.
“The essence of Rotary Club is to help humanity,” Sasore stated. “And today is another manifestation of the commitment of Rotarians to this creed. We are here today to help the people of Ita Marun enjoy the basic things of life like water and electricity. I am happy to be here and all members of the Rotary Club of Lagos are also happy to be here to commission the water project as well as the solar-powered street lights.”
The commissioning of the projects fell on Wednesday. Earlier, in a press statement by the club’s director of publicity, Ehi Braimah, Sasore was quoted as saying that the club would leave their comfort zones, where they fellowship every Wednesday to mingle with the people of the village.
She had said, “As part of activities marking the commissioning of these projects, the club will on that day leave the comfort of the Lagos Motor Boat Club on Awolowo Road, Ikoyi, Lagos, venue of its weekly meetings, for the village to hold its meeting for that week and fellowship with the villagers.”
The Rotarians lived up to that promise. Going on a motorcade of vehicles which included a 26-seater Toyota Coaster bus, headed for Ita Marun.
The community was without electricity. Apart from this, the people of the village were completely cut off from civilisation. There were signs that the government made some plans to provide electricity for the town – there are poles, cables and a transformer. But that is where it ends. No one can say precisely when the real electrification will take place.
Residents of the village told THISDAY that the project has been stalled for years and they were not sure when it would be completed.
It was therefore not surprising to see that virtually every house in the village has a gasoline-powered generator.
“We have no choice than to have a generator,” Sulaiman Nojeem, the secretary to Ita Marun Community Council, told THISDAY. “We have to charge our phones and watch television. We have no electricity and water. We don’t know when government will provide these things and before they do that, we have to help ourselves.”
The village is less than hundred metres from the Atlantic Ocean and that is why the people of the village have only one major vocation: fishing. But even when the waves of the ocean serves as an indication that they are all but located to massive water, the people of the village have no source of potable water supply.
They can smile now and avoid the tidal waves of the ocean as Rotary Club catered to that essential need.
With its members taking the pain of leaving the comfort of their homes and offices to brace the almost three-hour drive from Ikoyi to the community was a sign of the club’s commitment to humanitarian services.
The beauty and the humanitarian essence of the Ita Marun trip were underlined by the calibre of Rotary Club of Lagos members who graced the occasions.
Some of these members were in their late 70s and 80s. They braced all the odds to be part of the ceremony despite the toll such would take on their frail bodies. To them, it was a way of serving humanity.
Before the commissioning of the projects, the Rotary has been part of the story of Ita Marun. It had paid a visit there once and saw the poor sewage system in the village and it decided to build an incinerator for them. After this, the club also provided a palm kernel cracking machine for the women of the community.
Apart from fishing, another major vocation in the village was palm oil production due to the fact that there are many palm trees in the village. When the club saw the human energy as well as time being devoted to cracking palm fruits manually, the Rotarians decided to provide the machine, which has become invaluable for them.
There is something else that lies in the community. It is the untapped potential of it becoming a tourist attraction.
Braimah, Chief Executive Officer of New Media and Marketing, had last year told THISDAY that stealing a weekend away from the madness of Lagos’ hectic life would not be a bad idea.
“Setting a camp by the bank of the Atlantic would not be a bad idea at all. It will be a very good way of getting away from the stress of the city and enjoying nature at its very natural best,” he said.