The newly installed President of Abuja Metropolitan Lions Club, Chief Charlz Opusunju, and his team are set to build a N45 million Paediatric Cancer Centre in Abuja.
Opusunju said this during the investiture ceremony of club officers for the 2020/2021 Lions Year in Abuja.
According to the president, the decision was predicated on the total absence of a Paediatric Cancer Centre at the University of Abuja Teaching Hospital.
He said the club has promised to deliver a brand new and fully furnished Paediatrics Cancer Centre to the teaching hospital within six months.
He said: “We visited the Teaching Hospital and discovered that there was no ward for paediatric cancer patients.
“Sadly, people hardly talk about paediatric cancer because it is always overshadowed by adult cancer.
“This is what propelled us to start creating awareness that there is also cancer among children.
“This is going to be our major project.
“We know it is a huge task, but we intend to accomplish it in the next six months and we urge Nigerians to key into it.
“We intend to build and possibly furnish depending on the amount we can raise.”
On the hurdles before his new administration, the president said the rich are not so interested in helping the poor.
Opusunju said: “We notice in humanitarian services that the less privileged suffer so much, while the rich are not so interested in helping the poor, but prefer flaunting their wealth.
“We hope to sensitise our people about this.”
He further revealed that the club just recently commissioned and donated a solar-powered borehole to Tunga Maji, an Abuja suburb, adding that Lions Club was determined to continue touching the lives of the poor in the society.
He said: “Since July this year, the club had donated and commissioned some projects, including a solar borehole for the same Tunga Maji community.
“The solar borehole project, costing about N2 million, was funded and supervised by members through direct labour.”
The Club’s immediate past President, Lion Monique Welson, also said various projects were carried out during her regime.
Welson said: “We actually did so much in terms of project execution.
“We touched lives at the FCT School for the Blind by providing some signages for people to easily locate the place.
“We screened them to ascertain the level of their sight problem and we celebrated with them.
“To cap it all, we built and furnished a resource centre for the school because the students needed a library where they can keep their belongings.
“We visited the Government Secondary School in Nyanya, distributed sanitary pads to many of the girls desperately in need of them and also distributed customised notebooks, biros and other items the students genuinely needed but could not afford.”
Present at the investiture ceremony were representatives of the governors of Ekiti and Sokoto States. Dr. Kayode Fayemi and Rt. Hon. Aminu Waziri Tanbuwal.
The representatives were honoured at the event, which also had several other dignitaries in attendance.
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