Some stories are difficult to write. This is one of them. Sitting inside the Christos International Worship Centre that afternoon of Sunday this year’s 15 June, I had difficulty fighting back the tears that had misted up my eyes. Oh, I’m not your average spring chicken journalist. Name any situation that could draw tears from a journalist and I have experienced it with my eyes totally dry. I was in Dr. Chuba Okadigbo’s entourage, which was the first team to enter into Odi town, Bayelsa State, after President Olusegun Obasanjo Odinised it when troops of the Nigerian Army outdid themselves in man’s inhumanity to man and leveled the entire town. Only two buildings there did not bear the scars of war – the First Bank building and the Anglican church. The foul smell of rotten bodies assaulted the nose from the bushes.
I have, under the escort of the United Nations Peacekeeping Force, toured the rebel zone during the Ivorian civil war and saw how war devastates Africa. I have been inside the Israeli museum that keeps alive the memory of Hitler’s effort to wipe out the Jews of Europe, visited the Nigerian civil war museum in Umuahia and descended into the Emeka Ojukwu bunker in that town and tears did not blind me.
Yet on that Sunday, 15 June this year, as I watched the Bishop David Ogudu Foundation empower some 250 widows and the very needy, the sick and totally helpless, I kept dabbing my eyes so as not to cause a scene. I went out a few times to rinse my face with water. I was simply overwhelmed by the goodness I saw in the church as help reached the helpless and I saw with wonderment how some widows would lovingly embrace a bag of rice as though that very bundle was a lover.
It dawned on me that Nigeria could be a sorry story to some families, that many children would often go to bed at night, very, very hungry. It hit me that some families would watch a member die of malaria attack because they lacked the money with which to buy anti-malaria tablets. That day brought home the fact to me that Nigeria is not a modern welfare nation-state. The tragedy of our cities engulfed my heart; the city has no pity; where you fall is where you lie.
And the power of what just one man, Bishop David Nwachukwu Ogudu, who has been doing for years, did that day, touched my very soul. There in the church that day were some 250 of the neediest of the needy in Nigeria to receive some succor – and they were not disappointed.
Oh, I was emotional all right watching the widows receive the bags of rice, watching their faces light up with an angelic smile. But that was not what got to me. There was a woman, a grandmother no doubt, whom the scouts of the Foundation had identified as someone who needed much more than rice. She was so incapacitated that she couldn’t walk. Added to that she was so helpless that she totally depended on her daughter whose only source of income was to leave the home daily in search of families that had dirty clothes or dishes or any such menial and low-paying job to do and she would be paid. She and her grandmother depended on such income for their total sustenance. Oh yes, trust Nigerians, some neighbours often try to help them, but then grandmother and granddaughter live in one of the poorest Abuja neighourhoods, a decency-forsaken place without water or electricity supplies.
So, the Foundation’s scouts who compiled the list of those to benefit from the Ogudu Foundation largesse submitted that grandmother’s name as a matter of course- for a bag of rice. But Bishop Ogudu sent the scouts back to ask in what ways a real change would be effected in that woman’s life. Oh, bless his heart, Ogudu decided immediately to uplift that woman beyond her dreams. If she couldn’t walk, then she would need a wheelchair to enable her to see the sunshine and ramble around her own little corner of this earth that God created.
Then, there was the question of her livelihood. Ogudu decided that a grinding machine – for grinding pepper, egusi (melon), tomato, etc would be a source of an inflow of funds for her upkeep no matter how little. Who would manage it? Oh, her daughter would learn to operate it.
So, as the wheel chair was being handed over to that woman’s representative, I remembered the story of the little boy who beckoned on a person who gifted a wheelchair to him to come closer so that he would memorise the features of his face, adding ‘so that I will recognise you in heaven’. It was more than I could bear. My eyes misted up.
Then, the game-changing grinding machine was also handed over. I knew that a life fate had mocked was getting a new lease. Things had just got better – just because Ogudu, a man from Okposi in Ebonyi State, had decided to make a difference in the life of a woman who was not from the Southeast geopolitical zone. He is just a Bishop, living that unforgettable quip from the late American President, John F. Kennedy: ‘On this earth, God’s work must truly be ours’.
Oh, the Bishop Ogudu Foundation goes beyond the yearly empowerment of widows. It has a special focus on educating youngsters who lacked the funds for school fees. So far, it has seen dozens of people graduate from secondary schools and the universities, people who would otherwise lack the benefit of a good education.
Ogudu does his best to fund the Foundation because of his belief that the talents which God in his infinite mercies imbued His children with should not be frustrated but must as much as possible be nurtured to flower – for the benefit of all of humanity. Of his, there is only very little that only him can do. Luckily, some good-hearted persons, from within Christos Church, which he oversees, and from outside the church and even from outside Nigeria, have been partnering with him to spread ever further afield this delectable gift of God.
Sometimes, this is surprising. One would have expected a real Prophet of God such as Ogudu, who with all confidence would tell a total stranger that ‘thus says the Lord’, and later that person would return to give his testimony of the truth he heard from him, through whom the sick is routinely made whole, to insist in giving others concrete help, instead of prayers alone, to make better their economic fortunes. Yes, he stresses hard work as much as prayers, even as he holds that nothing sets a person on the path to success or heals as a word from God. No wonder Ogudu has written dozens of books to guide Christians on the path of holiness as well as becoming successful in human endeavours.
Oh, I only need to add one thing: not many people will be able to focus their charitable acts in such a way as to ensure that their efforts actually enhance lives. That is why partnering with foundations is a worthwhile venture – as churches are stepping up to uplift those whose existence the Nigerian nation state cares little about as there is no welfare system, no public buses, no food pantries or soup kitchens for the poor, no free-health care for the poorest of the poor.
