After successfully completing his primary and secondary education, Tega got admitted into a neighborhood University where he read Economics, graduating in 1987 with a very good honors degree. After completing his Youth Service, he joined the exodus to the new generation banks as was the fad then in 1989. Since then, his career has progressed very well on the average getting a promotion every two years and has today risen to a high managerial cadre. He initially met his wife when they were both students in the University, where he was 3 years her senior. Even though they had no relationship in the campus, they subsequently met in Lagos and one thing led to another as they say and they became husband and wife.

God has truly blessed their union; they now have a house of their own, top-end vehicles, go on a family vacation once or twice a year, decent savings and most importantly three (3) beautiful children – Junior, Janet and Juliet, in that order. These children though a blessing have turned into a major challenge for Tega of late.

Tega had a vision to run a tidy family life, bringing up his children the way his parents brought him and his siblings up: very disciplined, controlled and responsible children. However, recent events and reports have scared him such that he believes if nothing is done quickly, he may lose control of his children and he would have failed as a father.

Junior has had very poor disciplinary records at school. He has turned into a bully at school and has even come home from school once or twice with black eye. They have had to change school twice for him. To make matters worse, he has brought these tendencies home and started – “trying out” his “karate skills” on his sisters. This has led to so much tension at home and in even one instance, the two sisters joined hands to fight their brother and the brawl resulted to a lot of body scratching and broken items in the living room. Together the kids have become very wasteful and saucy and disrespectful to the home staff. Their rooms are always littered with items all over the floor and in several instances, they have wasted food given to them to eat by the maids.

It is their usual practice to always demand what was not in the menu and wasting already cooked food. Their toys and play stations are scatterd and unkempt, and are almost replaced every month. And to make matters worse, they are in the lower quartiles in their classes in academic performances.

Tega was really alarmed and he concluded that something needs to be done Urgently to inculcate discipline, moral values and a sense of responsibility into his children. Of course, he remembered the biblical injunctions:

Prov 22:6 “Train up a child in the way he should go; and when he is old, he will not depart from it.”

3 Jn:4 “I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in truth.”

Prov 29:15 “The rod and reproof give wisdom; but a child left to himself bringeth his mother to shame.”

He accordingly designed a work programme to restore ‘sanity’ to his children.

The Children’s Transit Home, Surulere was founded in 1991 for Children between the ages of 3-12 years. Funded by the State Government and Churches, it was established as a home for: (a) Abandoned children; (b) Maltreated children and (c) Those beyond parental care. At maturity, the children are either fostered out or sent to approved schools for boys or girls. As with most government institutions like this, the Children’s Transit house is poorly funded. They are always in lack even for the most basic things and most importantly quality meals for the children. Indeed in an earlier request sent to us, the home requested for basic things like mattresses, soap and toothpaste. Yes toothpaste!

Operating under very austere budgets, the staff struggle to spread the little money allocated to them to cover “everything”. Consequently to provide the right and quality care to the children, the home has to depend on external non-governmental support. The ACCMAD programme has been providing meals to this home along with 3 other similar homes in Lagos for five years now. On the average, we serve about 300-350 meal parcels every Sunday to the children in addition to other non-food items given to the home.

On this particular Sunday, Tega began the implementation of his “Children Restoration and Recovery” programme. He took the children early to the Soup Kitchen where they participated in scooping hot Jollof rice into small nylon bags before they are packed into the big sacks for onward delivery and sharing at the over 150 distribution centers spread over Lagos. Of course, the first shock the children particularly Junior had, was the fact that everybody was scooping and were oblivious of his presence. He had no choice under the instruction of his Daddy to wash his hands and join along with his sisters (very good family outing!!)

Shedding their air-conditioned Toyota Prado Jeep, they joined the serving team going to the Children’s Transit Home in the “Jalopy” ACCMAD Distribution Bus (WE NEED MORE BUSES!!!) with wooden seats and broken windows, of course, with no air-conditioning! With the other volunteers in the bus and wearing their aprons, they set out for the journey to the Transit Home in Surulere. Of course, bad shocks and bad tyres ensured that the journey was not smooth. Tega noticed that Junior was already sweating and he was waiting for that usual “Daddy I am hot”, that comes when NEPA takes light in their house and they are ‘managing diesel’. But because of the other people in the bus, Junior could not summon up the courage to say that.

You can then imagine the shock the children had when they arrived at the home. They have never seen this number of children together before. Though the children in the home were cheerful, Tega’s children could see immediately that the children were poorly dressed, did not look well fed, did not have games and swings in their gardens, were restricted, probably did not have Very good beds with the best mattresses, did not have the play stations or flat screens, did not have separate rooms etc. etc. As they began to handover the food packs of Jollof rice with a piece of meat and a satchet of ‘pure water’ to the Home’s children, Tega’s children remembered that this did not compare with the expensive plates their meals are served on and the bottled water that they waste when they are eating. Tega’s children also noticed the passion with which the Home children ‘pounced’ on the packs of rice as if there were manna from Heaven and the relish with which they were eating, never allowing even a single grain to fall off from the packs!

As if the children rehearsed it, they asked Tega in Unison “daddy, daddy, why are these children not like us?” Before their daddy could answer, they also added in unison, “daddy we are very sorry!!

Happy Can Sunday and May God bless you as you Continue to give!

· Luke 14:12-14 “Then said he also to him that bade him. “When thou makest a dinner or a supper, call not thy friends, nor thy brethren, neither thy kinsmen, nor thy rich neighbours; lest they also bid thee again, and a recompense be made thee. But when thou makest a feast call the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind. “And thou shalt be blessed; for they cannot recompense thee; for thou shalt be recompensed at the resurrection of the just.”

· Prov. 19:17 “He that hath pity upon the poor lendeth unto the Lord; and that which he hath given will he pay him again”.

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