Posted by By CHIDI NNADI and PETRUS OBI, Enugu on
March 11, 2008 was a day the children and members of the Nigerian Red Cross Motherless Babies Home in Enugu were looking up to. They had been hinted that giant GSM provider, MTN, will be coming to town on a nationwide tour with popular musician, Innocent Idibia popularly known as 2Face.
March 11, 2008 was a day the children and members of the Nigerian Red Cross Motherless Babies Home in Enugu were looking up to. They had been hinted that giant GSM provider, MTN, will be coming to town on a nationwide tour with popular musician, Innocent Idibia popularly known as 2Face.
Before the Enugu trip, 2Face Idibia said that they have been to Benin , Lagos and Ibadan , to show love to the less privileged in these cities in a tour codenamed MTN Xtracool Tour with 2Face and Friends.
Idibia told the members of the Home that he had brought a message of hope to the inmates. 'My message is that they have been given so much hope and light; and my message too is for you not to relent or be worn out, and one love," he said.
The musician said that he takes love to be one being the way God wants it to be towards other people and humanity in general.
He said that he was happy with the members of the Home who he described as those volunteers that are out to render selfless services.
'We have come to say thank you for selfless people like you. We want you to keep in touch always, we thank people like you who try to keep these children together," Idibia said.
Idibia who made a personal donation of N100,000 to the Home promised to float a foundation soon, a platform with which he hopes to organize concerts regularly to raise money to be given to charitable organizations.
Speaking on behalf of the members of the Home, its proprietress, Mrs Eunice Ugwu, said that they were happy that MTN and Idibia finally made the trip.
Her words: 'We have been expecting you for a very long time now, I'm very happy, the Red Cross is happy to see you with MTN. Your coming will motivate other people to come to the Home. The memory of your coming will remain in this place."
Mrs Ugwu who is also the founder of the Home said that they are taking care of the children very well like their mothers, saying that with the coming of Idibia they had also found a father.
She said that the Home which was established in 1969 has been sustained by public-spirited individuals, churches and organizations like MTN who are well disposed to giving to charity.
She disclosed that before last Christmas they had in the Home 18 children, saying they have now discharged some of them.
MTN had brought on the visit five bags of 50kg rice, 10 packets of Indomie noodles, one carton of Soya bean milk, one carton of Cowbell milk and one carton of sugar.
At a musical jam organized later at the Presidential Hotel where over 11 artistes performed with 2Face to climax the visit to the coal city, the Sponsorship Manager of MTN, Mr Osaze Obueku, said the visit was to say thank you and encourage the Nigerian youths who live in this part of the country and who are using the Xtracool package.
Obueku said they were in town to show love to the youths and the less privileged in the zone.