We touched 3,000 lives directly – Lion Ayobola Samuel
Lion Asiwaju Ayabola Samuel is the District Governor, International Association of Lions Clubs, District 404B2 Nigeria, 2017/2018 service year. He is a civil servant working with Kwara State Government, currently the Permanent Secretary, Kwara State Ministry of Sports and Youth Development; a community leader, the Asiwaju of Koro Kingdom in Ekiti Local Government, Kwara State. In this interview with www.therevealerng.com, he speaks on the activities of his administration. Below are the excerpts:
The essence of our existence is to render service to our immediate community and that we tried to do since July 1st 2017 when we resumed office. The first thing we did was to organize a public presentation ceremony. That public presentation was to serve two purposes: Number one, to create awareness about the new regime that has taken over; secondly to raise funds for the execution of our numerous programme and activities. That one took place at Government Banquet Hall, Kwara State on the 5th of August, 2017 and ever since we have been carrying our numerous projects and today (Saturday June 9, 2018) we had programme on paediatric cancer, cancer among children. Yesterday we donated traffic booth to Federal Road Safety Commission.
We had free medical mission in September last year in Ilorin, where we attended to about three thousand that came for eyes screening and diabetic screening. We gave out about 1600 free eye classes and we sponsored about 60 cataract and Glaucoma surgeries. We also embarked on relieving hunger. In January this year, we fed 200 indigents pupils in various public schools in Lagos which took place in Mushin.
We had a programme on sickle cell awareness at Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH) where we also donated medical equipment worth over N500,000 to the hospital. We have commissioned quite a number of boreholes: one was commissioned here at Mangoro in Agege, we have commissioned one in Osun State, and we also commissioned one at Ogbomosho in Oyo State; we have also carried out programmes on diabetic awareness and earlier this year – February and March we embarked on aggressive mobilisation and sensitisation of measles eradication across the district among others.
We have renovated schools for the special need in Ilorin. We have also created Skills Acquisition Centre for Postal Training Institute also in Ilorin. The Postal Training Institute is a creation of Nigerian Prison Service for children and adolescent who run fowl of the law but not old enough to go to prison yet, so they created this institute to reform them. So we discovered that if you put them there after sometime, they are freed to go and if they have nothing doing chances is that they can go back to crime so to forestall that, we set up skill acquisition centre where they acquire skill on tailoring and catering services like how to bake bread and cake and something like that so when they leave, once they have a skill, they can apply and this will help them when they get out they can have something doing that will divert their attention from going back to crime.
We have gone into environmental protection by planting trees and encouraging our communities to plant trees – firstly for beautification purpose and secondly to control windstorms, so these are some of the things that we have done.
About International Association of Lions Clubs
In 1917, a gentle man called Marvin Jones, decided to take seven of his friends out for lunch in Chicago, United States of America (USA) and when the lunch was on and he asked them: yes we have made it in our various businesses but has our community benefited from our success in our businesses? Why not we do something that will make our immediate community to appreciate that we live there? And so there and then the seven decided let us start a club that will be philanthropic in nature so they recruited some other friends and they started the first Lions Clubs in Illinois, Chicago. So basically we are 101 years old.
What is Lions Clubs to be rightly said? The Lions are men and women volunteers who decided to volunteer their times, their talent and resources to serving the less privileged in their immediate environment. So we are service organization. We are philanthropic organization that believes that whatever our situation is, there is somebody somewhere whose condition is worse than ours, and so what can we do? You may not really be the richest but you are richer than somebody. You may be poor but you are not the poorest. So what impact can you make with the little opportunity God has given to you on your immediate community, so that is the philosophy.
Lions are an acronym which means Liberty, Intelligent, Our Nation Safety but we have certified meaning – Loving Individuals Offering Needed Services and our slogan is: where there is need there is a Lion. So we are non-governmental organization that is collaborating with government to see how we can make our community much better. We can’t take over the duty of government but we can partner with them and see how we can better the lot of our people. So as I speak now we have one million, five hundred members globally spread into 46,000 clubs in about 210 countries of the world. The structure is like this: we have an international headquarters led by an international president; so the global organisation is broken into districts and a district is made up of a country or a number of countries; to date district is further broken down into regions, so a region can be made up of one or two states depending on the number of clubs within those states. Then we also have zones, a zone is made up of between five and eight clubs; then you have a club, a club is headed by a club president, a zone is headed by a zone chairperson, while a region is headed by a region chairperson and a district is headed by a district governor.
A country is depending on a number of clubs and a number of members. For instance in Nigeria we have four districts: district 404A1, 404A2, 404B1 and 404B2. District 404B2 covers all the Lions Clubs in Kwara State, all the Lions Clubs in Osun, all the Lions Clubs in Ekiti, all the Lions Clubs in Niger, all the Lions Clubs in Kogi, all the Lions Clubs in Kaduna, part of Oyo and part of Lagos.
Different between Lions Clubs and Rotary Clubs
Lions Clubs and Rotary Clubs are similar clubs just like if you a Christian let me just take that as example. For example, if you are Christian, then may be this man attends Anglican Church and I attend Methodist, we share the same belief that there is a supreme being called God and has his son by name Jesus Christ and before you can go to heaven you must know who Jesus Christ is. We are similar organization, both Lions and Rotary. We believe we should make impact in our immediate communities. It is just a matter that which one is convenient for me? For instance Rotary Clubs is known for fighting Polio and we have devoted our time to fighting measles. We do projects that bothered on social education, assist hospital with donation of drugs and medical equipments; we sink boreholes as a means of fighting water-borne diseases. So by and large we are similar in terms of what we do and in terms of mission and vision but it’s just a matter the route which each of us decided to follow.
Sources of our Funds
We draw funds from four major sources – if you want to join the association you are expected to pay membership subscription and which we pay annually; so that is one major source, the second one is through donations from friends, like I told you that I had presentation ceremony in Ilorin so I used it as an opportunity to invite my friends who are well endowed but they don’t have the time to come and sit down during meetings – they might not have the time but you can appeal to them once in a year let them come together to contribute depending on how well endowed they are; then the third way is that we sell our souvenirs, muffler, car stickers etc to make money and then lastly, when we have big projects, there is what we called Lions International Charity Foundation (LICF), that foundation gets money from two sources as well, so if you subscribe to what we called Marvin Jones Fellowship Award, you pay 100 US dollars and you acquire that award, you are permitted to use the prefix after your name. For instance that is what I am using, Lion Asiwaju Ayobola Samuel, MJF (Mervin Jones Fellowship).
So if you are able to pay 100 US dollars towards that foundation, you get that award. Again we also solicit for donation from government and highly placed individuals. When there is a fund raising that is ongoing and anybody who is able to give 500 US Dollars, there is what they will give to that person in return. You know here we talk about Naira and they are many wealthy Americans that can give as much as five million dollars. Even there is one man in Congo Libreville, he is into mining, and he too gave 500,000 US dollars, an African. So those are the sources of our funds. When you have big projects that are beyond your funding capacity, you submit your proposal to them, after evaluation and if they see that you are genuinely committed to the project and you have the capacity to manage it, they will give you a grant. For instance, if you go to Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH) even Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH), we have a Blood Bank there that was built by Lions. We also have diabetes screening and treatment centre in LASUTH, there is another in Ede, in Osun State and another one in Otta. We have accident clinic at Shagamu that was built through such arrangement; we also have one on Kaduna-Zaria Express Road and there is one also in Onitsha. When you have good projects but you do not have enough resources or capacity to execute them, you can apply for the funds through the International Foundation.
New Century Awards of Service
I have few days to go as the District Governor and I have tried to enumerate what we are able to do within the almost one year we have been in the office. It is not me alone; many people sacrificed their time, talent and resources; you could see that we are holding a meeting now, those people left everything to attend the meeting, not that we pay them, we don’t pay our members for services they render and they only way we can appreciate them is to organize that type of forum, to say thank you by giving them awards and little entertainment. So that is what we want to do. We want to use it as a platform to appreciate them and say thank you for all your support. The event will take place at the NUT Pavilion, Alausa by 12 noon on Saturday, June 23, 2018.
If you were to be given another change…
Unfortunately, in Lions, you cannot do second term, in fact, even you would not want to do because it is time demanding in terms of time and resources. I live in Ilorin but almost every fortnight I am in Lagos because three quarters of the clubs in my District are in Lagos. They will always invite you to come and commission one project or the other or come and attend one meeting or another. So you see me now shuttling from Ilorin to Lagos. If not that I am at the highest level at my place of work, because you will be taking permission from your boss and if care is not taking, you lose that job.
If I have another chance, there is one thing that pains me so much which I was unable to do because we did not have enough funds. I am pains when I see some of our public schools, the level of dilapidated, even some of them inadequate infrastructures – you see pupils learning under trees, some putting their notes books on their laps or on blocks to write. So we felt we should be able to collaborate with some local governments to renovate a few number of schools but some of them were not forthcoming and we did not have enough funds to do it all alone.
High point of my administration
The free medical mission that we did – because whatever you do in life if it doesn’t have direct bearing on human beings then there is no fulfillment. So for me having touched the lives of 3000 people directly is an activity that we will continue to remember. We brought some medical experts from United States of America to work with us. They are the people who brought some of the drugs that we gave free to the people even some of the medical equipment and drugs we donated to LASUTH was the left over from what they brought
Advice to the incoming administration
The incoming administration should continue to retain our members; not only to retain them; we need more members because members are important to implementation of our work. The incoming administration should do everything humanly possible to ensure that we do not lose our members and work harder to gain more members and also make sure that they do project that are relevance. Our policy is that you don’t just do a project for the sake of it, you must interact with the beneficiaries, and it is called next assessment – you must find out what is their immediate need because some people water might not be their problem and if you put water there, they will not use it not to talk about maintaining it. So you must give to the community what is of paramount to them. When they want to do project, let them continue to follow the laid down policies.
The next District Governor, District 404 B2 Nigeria
The next District Governor for District 404 B2 Nigeria is Lion Modupe Dada; she is a woman, a member of Lagos Mainland Lions Club Lagos. I wish them the very best of luck.
