By Olanrewaju Adesanya
The G5 and Makinde Formidable Legend has made good its resolve to give respite to all classes of people,by giving them food stuffs and well prepared meal to children even as the scourge of Coronavirus subsists which necessitated imposition of restrictive measures by the Federal and state government .
Hon. Rasheed Makinde the lawmaker representing Ifako-Ijaiye constituency II, who was also present to declare the food prepared for the children safe for consumption along with other dignitaries, who assessed the meal before given it out to the wards all lined up in clear observance of the social distance.
According to Makinde many homes are already running out of food stuffs,as the COVID-19 sit-at-home order enters third week, so the idea is thoughtful.
“We are here today to extend the hands of fellowship to the kids in this Meiran Housing Estate in Ojokoro, the scourge of COVID-19 is ravaging the world and we are in the third week now,most of the food stuffs stocked up by our people is almost getting exhausted.
“G5 of Meiran Estate and Makinde Formidable Legend deemed it fit to prepare a meal as well as give hand sanitizers to their residents and this is the second phase of the gesture, since the restriction imposed on human movement by government debarring many activities.
“This meal is to cushion the effect of the restriction on the parents and guardians of these children and secondly to keep them at home.
“At least if they have good food in their belly they would be able to sit at home and watch TV and keep to the social distancing measure.
“500 children were feted today with well prepared meal, the first phase catered for 300 people and as Honourable member representing this constituency, I have distributed over 2000 hand sanitizer across the various social strata in this area.
“We have already distributed it to the stakeholders in the local government too, yesterday we gave raw food stuff to inhabitants of Ojokoro.
“Today the G5 and Makinde Formidable Legends are doing another noble one. In the next two weeks Makinde Formidable Alliance will do similar things distributing raw foods to the vulnerables in our community.
“I also thank the Council Chairman,corporate bodies and individuals who have been doing a lot in assisting the state and federal government to cushion the effect of the stay at home order.”
Speaking on the security threats recently witnessed in the area, Makinde noted that the border lines between Ogun state and the neighbouring localities like Ojokoro gave rise to the development.
“Ojokoro shares a lot of border points with Ogun and as a result we have a lot of vulnerables that are now moving into our local government to take advantage of that geographic opening,due to which we had few skirmishes around our area.
“I called the Area Commander and the Commander of the RRS and they were both here in our local government last week Tuesday or Wednesday to quell the fracas that occured.
“Since then the panic created made the individuals and residents to be having security vigils, in those areas so as to forestall any unforeseen invasion from the neighbouring youths from Ogun state.
We are working on that and every security apparatus are in place to restore normalcy.
On the rate of compliance the lawmaker, cited that majority of the people living in the area are educated and so comported themselves very well.
“In Ojokoro Local Government, I can say more than average of the populace are educated,law abiding and we obey whatever government says.
“Since the pronouncement of Governor Sanwo-Olu we have obeyed the order and that informs why up till this day no case of CORONAVIRUS was recorded here, patient or infected persons here.
“Lagos state government have been able to gather a reasonable data that has covered over 85 percent of its inhabitants,it is a fact that Lagos State is a nation state.
Every now and then people come in so we cannot capture everybody coming in every minute in Lagos State but as at today due to the LASRRA creation that everyone must be registered along with their children and the household.
“So Lagos State were able to gather enough information and data to really plan and distribute the stimulus to their inhabitants., Lagos State is doing well and I want the Federal Government to follow suit so that the kind of embarrassment we are having across the globe will drastically reduced”.Said Makinde.
Engineer Balogun Omolade the Grand Patron MFL, mirrored why the gesture was necessary.
“It is our own way of extending our hands of fellowship to the community, the G5 group have been involved in various humanitarian services the estate.
“They have been into health care services for children within the age of one to ten,for free malaria drugs and they have been helping in terms of WAEC forms and GCE and JAMB forms.
” During this period they’ve been able to give up to 600 residents packs of raw foods and we now felt that since not all the residents have direct access to feed the children,we decided to come up with this saying let’s feed 500 children and see how it goes.
“People should continue to obey what the state and Federal government is telling them, stay at home when you don’t have anything essential to do outside.
“Now we are so sure that this virus is not about people coming into the country but now about we that are in the country already, so all we have to do is to just break the chain of spreading the virus and the only way is by staying at home and that is why we did not encourage any of the children or people here to stay for long.
“You collect your food pack and move away straight to your house. We want to encourage people to stay at home.
” I will say it here that people should endeavour to stay at home, except if it is essential for them to come out of their houses.
The host Mr.Babatunde Thomas, the Chairman G5 in Meiran Estate,hinted that Ojokoro is lucky that well meaning individuals are ready to help.
“Yesterday there is a woman selling moinmoin there and about three or four people bought the whole stock she is got and ask people around to be taking for free to support their feeding.
“Equally during this period we have given out lots of raw food stuffs to people not only the vulnerables because we have discovered that almost everybody is now vulnerable, as they don’t have cash in hand.
“Elderlies are the most vulnerable,they may not have money and will not like to go and beg for food, equally to some women that are vulnerable we ensure that we gather enough packaged food stuffs, we have done over 300, we equally feel that we have done for the adults, the elders then let us do for the children.
“If you are able to provide breakfast for a child then the parents and guardians will be left with the pressure of getting them lunch and dinner.
“We are equally thinking of the youths because in a community, when you close your eyes to the youths you are going to create problems,over 70 million Nigerians are unemployed.
“That means 70 million are vulnerable then we have statistics from the National Bureau of Statistics that over 25 million youths are underemployed,70 million plus 25million that equals 95million about 50 percent of the population, so if half of our population is vulnerable then we are in problems.
“Those of us who are not in this category should try and help others, if we don’t give the vulnerables pressure will be on us, we are going to see pockets of robberies and crisis that is when we would now discover that it is as a result of not doing what we should.
” So we now say from G5 and MFL let’s put our resources together to do this and we can still do more .”
One of the beneficiaries,Ofobutu Toyin said the meal is timely and profoundly thanked the initiators. “I express my gratitude for all those behind this gesture for not allowing me to go hungry.”