Her eyes widened in perplexity. She looked at her staff and
the team of volunteers. They had worked very hard and were ready to call it a
day, but she could not ignore the passionate plea from these three women
carrying their babies. The ceremony was winding down. Against the good judgment
of her staff that it was already dusk and that scarcity of petrol had made
commuting very difficult, she persuaded them gently to re-consider the
decision.
“We came here for these people. We cannot turn them back.”
It was an appeal (not a command) from Mrs. Ibidunni Ighodalo, CEO of Elizabeth
R, a top-notch events planning company and wife of Ituah Ighodalo, accountant
and Senior Pastor of Trinity House. Persuading them with more soothing words,
she moved ahead to make the women comfortable. Enveloping one of them in a hug,
she took a baby from another.
It was the first edition of the Ibidunni Ighodalo Foundation
baby shower charity called, Baby’s Day Out at the Open Field of the Millennium
Housing Estate, better known as, Tinubu Estate in Ibeshe-Ikorodu, Lagos.
The IIF had announced that the event was for pregnant women
and children between one day and one year old, but the organisers were forced
to observe this restriction more in the breach-elderly women, teenagers and
single ladies showed up in their thousands to benefit from the IIF largesse.
Though there was a captive population in the estate, a teeming number of people
joined them from nearby and far-flung neighbourhoods around Ikorodu and beyond.
Buses and trucks marked with the Trinity House and Elizabeth
R insignia that carried various gift items were parked beside the field.
Personnel from K-Square, a private security company were busy, trying to keep
the children and their mothers from becoming unruly. There were two teams of
men of the Nigeria Police keeping an eye on the crowd. Thank God, the situation
never got out of control. By and large, the mild disruption was foisted on the
event by parents who could not stay on the queue and excited children, who
scampered to get a gift bag from Santa Claus.
The handout from the IIF were in different categories.
Pregnant women were given clothes, baby bath set, raw food items and a bag
filled with baby toiletries. Though some mothers tried to shave some months off
their grown babies, officials of IIF insisted on giving the baby clothes to the
right recipient. For the baby cot bed, pregnant women took to the dance floor
to dance to music from DJ Shexy in order to decide who will take it home. The
elderly women smiled home with one live chicken and food items.
Mrs. Ibijoke Adeboyejo said she was familiar with the
charitable disposition of the Ighodalos since she worshipped under Pastor Ituah
at the Redeemed Christian Church of God Christ Church, Gbagada. She got to know
about the Baby’s Day Out on Facebook. Mrs. Olayinka Mokwenye heard of the
charity through a friend. A good number of the women were residents of the
estate. Many of them had modest expectations when they were notified of the
event. But it turned out that the organisers exceeded their expectations by
far.
Mrs. Bola Egbo, a teacher said she expected a children’s
party. “The crowd is too much,” she said. Another teacher, Mrs. Sharon Uche who
lives in the estate thought it was going to be a platform for evangelism. Her
presumption was fulfilled in another way. “What the Ibidunni Ighodalo did was
better than preaching and hitting people on the head with the Bible. They
carried out practical Christianity.” Mrs. Shakirah Lawal, a Medical Laboratory
Scientist said she saw much more than she expected. Mrs. Florence Uju confessed
that the IIF came with loads of gifts, but advised that they should be better
organized next time. Perhaps, the luckiest of the women was Mrs. Jennifer
Ojukwu who was vising her sister in the estate. As a pregnant woman, she was
not only gifted with items for her unborn baby and herself, her four children
also went home with gifts.
An IIF spokesperson said the organization was growing fast
and was beginning to accommodate responsibilities which were not part of its
original obligation. “We set out to help couples who were challenged with
conception. It was a simple obedience to God. When you walk with God, you do
not know where He is taking you. You just follow Him in complete trust and
surrender. God is opening new horizons. Everything is related. When couples
conceive, the next thing is a baby. The expansion of our mission is within
rational progression.”
On New Year Day, the IIF team led by Ibidunni and her
husband, Pastor Ituah visited five hospitals within Lagos; including Island
Maternity, Lagos, Ajeromi General Hospital in Ajegunle, the Mother and Child
Hospital at Amuwo Odofin, the General Hospital in Mushin and the Gbagada
General Hospital. At every facility, they distributed gifts to the babies born on
New Year Day and their mothers. They also paid bills for indigent patients.
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