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Ikate Rotary Club receives district governor, donates to school, health centre

By Eniola Daniel
10 October 2020   |   4:01 am
District 9110 Governor of the Rotary Club of Nigeria, Bola Oyebade has said that despite the cash crunch caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Rotary Club will continue to deliver humanitarian services to the society.

Members of the Rotary Club of Ikate with students and management of Lagos Progressive Senior Secondary School.

District 9110 Governor of the Rotary Club of Nigeria, Bola Oyebade has said that despite the cash crunch caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Rotary Club will continue to deliver humanitarian services to the society.

Oyebade, who was on a working visit to Rotary Club of Ikate, made the disclosure during the launch of a Dictionary Project at Lagos Progressive Senior Secondary School, and facelift of Anjorin Primary Health Centre, Surulere, Lagos.

Oyebade said, “I grew up around here and the school we visited was where I started my primary education in 1976. This is my first visit to the Rotary Club of Ikate.”

 
Speaking on the effect of COVID-19 on the club’s activities, he said: “the impact of COVID-19 pandemic has been up and down; in some cases, it’s been quite bad and some other cases, not been so bad. It has been bad in the sense that a lot of Rotarians have pulled back a little; they have not been able to do most of the things they are used to doing; making huge contributions, going to functions and participating in other activities of the district and other rotary clubs.

“Events are yet to fully open, we’ve not been having so many events where we have convergence of Rotarians in large numbers; that’s a down side for us. But, on the other side, people are still meeting virtually and they are able to do at least half of the things they are meant to do as Rotarians. For instance, we’ve not stopped making contributions to our community; we’ve not stopped developing our membership, and we’ve not stopped also making contributions to our rotary foundation, which is very close to our heart.”
 
He added, “We are looking out to the commissioning of uncountable projects before the end of the year. The last time I checked, we have more than a thousand projects lined up by various Rotary Clubs. We still have some clubs yet to list their projects, but that does not mean they are not executing projects; some are under listing the numbers of projects they are doing. Right now, I make bold to say that we have more than 900 projects set to be done and we have about 18 clubs that have not listed at least one project. More than a thousand service projects are going to be executed,” he assured.
  
While calling on government to find ways of tackling challenges facing Nigerians, he said, “most of the issues the government is supposed to be handling are the things Rotary Club is handling; we are not politicians, we are supporting the governments. We don’t even have one per cent of what the government has, but we are doing the little we can do. So, the needs of human are humongous and what the Rotarians are doing is just giving a little palliative of what the government of the day is able to give. We just have to wish the government the best of luck and add our own.”

  
Speaking at the commissioning of the projects, president, Rotary Club of Ikate, Rotarian Kola Awotoye, said, “usually, the visit of the District Governor comes with project commissioning, so, part of our activities is the launching of a Dictionary Project at Lagos Progressive Senior Secondary School, and paying homage to the Local Council chairman, then facelift of Anjorin Primary Health Centre, where we refurbished the health centre; painting, plumbing works, revamping the benches and chairs, donation of bed sheets, donation of fans and planting of trees.
 
“This is not our first project this year; our year starts from July and we are three months into our Rotary year; this is about the fifth project we are doing. We still have plans to dig boreholes and visit motherless homes; we plan to do a health project for market women. These are some of the projects we still have for the year.”

On his achievement since he became the District President, Awotoye said, “We’ve done tree planting because tree planting is what we encourage to make sure we have trees around; the environment is green and healthy. We have also donated gifts to Heart of Gold where children with special needs are. Because of COVID, we also invited a professor who is knowledgeable in small and medium enterprises to help see how small companies survive in this period.”

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