Wife of the former Lagos State Commissioner for Transportation Mrs. Olajumoke Opeifa has called on governments and philanthropic organisations to make life more meaningful for orphans, widows and aged members of the society.
Mrs. Opeifa, who is the Founder of Hydra Edge Foundation (HEF), gave the advice during presentation of food items to widows recently. At the event, put together by her organisation, about 1,400 bags of food items (made up of 700 bags of rice and gaari respectively), were presented to the widows and elderly, at Oyewole Junior Grammar School, Orile Agege.
She said these classes of people, who formed a sizeable proportion of the population, must be adequately taken care of to reduce the widening gap of poverty in the society.
While noting that nothing would make any meaning to a hungry person, Mrs. Opeifa said the major challenge to governance lay in reducing the poverty index. She said nothing gives her more joy than giving to the poor and making life more meaningful to the less-privileged members of the society.
According to her, the yearly presentation of food items, which is the eighth in the series, is her Foundation’s response to making life more bearable for the vulnerable groups of the society, who have no means of celebrating the festive period with members of their families.
She said the exercise, which began eight years ago, is in response to giving back to the society a little from what God had bestowed on her, adding that nothing is too much to give to humanity in appreciation of God’s mercy and goodness on her entire family.
She said: “Every year, since the past eight years, we have been giving the less-privileged, especially the widows and orphans food items, especially during Christmas. This year, we decided to expand the programme a little by adding the aged. This year, 700 people, made up of 500 widows and 200 aged would go home with one bag of rice and one bag of gaari, to enable them to celebrate the Yuletide and the New Year with members of their families.”
The Executive Secretary of Orile Agege Local Council Development Area, Mr Adeyinka Akeem described the gesture as one with a profound impact in the council.
He urged other well-meaning members of the society to emulate such humanitarian gesture by looking at the area of need in any given society and fill the vacuum, adding that it is only when philanthropists teamed up with the government that the task of improving the lot of the common man, especially the indigent can be achieved.
“This foundation is the biggest humanitarian group in this local government and I must say that every year, the indigent in this area look forward to this event, knowing that they would not only get foodstuffs, but also cash gifts to augment their incomes to make the Yuletide a memorable one for their families,” Akeem said.
The chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the LCDA, Prince Sunday Ajayi praised the HEF for the gesture. He said the crowd of beneficiaries had continued to grow every year, since the programme started eight years ago.
“This programme has continued to witness tremendous crowd since it started eight years ago. Last year the crowd was tremendous, and this year, it seems to have doubled. The foundation has continued to put smiles on the faces of the common people in this council area. We can only pray that God should continue to strengthen the group,” he said.
One of the beneficiaries, Mrs Anthonia Anoibo, a widow, said the gesture would forever be remembered in her life, even as she prayed for the organisation to continue to wax stronger in its stride to make life more abundant for the downtrodden.
Another widow, who had been a regular beneficiary since the programme began eight years ago said she is happy that HEF could remember the widows this year despite the harsh economic situation in the country. She said her prayer is for God to continue to uplift the promoters and those working for the organisation.
