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Osteogenesis Imperfecta Foundation Beams Light of Hope, Distributes Mobility Aids to PLWD

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By Eric Elezuo

The main hall of the Saint Micheal, Raphael and Gabriel Catholic Church, Satellite Town, Lagos, and the entire premises were bubbly with humanitarian activities as the Osteogenesis Imperfecta Foundation of Nigeria took it upon itself to reach out to Nigerians living with disabilities with various forms of mobility aids, ranching from crutches, wheelchairs and walking sticks.

The Foundation, which has in the last eight years, since 2016, been saddled with the responsibility of caring for the less privileged and other indigent persons, also conducted free eye tests as well as gave out free medicated eyeglasses for the virtually impaired.

Speaking at the occasion, and tracing the eight years journey of the Foundation, the Founder/CEO, Mrs. Tarela Aghanti, who is also the United Kingdom Ambassador for the National Youth Council of Nigeria, Europe Chapter, noted that she was motivated to embark on the journey, which has translated to pure selflessness and humanitarian, upon discovery that her own son was not only born with the Osteogenesis Imperfecta, but was not properly diagnosed and treated, until she was opportune to take him abroad, where he received better treatment and attention. She noted that it was the need to extend the privilege her son had enjoyed that prompted her to ensure that the processes are replicated back home in Nigeria.

“The motivation was purely humanitarian, and with me having gone through that issue of having a child with Osteogenesis Imperfecta, and with everything that I went through personally for the fact that there was no awareness about it, and I didn’t know what my son had, and there was no proper medication that was recommended for my son. That got to the bottom of my heart. And when I eventually got an opportunity to give my son treatment, I felt there was a need to come back home and give back to humanity. And the reason I felt that need was because I had an opportunity of a lifetime that changed my life and my son’s life.

“My son became a human being again; my family was intact. For me, family is very important, so I felt that need to go back and breach the gap where people with Osteogenesis Imperfecta can be human, and have their own family; be united with their family and be brought up by their own parents.

“I’m so grateful that the Foundation is doing just that, and we are able to achieve even more, bring in OI professionals and specialists from the United States to conduct surgeries for these children,” Mrs Aghanti informed.

She added that humanitarian-giving by the Foundation has been sustained in eight years, and in 2024 at the very event, a total of 314 mobility aids including wheelchairs, crutches and walking canes, were given out to various categories of Osteogenesis Imperfecta patients.

In her remarks at the occasion, the Ambassador of the Foundation in Nigeria, Yeye Adenike Agnes Shobajo, expressed her delight at the selfless efforts of Mrs Aghanti and her team in giving to Nigerians, what otherwise they would not be able to access, describing her as a superwoman, who deserves a national award.

“If there are few individuals in this country, who deserve to be honoured on the national scale, Mrs Aghanti qualifies to be one of them. She deserves a national honour and recognition for her selfless efforts,” Yeye Shobajo said.

The OI Ambassador proceeded to honour Mrs Aghanti by presenting her with a medal honour, thanking her for her efforts as well as pleading with her not rest on her oars in affecting the society positively.

While acknowledging the accolades, Mrs Aghanti called on the government at all levels to come to their assistance in reaching out to more Nigerians as funds required for the assignment are huge.

“The challenges are huge. In the first place, we’ve not had any funding in the Nigerian space. A lot of the funds we have used are from fundraising in the UK or individuals supporting us. But from the Nigerian space, we have not had any help.

“Again, we are in dire need of medical doctors for the children, who need a level of bone juice every six months to keep them going, and it reduces fracture among the children, who are very fragile and allergic to any form of stress. The juice and surgery can correct any deformity in the child. So funding and provision of medical personnel are highly needed.

“We certainly need the government to partner and work with considering more that we are working in the grassroots. We are actually locating families of children that have been abandoned, picking them up and giving them life again,” Aghanti said.

She further advised on the need to identify the Osteogenesis Imperfecta patients on time because the only record of loss recorded in the Foundation are those of children discovered after they have been seriously battered and rendered almost lifeless, noting that early discovery makes therapy and treatment easy and rewarding.

“It is my privilege to let our policy know that Osteogenesis Imperfecta do exist, and there are a lot of Nigerian children suffering from the disease. They need assistance, and more importantly policies that will enable them live their normal lives as human beings,” Aghanti added.

A major highlight of the event was the presentation of the wheelchairs and others to citizens who desired them. Among the first of recipients was young Tishe Ajayi, who presented emotional poems before receiving his wheelchair.

Other members of the public, who have benefited from both the generosity of Osteogenesis Imperfecta Foundation and Mrs. Tarela Aghanti as a person, were also on hand to express their appreciations.

The Osteogenesis Imperfecta Foundation is already eight years in the business of rendering humanitarian assistance to the special needs persons, and according to the Founder, they are not stopping any time soon.

“Our Foundation is in search of a country where the needs of people living with Osteogenesis Imperfecta are understood, respected and affected to fully meet their potential,” Aghanti concluded.

Osteogenesis Imperfecta, also known as Brittle Bone Disease, is a disease that causes weak bones, making it to break easily. The OI can also cause many other diseases such as weak muscles, brittle teeth and hearing loss.

Photos: Ken Ehimen

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UBA Reinforces Commitment to Rewarding Customer-Loyalty with N400m Bonus

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UBA Rewards Customer Loyalty with Over ₦400 Million Bumper Account Anniversary Bonus
…Reinforces commitment to rewarding customers for consistent savings
Africa’s Global Bank, United Bank for Africa (UBA) Plc, has rewarded thousands of customers with over ₦400 million in anniversary bonuses under its flagship UBA Bumper Account, reaffirming the Bank’s unwavering commitment to rewarding customer loyalty and promoting a strong savings culture.

The payout, one of the largest loyalty rewards under the Bumper Account initiative since its launch, saw qualifying customers receive anniversary bonuses directly into their accounts, demonstrating UBA’s resolve to create lasting value for customers who consistently save with the Bank.

The UBA Bumper Account is a unique savings product that rewards customers simply for maintaining and growing their savings. Every year an eligible account reaches its anniversary, customers receive a cash bonus, making disciplined saving both rewarding and beneficial over time.
Speaking on the milestone, UBA’s Head, Retail Products, Tomiwa Sotiloye, said the Bank remains committed to ensuring that customers benefit directly from their relationship with UBA.

“At UBA, we believe customer loyalty deserves meaningful recognition. Every bonus paid is our way of saying ‘thank you’ to customers who continue to trust us with their financial aspirations. Surpassing the ₦400 million milestone reflects our commitment to creating products that not only help customers save but also reward them in tangible ways. It is another demonstration that when our customers grow, we grow with them.”

He added that both new and existing customers can open a UBA Bumper Account seamlessly through https://on.ubagroup.com/bumper-tc, any any UBA branch, the UBA Mobile Banking App, by dialing *919#, or online, positioning themselves to qualify for future anniversary rewards.

Also speaking, UBA’s Group Head, Brands, Marketing and Corporate Communications, Alero Ladipo, said the Bank’s customer-centric philosophy continues to shape its product offerings.

“The UBA Bumper Account reflects our unwavering commitment to putting customers first. We deliberately design products that reward responsible financial behaviour while delivering real value. Crediting over ₦400 million directly into customers’ accounts is not just a payout; it is evidence of our promise to make banking more rewarding and to continually appreciate the confidence our customers repose in us.”

The UBA Bumper Account remains one of the Bank’s flagship retail savings products, combining competitive savings benefits, digital convenience and attractive loyalty rewards. It forms part of UBA’s broader strategy to deepen financial inclusion by encouraging sustainable savings habits while delivering exceptional customer experiences.

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Dele Momodu Leadership Centre Hosts Media Scholar, Prof Abiodun Adeniyi

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By Anjorin Fehintola Stella

We often measure leadership by the institutions people build or the positions they occupy. Yet, during his visit to the Dele Momodu Leadership Centre, Professor Abiodun Adeniyi repeatedly returned to something less visible but perhaps more enduring; the responsibility of documenting one’s life and thoughts. He spoke as someone who understands, at a personal level, what is lost when experience is left unrecorded. His emphasis on documentation was not stylistic advice for writers. It was an argument about memory itself, about how societies retain or lose the wisdom of the people who pass through them.

Ideas disappear when they are undocumented because memory, at the collective level, is fragile and selective. A society does not remember everything that happens within it, it remembers what is written down, repeated, taught, or institutionalised. An undocumented thought, however brilliant, dies with the person who held it, or worse, drifts into vague anecdote, stripped of its original precision. This is why oral cultures, for all their richness, often struggle to transmit complex ideas across generations with fidelity. Professor Adeniyi’s point, then, was not simply about personal record-keeping. History remembers people largely through what they leave behind, not through what they intended to leave behind. Intention without artefact disappears.

When he spoke about travelling, it would be easy to reduce his words to a fondness for movement or exposure. But the deeper claim runs further than that. Travel disrupts familiarity. It exposes individuals to different ways of living, thinking, governing and imagining society. Professor Adeniyi suggested that travelling remains one of the simplest yet most profound forms of education because it broadens not only knowledge but perspective. A person confined to one environment mistakes the local for the universal. Movement across geographies forces a confrontation with alternative logics, alternative arrangements of power, family, and meaning, and that confrontation is often where genuine learning begins.

Perhaps the strongest advice he gave concerned the pursuit of a doctorate. When Aare Dele Momodu spoke of his desire to pursue a PhD, Professor Adeniyi’s response challenged a growing culture in which academic qualifications are sometimes pursued as symbols of prestige rather than vehicles of inquiry. A PhD earned for the title that follows a name produces a credential without a contribution. A PhD earned out of genuine curiosity produces new knowledge and, more importantly, sustains the kind of intellectual restlessness that defines a thinking life. Professor Adeniyi’s counsel was that one should choose a field that strikes them professionally and personally, something that connects to lived purpose rather than social signalling, because the value of advanced study lies in the questions it forces a person to keep asking long after the degree is conferred.

Professor Abiodun did not reserve his counsel for matters of scholarship alone. Turning to the younger staff in the room, Professor Adeniyi offered something closer to reassurance than instruction, that everything they are currently going through, the uncertainty, the striving, the sense of being far from where they hope to be, is a phase both he and Aare Dele Momodu have lived through themselves. It was a reminder that ambition rarely moves on a straight or visible timeline. The goals and dreams that feel distant now are not denied, only delayed, and what stands between the present moment and their fulfilment is simply time and dedication, applied without pause.

 

Underneath all these threads, travel, documentation, the meaning of scholarship, was a single, unifying idea about legacy. Legacy isn’t what people say about you. It’s what remains after you leave. This distinction matters because praise is temporary and circumstantial, shaped by mood, politics, and memory’s natural decay. What remains, however, is structural. It is the book on a shelf, the institution still running, the idea still being taught.

This is where the conversation returned, inevitably, to the Centre itself. The library. The scholars’ rooms. The conversations. The institution. Professor Adeniyi appeared genuinely moved by what he encountered, not by the scale of the buildings, but by what the buildings were designed to hold. Perhaps that is why Professor Adeniyi appeared genuinely moved by the Centre. It was never merely about architecture. It was about permanence. Buildings become legacy only when they preserve ideas.

Every visit leaves footprints. Some are physical. Others are intellectual. Professor Abiodun Adeniyi’s visit left the latter.

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Lagos Govt Sues for Calm As Flood Ravages City, Okays Dredging of 28 Channels

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The Lagos State Government has appealed for calm following persistent rainfall and flash floods across many parts of the State over the past two weeks, announcing the immediate dredging of 28 additional primary drainage channels to improve flood control.

Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu approved the emergency dredging intervention as part of efforts to strengthen the state’s drainage network.

The Commissioner for Environment and Water Resources, Tokunbo Wahab, said the recent downpours are an extreme weather event that produced an unusually large volume of rainfall within a short period, overwhelming drainage systems in some locations and causing temporary flooding in parts of Victoria Island, Lekki, Ikeja, Gbagada, Mushin, Mafoloku and other communities.

According to him, the situation was not peculiar to Lagos; several African countries and parts of North America also experienced heavy rainfall and flooding during the same period.

Wahab, however, said Lagos presents a more complex hydrological challenge because of its extensive network of lagoons, rivers, creeks and tidal water bodies, coupled with its high rainfall intensity.

He explained that the interaction between the Atlantic Ocean, Lagos Lagoon and inland waterways, especially during high tide, naturally slows the discharge of storm-water into the sea, leading to temporary flooding in low-lying areas during exceptionally heavy rainfall.

The commissioner assured residents that the government was closely monitoring drainage infrastructure, flood-prone areas and major channels across the State.

He added that emergency response agencies have been deployed to affected areas to facilitate the quick recession of floodwaters and provide necessary support to residents.

Wahab said the government would continue to invest in drainage construction, channelisation, desilting, and other flood-control infrastructure, but stressed that residents also have a responsibility to support these efforts.

He urged residents to stop dumping refuse into drains, canals and waterways, warning that blocked drainage channels and illegal reclamation of wetlands contribute significantly to flooding.

He also cautioned against building on drainage alignments and engaging in activities that could obstruct the free flow of storm-water.

The commissioner said the increasing frequency of extreme rainfall events across coastal cities is a clear indication of the impact of climate change.

“Lagos is not exempt from these realities. However, the State Government remains steadfast in its commitment to building a flood-resilient city through sustained infrastructure development, environmental enforcement and active collaboration with residents,” he said.

Wahab described flood management as a shared responsibility, urging residents to keep drainage channels free of debris and to report any activities that could obstruct storm-water flow.

He also advised motorists to avoid driving through flooded roads during heavy rainfall and urged residents, particularly those in flood-prone communities, to comply with weather advisories and safety instructions issued by relevant government agencies.

He reaffirmed the government’s commitment to protecting lives and property through proactive flood management measures and called for continued public cooperation in building a cleaner, safer and more resilient Lagos.

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