From Noah Ebije, Kaduna
As part of their contribution to humanity and health care service delivery to the society, a group under the auspices of Jeje Riders Nigeria International (JRNI) has donated Heart Start Defibrillator worth millions of naira to the Barau Dikko Teaching Hospital and the 44 Army Reference Hospital in Kaduna.
The Jeje Riders who drove in their motor bikes from across the country led by their chairman, Board of Trustees and president, Tizhe Ibrahim Mathew said, they are committed to touching lives in positive ways as part of their core values and mandate as a group.
Speaking while making the presentation at both the Barau Dikko Teaching Hospital and 44 Army Reference Hospital, the president of the Riders, Mr Mathew said, they are an exclusive group of like minded young Nigerians international bikers based in Abuja.
“And the core of our objectives is charity, youth development and peace advocacy. It is in line with our creed that we have donated multi-million naira hospital equipments to Barau Dikko Teaching Hospital and 44 Army Reference Hospital in Kaduna.
“This is in line with what we have desired to do and will continue to do to support some of the good works that we have seen in the country. Supporting hospitals that are rendering services to the populace.
“If you look at the 44 Army Reference Hospital, it’s a military hospital that offers services even to civilians, and that is why we decided to support them today.
“We are international touring bikers organisation, we have support from sisters biker’s association across the world. In Africa, just recently, at the beginning of the year, we were in Niger Republic where a school was donated by bikers, last month we came back from Côte d’Ivoire, we have support from this sister bikers association and we also support them and they support us and that is how we get support for some of the things we do.”
He also disclosed that as an association, they have concluded plans to visit the Kogi state Governor to commiserate with him on the recent flood disaster that hit the state and that they will support no fewer than 200 households affected by the flood with relief materials.
“We will also be partnering with NDLEA before the end of the year in the area of youth development and you know we have to channel the energy of the youths appropriately and ensure that they are supported and developed properly”.
Also speaking on their recent visit to the Emir of Gombe Alhaji Abubakar Shehu Abubakar III, he said, “The Emir of Gombe is our father and the grand patron of all bikers in Nigeria. He supports all our activities all the time. He gives us advice and supports all the biking activities that we have done this year. We hope to also invite bikers associations from around West Africa to Nigeria by next year when we will be going to Gombe for a special event”.
On how long the Jeje bikers have existed, he said, “We have existed for a couple of years now. Individually, bikers belong to different biker associations. We brought ourselves together to form an exclusive Biker group. And that is why Jeje Riders is an exclusive biking association of like-minded young people. The maximum number of members is 24 that is to tell you how exclusive Jeje Riders is. People who have the same values and beliefs and are from different backgrounds belong to Jeje Riders Nigeria”.
Speaking on their challenges, he said, “There will always be challenges in terms of the roads which is a major challenge. That one is very obvious. You can imagine riding across the country, and sometimes on bad roads.you come across bad roads. But JeJe riders have safety at the core of all its riding activities, and we have been able to avoid any incidence since the formation of the association” he said.
Responding shortly after recieving the equipment, the chief medical director (CMD) of Barau Dikko Teaching Hospital, Professor Abdulkadir Musa Tabari said, “The equipment is used in saving lives in emergency cases especially patients with cardiac problems.
“Most often, we lost patients because we don’t have these facilities immediately available. ideally, not only within the hospital, every corner of the town and cities and highways, we are supposed to have this machine. It’s a life saving machine, instantly when you apply it to the heart, it will come up and bring back the heart to normal.
“We lost a lot of patients because of the lack of this type of machine. So it’s a highly welcome development that we have the nature of this machine in this time that we have it now. We thank the Jeje Riders for this wonderful donation and for even thinking towards this course.
“As we all know, most people suffers heart problem and indeed heart attack because we don’t do medical checkup to know whether there is impending heart attack or heart problem, it can happen to anybody at any time. We just heard the PDP Chairman somewhere while jubilating slumped instantly and died.
If this type of equipment is available, once you apply it, he will come back to life”, he stressed.
On his part, the Acting chief medical director of 44 Army Reference Hospital, Colonel Ndidi Stephen Onuchukwu, also commended the bikers for adding value to the hospital’s capacity to health delivery services while assuring of judicious use of the equipment.