By Olakunle Olafioye
The National President of Association of Orphanages and Homes in Nigeria (ASSOHON), Dr Gabriel Oyediji, has given insight into why many eligible orphanages in the country could not benefit from the N25O million donation by Nigerian singer, David Adeleke, popularly known as Davido, to orphanages in the country.
Oyediji who described the singer’s gesture as legendary, rued the inability of many qualified orphanages to access the donation despite having their names submitted to the panel saddled with the responsibility of sharing the money.
In this interview, Dr Oyediji also x-rays some of the challenges confronting orphanages as well as the frustration of Nigerians seeking children for adoption.
The entire world is going through a very difficult phase occasioned by the outbreak of COVID-19. How has this impacted on orphanages and motherless babies’ homes in Nigeria?
It’s a global issue, but localizing it I will say it has had a grievous and unpleasant effect on home operators in Nigeria which has also affected the welfare and wellbeing of the children in these homes. One, it has escalated charity fatigue because the structures of many companies got upset; the economy too got upset and these have affected charity acts. People are not as naturally disposed as they used to before now. Since homes are not funded by government we depend largely on charity. Imagine many companies that are struggling to reopen; some have not even opened at all. All the structures in place were already upset and disrupted. The disruption has serious impact on the lives of the children in homes and we, the operators. The struggle for survival has escalated. So, it is a big tragedy and serious complication. Sometimes the quality and quantity of foods cannot be the same as it were.
Would you say there has been increase or reduction in the number of children being admitted into homes in this period of pandemic?
There has been increase because there is distress in many families, which has made many children to walk away because their families cannot sustain their needs. And in moving out of their homes some of them get stranded and unable to find their ways back. Many parents are even pushing their children out to go and seek refuge in orphanages because they believe that the children in these orphanages are faring better. Even those whose parents can be traced would even beg us to retain their children with us because those factors which prompted their escape from homes are still there.
Considering the pressure on orphanages now do you consider rejecting some of these children?
By what we signed for we are not expected to reject them. Although Lagos State and some other states have targets about the number of children they want; so some may reject them if they have reached their targets. But some of us don’t have set targets; I don’t turn them back except when there is no more space to accommodate them. The family courts have been busy these days trying to decongest homes and avoiding the perpetuation of the stay of children in homes so they do a lot of social investigations, contacting their parents where they can be found and getting them to recover their children. So children come in and children go out.
How has adoption of children helped in decongesting homes? Are people still coming for adoption?
Adoptable children are very scarce. Not all children in orphanages are adoptable. There are four categories of children in all orphanages. The pure orphans, these are children without parental identification at all. They are classified as abandoned children. Secondly, we have children in need of care and protection, children whose survivals are being threatened and in need of placement while investigation is going on. Number three we have children under disparities or issues, may be their matters is going on in the court and the court has to assign them to homes pending the resolution of their matters. The fourth category is abused children because the law and social practice do not allow the child to remain in an environment where they will be abused because of the emotional trauma. So while their matters go on they put the child in a place where he can recover from the emotional trauma and if the abusers have been made to repent. When you see children, 20, 30, running about in an orphanage, it’s not all of them that are adoptable because the population of abandoned children has become so scarce. The reason is that in those days when homes, the juvenile police and the ministry were working together, their input to boldly decide that a child should be given up for adoption and they would go and make a formal affidavit in the high court stating their intention and promising that they would not come to give anybody any trouble, if they (parents) know that the baby cannot survive in the care, but because of over-regulation, this has become a problem. The second reason is that when the regulation had not escalated to this point whenever they called any orphanage that there was an abandoned child anywhere we would rush there and call the ministry and the police; give the child the necessary medical and nutritional needs and they would put the baby in our placement. Then if anybody who had an approval for the adoption of the baby came around we would give them through the ministry; not directly and conjunction with the juvenile police. But the trajectory changed suddenly. Now when you see such a child and you waste time taking care of the child by giving it medical attention, you pay hospital bills. The ministry will come to tell you that the child will not be kept in your home because of the new regulations. They will take that child to another orphanage and all your input on that child will come to naught. So they expect that once you pick the child you bring it to them and hand off. They will decide where the child will be assigned. So, many operators believe that they are being denied the fruit of their labour. But we cannot challenge the decision of supervisory authorities. So, these days when they call us for any abandoned child, we will call the ministry; we won’t go there to invest all our efforts and resources and at the end of the day be denied the privilege of having the child in our homes. Meanwhile there is a serious escalation in number of people in need of adoptable children. There is a serious infertility crisis in town and serious surge for adoption. The ministry and orphanages are under terrible pressure. This is so because the Nigerian government is not proactive. As we are talking now the issue of surrogacy which is practiced everywhere, is still being debated here in Nigeria. We have also been talking about the establishment of unwanted pregnancies department in local governments. Whether we like it or not there will be cases of unwanted pregnancies. There is a bad disequilibrium. In a country where hundreds of thousands people are looking for children to adopt, some illegal private clinics are still thriving on abortion. The reason is that there is no detailed direction for people who have unwanted pregnancies. If there is such department, they will be asked to go there for counseling. If at the end of the day they are convinced that the baby will not survive under such parents, they will slate the baby for adoption with the cooperation of the parents and there will be supply of babies to fill the gap.
Is it then safe to say that these could be the reasons we continue to hear rampant cases of baby factories in Nigeria?
It will interest you to know that in the East where we often hear reports of baby factories, as the national president of Association of Orphanages and Homes in Nigeria, ASSOHON, I visited the Southeast and I saw that in that area their policies are different. People are just shouting baby factories in the East without knowing the details. For instance, in Igbo land, it is a taboo or an aberration for their unmarried daughters to be pregnant without knowing who is responsible. So, in order to avoid being stigmatized some of these girls run to other places to hide and give birth because the majority of them are scared of abortion. I found out that in the Southeast they have what we call social care institutions and homes that are run by medical doctors and gynaecologists. When these girls run to them, they admit them as their patients and start taking care of them till they give birth to their children. When they register them they do so in conjunction with the supervising ministries. The State Assemblies have even gazetted it in some states. When they are sure that they are not ready to take care of the baby they call the ministry. The ministry will now look into their files for those seeking to adopt babies. When they get anyone that is interested in adopting the baby, the ministry will then call the hospital and ask for their bills for nurturing the pregnancy of the baby till birth. This will take care of the expenses incurred from the day the lady was admitted, including feeding, medical care etc. If the intending adopter can bear the expenses, the case is sorted. Doesn’t that make some sense? But that does not mean that there are no those who like to circumvent the process.
He has actualized that vision. He raised the money, N250 million and raised the panel to distribute and the panel did the distribution as much as they could. The biggest problem the panel faced is the problem of identifying genuine orphanages in the country. When we heard about the panel, we forwarded a letter introducing our association and sent a list of genuine orphanages that are known to us and to the government, about 590 plus across all the states in the country. Unfortunately only, I think, 292 orphanages benefited. The panel tried as much as it could to make the process seamless and transparent by getting in contact with us to verify certain information. But I believe it would have been a little better if Davido had included our members in the membership of the panel. Some ineligible people still found their ways into it. I personally saw one whose home had been shut down for more than 10 years, while some genuine operators did not get a dime. The authentication was not properly accomplished because of the nature of the country. Some people got their list directly to the panel behind us. The modality they used in picking the 292 homes out of the almost 600 is not clear to us. One illegal home in Delta State claimed it had 3,000 children, so the panel became curious and called me to authenticate the claim. I called the state coordinator who told me that it was fake. In spite of all these shortcomings I will still say the panel tried its best. Many of our members are lamenting their non-inclusion and we are even thinking as an association we have to rake from those who received to take care of them. Because it seems unfair to them and it has also affected their confidence in us. Some are even thinking we did not present their names to the panel. When I informed the chairman about this she told me confidentially that the panel was unable to cover everybody and that they reserved a list and promised to take care of those left out in another opportunity that may come their way soonest.