Mr Ogechukwu Udeagha, the Manager, Media and Communications of Mobil Producing Nigeria Unlimited (an ExxonMobil subsidiary), has hinted that the company’s foundation had invested 15 billion naira to combatting malaria in Nigeria over the last 20 years.
He clarified that this is solely for Nigeria, adding that they spend much more globally.
He made this known, on Thursday at the Launch Basketball clinic mentoring sessions of Boys and girls team scrimmages ,tagged: Power Forward 2022 Season held at Government Secondary School, Tundun Wada, in collaboration with NBA Africa and PanAfricare.
He did say, however, that they are utilizing basketball as a rallying point to reach out to the students who will inturn take the message to their parents at home.
According to him:” Nigeria recorded more than 2000 deaths from malaria in 2020, even COVID-19 has not killed up to that number since it inception and nobody seems to be interested in the fight against malaria.
” It is a lot of work to get people to understand that malaria is a killer disease, you hear people say, I just have malaria, you don’t just have malaria, you have a major disease and we will take all precautionary measures to stop the dreaded disease and ensure that people are aware of the dangers of malaria. This is the message we are hoping that the young ones will take home , telling their parents on the need to have mosquito nets, clean our environments.
” The foundation has been working in the area of advocacy and research. We have about 15 local scholars who are attending several universities across the world. Malaria vaccine, I will not announce it here but there is a lot of input that our scholars who are on scholarship made into the research. We are not just talking advocacy, we are talking research, how do we end this, how do we get vaccination to stop malaria. We are also talking about treatment, we have distributed a lot of nets, diagnostic kits and a lot of treatments. It’s a whole value change for us from prevention to treatment, advocacy to research all of that is what we are focused on.”
NBA Africa Vice President and Country Head, Gbemisola Abudu, also spoke at the occasion, stating that the goal of the program is to provide young boys and girls with the opportunity to learn about the fundamentals of basketball while also equipping them with life skills that can improve their lives.
She stated, “We want to make sure that the programme cuts across Nigeria.” They have reached over 150 thousand pupils in Abuja during the last nine years, she added.Also speaking at the event, NBA Africa Vice President & Country Head, Gbemisola Abudu said the objective of the programme is keep young boys and girls the opportunity to learn about the foundamental of basketball while also equiping them with life skills that can transform their lives.
She said, they have reached about 150 thousand students in the last nine years in Abuja, we want to make sure that the project cut across Nigeria.
She added that,” we use this programme for talent hunts and youth empowerment”.
Meanwhile, the Director/Secretary, FCT Secondary Education Board , Mrs Nanre Emeje said Power Forward started this project in five secondary schools and now they are in 21 schools . If there was no positive impact, we wouldn’t have given them approval for more schools.
According to her:” The students that are prefects today were part of this programme, I am glad to let you know that the boys team of basketball in one of our schools are champion. Right now, they won the league in Lagos under the Maltina championship and they will be representing FCT in Lagos at the end of the month. They are students that have been groomed through power forward project.
“We are not afraid to grant them more approval if they want to go into all our schools we are ready”, she said.
