By Nosa Akenzua
A renowned non-governmental organisation, Marie Stopes International Nigeria, on Wednesday sought to collaborate with Omu Anioma/Nneoha, Obi Martha Dunkwu, as a way of achieving proper promotion of the organisation’s mission of maternal and child health in Delta state.
The group, during an advocacy visit to the Omu’s palace in Okpanam, Oshimili North local government area, Delta state, appealed to Omu Dunkwu to guide them on ways to go about educating the local women on family planning needs.
According to the leader of the delegation and community mobilisation officer, Okiemute Iyedo, “We are in your Palace Your Majesty, to intimate you of our activities and programmes in Delta State. We have done quite a lot, including setting up a maternal and child clinic for the purpose of assisting women to contain child-bearing complications like bleeding, still-birth and others.
“Apart from the maternal and child health support programmes of the Marie Stopes Nigeria, we are also involved in cervical cancer screening for which we had carried out several campaigns before now.
“In all of this, we have created the stakeholders’ townhall meeting for the stakeholders’ involvement in giving talks to women on how best to achieve proper family planning and at the same time, attaining sound health status going forward.
“One of such stakeholders’ meetings will hold on Thursday, 30th September, 2021, at the Oshimili South Council from 10am. We are mindful that without your highly achieved and passionate person being involved to guide us, the meeting is as good as not worth its salt. On this note, we have come to seek your royal guidance and future collaborations on mobilising women towards benefitting from various health initiatives and programmes of the Marie Stopes International Nigeria”, Okiemute explained.
Responding, Omu Dunkwu commended the group for their sacrifice of love in doing humanitarian services.
She told them categorically that she had, over the years, remained indifferent to population control in the name of family planning, adding that the western world was not telling the blacks the truth.
She said that our population is to our advantage, except that leadership had failed in maximising the potentials of our positively growing population.
“The western world is afraid of our growing population as against theirs with their women refusing to give birth to more children. They are afraid of a world being ruled by the blacks.
“We have the capacity to consume what we produce if only we can look inwards and leverage on the positive side of our population. We don’t need population control; all we need is quality leadership to harness our population into strength and economic advantage.
“I am not particularly interested in that kind of control of population where our women are told not to give birth to more children because that is what the Western world needs. Except it has to do with the health of the woman. If we are doing birth controls through family planning because the health of the mother is endangered, fine, but if not, don’t get me involved,” Omu Anioma posited.
However, both sides agreed to meet to particularly encourage women to take care of their health and be guided by what affects them.
Omu Dunkwu, nonetheless, educated her visitors that the only solution to women living a fulfilled life of family and purpose is when they are educated. She said that education was the only critical code that could help them solve their own issues.
She stressed that in thinking ahead for women, especially of Anioma extraction, she had registered the Obi Martha Dunkwu Foundation to give scholarship to indigent Anioma girl children in a way to help them advance educationally.
Commending Omu Anioma for the knowledge gained through the advocacy, the administrative assistant of the group, Mr. Charles Idama, thanked her for her willingness always to engage and impart value-oriented lessons on people.