By Simon Ebegbulem, Benin City
When Saturday Vanguard visited one of the bungalows at the Edo State Government House last Tuesday, we saw children between the ages of 14-19 playing happily round the compound.

He wondered who they could be because the buildings in the area are used as guest houses. He tried to satisfy his curiosity by inquiring if any government official resides in the place. He was told that the kids were Governor Adams Oshiomhole’s children.

Did the governor have the kids outside wedlock? Jhe wondered but he was quickly informed that he picked the children on the streets of Benin City about six weeks after he was sworn in as Governor of Edo state.

Saturday Vanguard learnt that the Governor picked the children, nine of them, on the 24th of December, 2008. It was learnt that these children have lived in the streets all their lives and some of them were arrested and locked up in police cells with no hope of being bailed by any family relation.

However, when the Comrade Governor was touring the streets of Benin shortly after his victory at the Appeal Court , he ran into these children, six of them at a police station. After he inquired what under aged kids would be doing in a police cell, he was told that they were petty thieves as a matter of fact, they stole some money from a woman who insisted that they would not be bailed until her money was made available.

The Governor saw poverty in the kids and paid the money, just as he granted them bail. The kids were said to have told him that they had no where to go after he inquired about their parents.

He asked them to enter the vehicle and that was how they found themselves in another world. It was said that that same day at Ring Road, he also ran into three street boys who met him to say they wanted to go to school but they have no body to train them. He also asked them to enter the vehicle.

However, Saturday Vanguard visited this well furnished apartment, and one could immediately observe that even some children of the rich could not get the comfort these Oshiomhole’s children are getting today. It was also observed that some of the kids are not even Edo state indigenes, two of them are from Delta State . Saturday Vanguard met a lady playing with them.

She identified herself as Ochugbue Gillian, the Special Assistant to the Governor on Sanitation and Beautification and the mother of the children. She went on to tell the story of the children and how she became an emergency mother of nine.

According to her, “It was actually six weeks that the Comrade Governor was sworn in as Governor, precisely on the 24th of December, 2008. We were on a tour to the various dump sites in Edo state. Then we stopped briefly at the market area to look at the place, when some how, something led us to the police station.

When we got to the police station, the Comrade Governor saw this very old woman and from there, he got to know that there were some teenagers who ran into police trouble and were held by the police. He frowned at it because they are teenagers within the ages of 14 and 16.

These children had poor parental background and have become street children. They were six of them in number and he asked them to enter the vehicle. That same day, just as we left the police station, three kids ran to him and said they were not in school because they could not pay school fees. He asked them if they wanted to come with him. They said yes and he said they should enter the vehicle. And since that 24th of December, they have been with me.

The day we got these children, the Governor just said, Gillian, ‘You now have children. Go and take care of them’. And I thought it was a joke. Some of them had STDs and all that but we had to take care of them. I thought the Governor wanted to hand them over to Reform Homes.

When I now found a place, I went to him to inform him. He looked at me and asked, ‘Do you understand, Gillian?’ He looked at me as if I was a mad person. I went out and started thinking but I now understood what he meant was that these children are special people and he wants to train them in a special way.

“All of them said they wanted to go to school. So because of their background, we had to seek the assistance of social workers to put them through some kind of training because what we were doing was a kind of reformation. These are people who have lived all their lives in the streets.

So, we got some people from NAPTIP, Sisters of Divine Mercy to help us talk to them, just to break into them and see how we could reform them. So we said, okay, since they have left school for a long time, we got them private teachers to help groom them for some time because as at when we found them, they were bullies. We also put them through career learning.

We put all of that together. We took them to Idia Renaissance. We put four of them in hair dressing. We had one in tailoring, we had two in catering and we had one in computer science.

But we were surprised after the third day in school, the driver went to pick them and I had a call that three of the girls had disappeared. We started searching for them and later we found them back in the streets. And we began to wonder. Is it this the kind of life you prefer? But after six months at Idia Renaissance, we took them to real schools. We took them to Baptist Children Academy and Baptist High School .

Then in February this year, one did not come home from school. The mother came later, crying appealing that we take her back. But we said we did not chase her away in the first place. So the mother said she was behaving like somebody under demonic influence. A lot of things really happened while taking care of these children. But we thank God. It is God’s work we are doing and he always gives his children protection.

And last Sunday here, one of the boys, Nosa disappeared and it pained me so much because he was very responsible. He went to church with us and left from there. We tried to trace him.

He is with his family now and the next thing I heard was that his uncle took him to the village to farm. Honestly, I get scared with the kind of things I see happening in Benin . When I insisted that Nosa should be brought back, the mother told me that I should mind my business, that they had taken their child.

Recently, I saw Nosa because I asked some people to help me search for him. He was looking very terrible when I saw him. I asked him what happened. He said they bundled him to the village to the uncle’s farm. It was like they saw that the boy was going to see the light and the uncle never wanted that. But we thank God we have others who are doing very well here.”

Asked what was the Governor’s reaction to Nosa’s disappearance, Gillian asserted that, “the Comrade Governor is one man with a very big heart. Disappointments don’t deter him. When he learnt about these development, he just said we would keep trying, that we would at least ensure that we take the ones left to greater heights. He said we must not give up.

One of the beneficiaries, Joy, from Ethiope East Local Government Council of DeIta State, expressed joy over her rehabilitation, asserting, “The Governor has done what my parents failed to do. I now attend good school, live in a good home and have good food.

I feel grateful to him for making me live like a human being. I was a frustrated person before but I now go to church and school. Some body arrested us and locked us up in the police cell until the Comrade Governor came and freed us and paid the woman the money back.

Speaking also, Victor who is now in JSS 2, narrated that the governor “picked me up at Ring Road and I told him that I want to go to school. I just pray that God should protect him and his family. Where ever he is getting the money he uses in training us, God will replenish it for him.”