A FATHER’S LOVE

Nigeria has to create a society that cares,

Sometimes in 1997, in my capacity as deputy editor of the defunct Sunday Concord newspaper (then edited by Mr Tunji Bello, current Secretary to the Lagos State Government), I sent a student-reporter undergoing internship to interview Reverend Father George Ehusani. He was then the Deputy Secretary-General at the Catholic Secretariat in Lagos with the current Bishop of Sokoto, Matthew Hassan Kukah, as his direct boss. The young lady got the interview alright but upon return, she waited around in my office for a while; then muttered almost to herself (but I heard her loud and clear): “How can such a brilliant and handsome young man be a Reverend Father? That means he will never get married and have children. What a waste!”

Embedded in that statement, which I have never had the courage to tell Father Ehusani, is the notion that a successful life is constructed around getting married, having own biological children, living in comfort while they grow up, and then dying. But life consists much more than that. It is not the children we call our “own” that really matters but those whose lives we impact. Yet the tragedy really is that beyond supplying the cash, many do not even have any impact on their children. In that respect, Father Ehusani indeed has many children for whom he cares, kids who love and cherish him in return, because without him, they have no future.

Now let me put the issue in context. In the course of our stay in the United States between 2010 and 2011, my wife came home one day to pledge that once we got back to Nigeria, she would go and teach in any public primary school that caters for the children of the poor. She said the inspiration came from a film she had just watched titled “Born into Brothels: Calcutta’s Red Light Kids”, a documentary about the children of prostitutes in the Indian community of Sonagachi, which in 2004 won the American Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.

Considering that she had then just enrolled for a programme at Harvard, a community of people with so many crazy ideas, I paid little attention to what I thought was no more than a passing fancy. I turned out to be wrong as my wife got her wish upon our return to Nigeria, following a chance meeting with Father Ehusani, currently the Parish Priest at the Catholic Church of Assumption, Asokoro, Abuja. So, my wife is now a part-time teacher at the school domiciled within Annunciation Catholic Church, Kpaduma village, one of the slums that overshadow the highbrow Asokoro district where 500 pupils are being taught by some auxiliary teachers.

Kpaduma residents basically are the poor, the displaced and the dislocated of our society. The shanties have for long been marked out for demolition and the plots probably already shared-- so the Abuja authorities quite naturally have no plan for the inhabitants and their children. Kpaduma has no water, no road, no school and no basic social amenities. The situation is so deplorable that the Rotary Club of Asokoro, Abuja in January this year pledged to commission a six-unit latrine and a borehole for the people by next month. According to the president of the Club, Nze Kanayo Chukwumezie, the projects are “being done in collaboration with the Rotary Club Malcolm, United States of America. With the toilets and a functional borehole, they will defecate and flush. They will also have the water for domestic use. We shall also provide them with a generator for powering the borehole. The toilet is six units, three for men and three for women.”

That is Kpaduma for you. Even though most of the residents provide the labour force for menial jobs at Asokoro, it was a Father Innocent Jooji who in 2003 decided to use the Catholic Church in the village as school for the children. On arrival in Abuja in 2008, Father Ehusani took interest in the school and decided to pay more attention to the welfare of the pupils and their future. I have visited the school twice and as I interacted with the pupils, I asked what they would like to become in future. Some said doctors, some lawyers, some engineers. They all looked happy and indeed believed they could achieve their dreams yet, they face a very uncertain future. The school is not registered because it is really not a school; it is just an arrangement to give the children education. Class four and five pupils share the same makeshift building with each class facing opposite directions. Classes one to three use the church auditorium.

The school has 10 teachers, two cleaners and one security man with each pupil paying N2000 (pre-school) and N2,500 (primary one to five) tuition fee per term. The worry for Father Ehusani now is how to get some of the pupils registered into an approved school where they can do common entrance examination into secondary schools by the next academic session. But the greater challenge is that the structures, which make up Kpaduma village, have been marked for demolition. So those innocent souls whose imaginations are already fired could soon be scattered with their future thrown into jeopardy.

I must stress here that this piece is not about the deplorable condition of the shanties that are springing up in many highbrow areas of Abuja. Nor is it about whether or not the residents of Kpaduma should be allowed to stay. In any case, a 126-page 2006 report titled, “Pushing out the poor: Forced Eviction under the Abuja Master-Plan” by the Social and Economic Rights Action Centre (SERAC) has already dealt with the issues surrounding Abuja slums where “...almost all residents live in mud, frail houses, though some are coated with cement and paint in the bid to give their homes a modern look...Most houses have pit latrines that are shared by a large number of people. Most households depend upon the adult female to provide the water needs of the family, while some others opt to buy from Mairuwas...”

My concern here is about those children of Kpaduma who have been brought up under circumstances for which they have no control. This is where I believe our society is failing and where I commend the Catholic Church which the efforts of Father Ehusani exemplify. All over the country, especially in remote places, the Catholic Church is building schools funded through the sacrifices of their members. I am a Pentecostal Christian, with all the hypocritical arrogance associated with that appellation, yet we profess our charity with our mouths with our schools basically established to cater for children of the rich. But that is not an issue for today.

What is important is that we need to create a society that cares. It is a shame that Kpaduma and other such villages exist around Asokoro and there is no thought for the children who live there. And here I am not even talking about the government. How many of the home owners in Asokoro bother about whether or not the children of their driver, gardener, security man and cook go to school?

I have had opportunity to interact with Father Ehusani who evidently sees the Kpaduma school children as his own. And they love him as their father because I once saw the way they mobbed him on one visit. He is of the strong opinion that the Church is called to serve the poor, “those who have no social and economic or political rights, those who have lost their human dignity due to the material circumstances they find themselves in.” He argues passionately that “the common good, the good of society as a whole requires that the powerless be specially protected and defended. That is why the degree of development or civilisation of a society is measured and evaluated not by how much material wealth that society has, but by how that society treats the weak and the powerless in its midst.”

I agree completely with Father Ehusani. Those who are relatively comfortable in our society must begin to inculcate the culture of giving back. And their charity must begin from their immediate environment. This piece was first published on 15th March, 2012