Newly installed president of Abuja Metropolitan Lions Club Charlz Opusunju and his team have set an agenda to build a N45m paediatric cancer centre in Abuja.
According to Mr Opusunju, this is predicated on the total absence of such a centre at the University of Abuja Teaching Hospital.
The club has therefore promised to deliver a brand new and fully furnished paediatric cancer centre to the teaching hospital in six months.
Opusunju made this disclosure last weekend in Abuja during the investiture ceremony of club officers for the 2020/2021 Lions year.
He also revealed that the club which just recently commissioned and donated a solar-powered borehole to Tunga Maji, an Abuja suburb is determined to continue touching the lives of the poor in the society.
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 N2million was funded and supervised by members through direct labour.
The club, according to Lion Opusunju, is already raising funds to build the N45 million paediatric cancer centre inside the University of Abuja Teaching Hospital.
“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,” he promised.
On the hurdles before his new administration, he 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.”
Similarly, the immediate past president, Lion Monique Welson in enumerating the various projects carried out by her regime, 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 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.”
The investiture ceremony was attended by representatives of the Governors of Kayode Fayemi and Aminu Tambuwal of Ekiti and Sokoto states respectively.
