…Says ‘We Have 14 Children, Not 100 As Claimed’
The Enugu State Chapter of the Nigeria Red Cross Society has picked holes in the claim by the state chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC), and its Chairman, Ugo Agballah, that it lost a baby in the process of demolitions at Holy Ghost, Enugu, where the state government is clearing the old motor park and some properties to build a modern transport terminal.
The Red Cross also punctured the claim that it had over 100 children at the time of the demolition, insisting that it had only 14 children who had all been safely and temporarily relocated to another orphanage in the state capital. Wondering how the APC got the figure 100 children, the Red Cross appealed to politicians to stop dragging it into politics as it is a neutral body in the politics of Enugu State. These rebuttals and clarifications were made by the Secretary of the Nigerian Red Cross in Enugu, Tony Udegbu, in a telephone interview on Tuesday.
NewsBits recalls that the Chairman of the Enugu State chapter of the APC, Chief Ugo Agballa, had on Monday addressed the press at Holy Ghost where he leveled several allegations on Governor Peter Mbah-led administration over some of the development projects in the state.
But reacting to the development, the state scribe of the Red Cross, Udegbu, said, “It is not true that any child died. We are healthy. The governor relocated us, and they are working on our new site. And we do not play background politics. The Red Cross is an impartial body all over the world. And the role we play is auxiliary to the government’s role. So, we want to be left out of politics because we are not a partisan organisation.
“We do not have anything near 100 children. They are 14. “What happened that time was that they were renovating a place for us at the old UNTH road. But that place was not ready when they came with a bulldozer. But when the governor got to know about the reality, he relocated the babies to Ken David’s Orphanage Home and they are working on that permanent place right now.
“So, by the grace of God, His Excellency, the Governor, has since relocated the babies to an orphanage they call Ken David’s Orphanage Home. And the children are there temporarily until they finish the new place. I thank the governor for taking a decisive action by making the babies comfortable when he got to know the truth. The governor is the Patron of the Nigerian Red Cross Society, Enugu Branch, by the Nigerian Red Cross Act 1960. So, those babies are his own too,” the Red Cross said.
