Admirable Friends’ Time With Okobaba Destitute Ferdinand Ekechukwu
Witnessed a charity exercise by a group of individuals and writes that beyond material items and food supplies to the Okobaba Destitute Home is the need for government intervention
Agroup of like-minded friends, under the aegis of Admirable Friends Social and Charity Foundation (AFSCF), recently visited the Okobaba Destitute Home at Ebute Meta in Lagos State. The visit brought excitement and momentary relief to its residents as it coloured their squalor with rays of hope. At the time of the visit, the condition of human lives at the home was terrible. Just like it had done in different locations in time past for over a period of nine years, the social and charity advocacy group supplied the destitute, mostly beggars, with food packs to over 2000 people.
In addition to the food items were donations, in large quantity, of clothes, and other utilities and material items for shelter, pulled by members of the foundation whom are professionals in various fields including lawyers, bankers, engineers, doctors, etc. The materials brought by the foundation were single handedly distributed by its members to every persons within reach to avoid the goods being shared disproportionately.
The essence of the charity work, according to the National President of the Foundation, Prince Ochuko Ejohwomu, was to mark their annual day for charity tagged ‘Time To Give Back To The Society’. “So its like a unique period for us we call it Time To Give Back To The Society”, he stated. In that deprived community are three groups: the group for the blinds, the group for lepers and the group for the cripples (handicaps).
Majority of the destitude are migrants from the northern part of the country with most of them partially blind, some in state of full blindness and malnourished. In their poor living conditions there the population rises as one observed them giving birth inside this destitute camp.
“We try to identify those ones that really need it and we give them food items and also clothes and toiletries. But we have also visited IDP camps in Edo State”, Ejohwomu claims. “When we got their it was really very pathetic and am thinking maybe our next event (its tenth anniversary) to be in Benin. Also we are going to revisit that IDP camp where you have about 4/5000 children living there.”
Aside their annual flagship programme, which has seen them visit IDP camps, the foundation also, occasionally, engages in various kinds to touch the lives of the needy, like orphanages, in addition scholarships to the less privileged kids, and offsetting hospital bills for children in different wards, in orthopedic hospitals, and pediatric sections in different hospitals.
The foundation has also partnered with other charitable foundations in the course of their humanitarian drive as it looks forward to getting the support of the government towards their initiative so as to transcend whatever plans in place by them towards a positive goal.
“What we have done is to partner with other charitable foundations like this. We have done with QMCs, we have done with UJAH, which is an Indian community,” Ejohwomu revealed.
“But maybe in the future we would look at it and see how we can partner with the government. But for now ours is to gather like minds and you may not necessarily be a member of the association. But when its time to give, I believe if you have one or two things that you can give, why not give and put a smile on somebody’s face,” he added.
Beyond the material items and food supplies to the home is the need for well meaning individuals and the government at various levels to support. “Its not by having so much to give alright. You may not have as much as the Dangotes to give. Now it is the mindset. If every Nigerian who is able to give one bottle of coke is able to do this, then I don’t think we will have people hungry on the streets. That’s what we are trying to prove that you don’t have to be rich to do good or to give,” Ejohwomu advised.
During the charity exercise, the foundation’s national public relations officer, Engineer God’slove Iserhien, expressed concern on the need for government support and measures to assuage the situation of the place. “So there’s so much the government can do; there could be strategic partnership between the state and the federal government because most of them are from the north and they are living in the southern state, like Lagos. Lagos accommodates a lot of people.
“So what the government need to do is to liaise most time with the northern states, they even have northern governors forum. Things like that, people like that, bodies like that should be reached. Let them come look for a way to bring solution to help these people. You can’t alleviate the poverty totally.
“But by the time they engage most of the adults here into different skills like sewing, shoe making, hair making, enlighten them on how to be skillful and try and integrate them gradually into the society before you know it by five, six years the society might start absorbing most of the kids at the end of the day we might end up not making association of beggars,” Iserhien stated.