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| Onyeka Onwenu. |
It was a bright and sunny day on Wednesday, October
11, 2017 as a group of women philanthropists led by Nigeria’s renowned music
icon, Onyeka Onwenu visited the Badagry Prison in Lagos on an outreach to
hundreds of children incarcerated in the adult prison.
Earlier in 2017, a moving story by one Ayomide Odekanyan
went viral on Social Media where the author recounted a visit by the Lagos
State Chief Judge, Justice Funmilayo Atilade to the beachside prison and had
hoped to free 28 underage inmates at the prison, but, she met “hundreds of hungry
and unkempt children, displaying varying stages of disease and neglect”.
“Held deep in the dingy cells of the prison among the
convicted murderers, armed robbers, rapists, and the likes are also children
and teenagers serving sentences for various offences ranging from petty theft
to wandering and even street hawking,” Adekanyan’s haunting piece read. “The
horror within the Badagry Prisons cells is better imagined.”
When music legend, Onyeka Onwenu read Adekanyan’s
report in August 2017, she decided to intervene on behalf of the children who
had found themselves held by the state in a prison meant for adults. She began
to organise to visit the children and do whatever she could to bring their
plight to the attention of the authorities.
Consequently,Onyeka was joined at the prisons by some
members of the Christown Platform, a Christian Whatsapp Group founded by the
music legend, members of Prison Outreach Department of the Fountain of Life
Church, two of her friends, Mrs. Chinelo Egbuna and Mrs. Violet Obiora, a team
of doctors from an NGO, Healthy Pink Initiative Services, and two officers of
Ztalion, an NGO and they presented 240 mattresses, biscuits, medical supplies
and drugs to the inmates of the Badagry Prison.
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