Date Published: 10/03/11

Fayemi's wife urges ladies to deliver unwanted babies at orphanages

The wife of Ekiti State Governor, Erelu Bisi Fayemi, has appealed to ladies with unwanted pregnancies not to abandon their babies when they eventually deliver them.

She gave the advice at Iyin-Ekiti when she visited the Erelu Adebayo Orphanage as part of activities to commemorate Nigeria’s 51st independence anniversary and 15th year of the creation of Ekiti State.

Fayemi was at the orphanage to donate some food items and toiletries to inmates of the home.

She advised such ladies to take their babies to orphanages rather than throwing them into dust bins or drains.

Fayemi said the orphanages would take care of such children to school age level.

She noted that since the state government had introduced free education and health programmes, it would not be difficult for such children to receive the best education in life.

The governor’s wife said she was surprised to see some of the adopted children outside the country in Netherlands during her visit to that country last week.

She noted that although the adopted children were doing well, they ought not to be there in the first instance.

Fayemi appealed to Nigerians to imbibe the culture of adopting some of the babies locally rather than allowing foreigners to come and adopt them.

She wondered if most of the adopted children she saw in Netherlands would ever come to back to the state again, stressing that ``even if they ever come, they will only come as visitors, not as citizens’’.

The Director, Child Development, Ministry of Women Affairs, Mrs Juliet Boluwatife, had earlier informed Fayemi that 47 of the children had been adopted by people from the Netherlands, while 13 others were in Sweden.

She said government had given approval for the renovation of the orphanage before the end of the year.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the orphanage was established in 2002 by the wife of former Gov. Adeniyi Adebayo, to cater for abandoned babies and those whose mothers died during delivery as well as children whose mothers are serving jail terms.

Fayemi had earlier paid a similar visit to the Children’s Ward at the Ado-Ekiti Teaching Hospital, where she equally presented some food items and toiletries.

At the Theatre Department, where free hernia surgery was going on, she promised that her NGO, Ekiti Development Foundation (EDF) would pay for the treatment of 50 beneficiaries.

The gesture was sequel to a complaint by the Commissioner for Health, Dr Wole Olugboji, that government only planned to offer free surgery to 150 patients, but that 300 people eventually turned up for the exercise.

(NAN)