The Association of Orphanages and Homes Operators in Nigeria, ASOHON, has stated that unregistered, closed down and non-existing homes benefitted from the N250m largesse to orphans by popular Nigerian singer, David Adeleke, popularly known as Davido.
The national president of the association, Rev Dr Gabriel Oyedeji, who disclosed this at a press conference in Lagos, blamed the development on the inherent complications in identifying, verifying and confirming credible homes and orphanages.
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While confirming that no fewer than 292 orphanages benefited from the Charity Initiative by the music star, Dr Oyedeji said the challenges encountered in the disbursement would have been avoided if officials of the association were included in the committee set up by Davido.
“We deeply appreciate Davido and hereby formally confirm that the fund was properly released. We also wish to confirm the disbursement though it was dotted with some hitches. We are not unaware of the inherent complications of identifying, verifying and confirming credible homes and orphanages by the committee saddled with the responsibility.
“We presented a total of 592 credible homes and orphanages across the country but only 292 were touched. Even so, several unregistered homes, closed down homes and non-existing homes were also included in the 292 benefiting from the initiative,” he said
Dr Oyedeji added, “From our calculations, we figure that the sharing modality adopted by the Committee assigned by David allocated the average rate of N25,000 per orphan in the beneficiary homes. We also noticed some dis-equilibrium in the rating, as some homes got fewer than the number of orphans in their homes while several others got nothing.
“Nevertheless, we want to appreciate the committee for the stress they went through in the disbursement. We further note that the accreditation, verification and disbursement would have been better and easier had our association officials been included in the panel chosen for the disbursement”.
He said that the association had engaged the Panel Chairman on the gaps identified and he, in turn, appealed to them to be patient as those left in the initiative would be favourably considered in future exercise.
Dr Oyedeji, who commended Davido’s initiative, appealed to Nigerians to emulate the superstar and reach out to orphans in Homes across the country; adding that over the years, no home operator in the country received sustained grants or funds from the government to run their homes.
The association also called on the House of Representatives to strengthen the existing regulatory organs, rather than create another supervisory body to manage orphanages as proposed in a bill before the federal lawmakers.
