Group donates personal hygiene kits to women, Computers to children with special needs

A social political group, Ofu k’ Idoma for Unity and Development Association, led by its chairman, Mr. Emmanuel Abechi, has donated personal hygiene mother care kits to selected primary health care Centres and Smart Classroom Computers to handicapped School and Orphanage Home, in Benue South senatorial district of Benue state.

The group also created awareness and Sensitization for Oil Palm Seedling Planting in Idoma land as part of its mission and vision.

According to Mr. Abechi, the association as a matter of deliberate policy decided to venture into projects and programmes deemed necessary for the upliftment of their people and communities noting that the event is in pursuit of those core objectives of the Association.

He pointed out that, empirical analysis, based on World Bank data has shown that infants and maternal Mortality rate in Sub-Sahara Africa is the highest in the world; with Nigeria not left out of statistics.

“World Bank Source provides that, infants Mortality as at 2019 stands at 74.2 deaths per one thousand (1,000) live births, while Maternal Mortality stand at 917 deaths per one hundred thousand (100,000)births”.

“There are several reasons for these high infant and maternal death rates in Nigeria.

However, one of the major reasons is lack of basic hygiene at the point of delivery.

The remedy to this basic hygiene problem is the provision of mother care kits, also known as “mama kits” for expectant mothers under labour”.

“It is for this reason that Ofuk’Idoma have decided to distribute one thousand, eight hundred of this all important maternity kits to selected nine (9) Primary Health Centres (PHc), In the nine local government areas in Benue South Senatorial District, he added.

He noted also that, the group will be expecting a feedback on the usage of these items to be distributed to the above mentioned Primary Health Centres for evaluation and future plans.

The chairman also said that, “Our Association believes in an all inclusive development. As part of our integrated development plan, we have also decided to extend our corporate social responsibilities to the less privileged.

In this vein, we are providing one smart classroom computer package each to CEFN Handicapped Children School and Children of Mary Orphanage home, all in Otukpo”.

“This is a special interactive computer package for their special conditions.

“It will be useful to both the teachers and the children in their teaching and learning process. We intend to provide training on the use of the specialized computers to the recipients”, the chairman said.

The group also advocated for aggressive Oil palm seedling planting in Idomaland.

He noted that, “Ofu k’Idoma has realized that our people need to diversify our agrarian economy.

Our parents are largely involved in subsistence farming over the years but needed to engage in cash crop farming as well”.

“Studies have shown that our soil and geographical location is very suitable for Oil palm plantation with all its attendant benefits. Oil Palm produce has a lot of by-product such as vegetable oil, palm stem starch, livestock feeds and making of detergents.

Our venture into palm plantation will prevent desert encroachment with its devastating consequences; it can stimulate setting up of agro-based industries in our communities in the future, which will in turn increase employment opportunities for our teeming youth.

The Malaysians took palm seedlings from Nigeria in the nineteen sixties to their country for planting and by late nineteen Seventies, it had become a major foreign exchange earner for their country”.