Heaven Weeps With Hopeless Family For Joy In Oko Anambra State
The heavens shed tears of joy today at Oko as members of Amsterdam based NGO commissioned an ongoing renovation project for an 80 year old single mother of three mentally disturbed children as well as a N700,000 small scale business for her only daughter.
Why won’t it be ‘ije mmili’ when the group, Cardinal Friend’s Club, literally picked up 46 year old, Oko-born Christian Ezechukwu from the streets, cleaned him up, united him with his twin brother and aged mother and commenced a thorough rehabilitation process for the entire family.
The president of the group, Ogbuefi Udechukwu opined that the Nigerian government does not care about the people and is therefore non-existent.
Speaking after commissioning the toilet facilities, fencing, and the provision store the girl started with the grant she received, Udechukwu said,
“We don’t have a government in Nigeria. We are still behind in everything. All the infrastructures are not working. We have no social amenities. These are the primary purposes of government.”
He said that if the infrastructures are functional and the social amenities in place, those would be stepping stones for the country in her bid to break the jinx of underdevelopment and backwardness.
Chimaobim Emmanuel Okoli, the group’s secretary, while also observing that Nigerians are suffering, said the group’s primary motive is charity work among their people every December/January homecoming.
He said that the group, which started in 2014, has been visiting prisons within Anambra state to support the prisons and assist those held behind bars due to lack of bail money, as well as other individuals and families that are impoverished.
In his words,
“We met the young man Christian, on our way to Ekwulobia prison January last year, living like a tramp, and on interrogation we discovered he was mentally unstable.
“After cleaning him up, we took him to his home in Oko, and we discovered his home lacked fencing, gate and toilet facilities. And that while his twin brother was also mentally unstable, their only sister had been away in Abuja for more than a decade doing nothing.
“So we took it upon ourselves to enroll the twins in a mental clinic, fence the house , mount a gate and build modern toilet facilities for them. We also made the young lady to come back home, and gave her N700,000 to start a small scale business.
“We need to help our people in anyway we can. We cannot continue to sit back and watch our people continue wallowing in this mess our government has put us into.”
Joe Ezechukwu, the chairman of the beneficiaries’ kindred, Ezioko, as well as their relative, told the reporter that his kindred was exceedingly pleased at the philanthropic gesture of the group.
“This is a model intervention programme because it went beyond merely giving handouts to the family to rehabilitate and empower every single one of the family members.”
The beneficiaries especially the 46 year old twins, Christopher and Christian Ezechukwu, were full of joy and appreciation to God and the group and prayed God to continue to bless and protect their benefactors.
