The Yuletide and New Year celebration provided an opportunity for the Ibidunni Ighodalo Foundation, IIF, to show care and compassion to others. Despit
The Yuletide and New Year celebration provided an opportunity for the Ibidunni Ighodalo Foundation, IIF, to show care and compassion to others. Despite the biting fuel scarcity, the first edition of the Foundation’s baby shower charity called, ‘Baby’s Day Out; held at the Open Field of the Millennium Housing Estate, better known as, Tinubu Estate in Ibeshe-Ikorodu, Lagos.
Ibidunni Ighodalo, CEO of Elizabeth R, a top-notch events planning company and wife of Ituah Ighodalo, accountant and Senior Pastor of Trinity House, via her foundation, the Ibidunni Ighodalo Foundation, IIF, had announced that the event was for pregnant women and children between one day and one year old, but the organisers were forced to observe this restriction more as some elderly women, teenagers and single ladies showed up in their thousands to benefit from the IIF largesse. Though there was a captive population in the estate, a teeming number of people joined them from nearby and far-flung neighbourhoods around Ikorodu and beyond.
Giving out baby clothes to mothers
Buses and trucks marked with the Trinity House and Elizabeth R insignia that carried various gift items were parked beside the open field. Personnel from K-Square, a private security company kept busy trying to keep the children and their mothers from becoming unruly. There were two teams of men of the Nigerian Police to keep an eye on the crowd. Luckily, the situation never got out of control. By and large, the mild disruption was foisted on the event by parents who could not stay on the queue and excited children, who scampered to get a gift bag from Santa Claus.
The handout from IIF were in different categories. Pregnant women were given clothes, baby bath set, raw food items and a bag filled with baby toiletries. Though some mothers tried to shave some months off their grown babies, officials of IIF insisted on giving the baby clothes to the right recipient. For the baby cot bed, pregnant women took to the dance floor to dance to music from DJ Shexy in order to decide who will take it home. The elderly women smiled home with one live chicken and food items.
Mothers and children at the event
Mrs. Ibijoke Adeboyejo said she was familiar with the charitable disposition of the Ighodalos since she worshipped under Pastor Ituah at the Redeemed Christian Church of God Christ Church, Gbagada. She got to know about the Baby’s Day Out on Facebook. Mrs. Olayinka Mokwenye heard of the charity through a friend. A good number of the women were residents of the estate. Many of them had modest expectations when they were notified of the event. But it turned out that the organisers exceeded their expectations by far.
Mrs. Bola Egbo, a teacher said she expected a children’s party. “The crowd is too much,” she said. Another teacher, Mrs. Sharon Uche who lives in the estate thought it was going to be a platform for evangelism. Her presumption was fulfilled in another way. “What the Ibidunni Ighodalo did was better than preaching and hitting people on the head with the Bible. They carried out practical Christianity.” Mrs. Shakirah Lawal, a Medical Laboratory Scientist said she saw much more than she expected. Mrs. Florence Uju confessed that the IIF came with loads of gifts, but advised that they should be better organized next time. Perhaps, the luckiest of the women was Mrs. Jennifer Ojukwu who was visiting her sister in the estate. As a pregnant woman, she was not only gifted with items for her unborn baby and herself, her four children also went home with gifts.
More mothers and children at the event
An IIF spokesperson said the organization was growing fast and was beginning to accommodate responsibilities which were not part of its original obligation. “We set out to help couples who were challenged with conception. It was a simple obedience to God. When you walk with God, you do not know where He is taking you. You just follow Him in complete trust and surrender. God is opening new horizons. Everything is related. When couples conceive, the next thing is a baby. The expansion of our mission is within rational progression.”
Also on New Year Day, the IIF team led by Ibidunni and her husband, Pastor Ituah visited five hospitals within Lagos; including Island Maternity, Lagos, Ajeromi General Hospital in Ajegunle, the Mother and Child Hospital at Amuwo Odofin, the General Hospital in Mushin and the Gbagada General Hospital. At every hospital stop, they distributed gifts to the babies born on New Year Day and their mothers. They also paid bills for indigent patients.
One of the mothers overcome with emotion
