Photo: NAN
By Lawrence Olaoye
President Muhammadu Buhari yesterday had breakfast with a group of orphans who staged a performance at the All Progressives Congress (APC) convention where he was affirmed the presidential candidate of his party at the weekend.
According to statement made available to newsmen yesterday by his spokesman, Femi Adesina, the group, Xplicit Dancers, consisting of young male and female orphans put up a scintinlating performance to the admiration of the audience at the Eagle Square venue of the party’s convention on Saturday night.
Owing to their performance, the President hosted them to a surprise breakfast yesterday morning.
Buhari at the breakfast said: “I am very impressed with your performance. It must have taken a lot of discipline and training. To dance with such dexterity is fantastic. I congratulate you.”
The young dancers, aged between 11 and 27 years, are mostly orphans taken off the streets, and brought up at Explicit Home of Favour Initiative, Ibadan, Oyo State.
The father of the home is David Abraham, a graduate of Business Administration. His wife, Oluwakemi, serves as mother, and they jointly run the registered welfare home. They have two biological children of their own.
“I still feel this is a dream, and if it is, I don’t want to wake from it,” Abraham, in his 40s, told the President. “Thanks sir, for being a father. Because you invited us to have breakfast with you, came down to our level, stood on the line with us to take your own meal, ate with us, favour will not depart from you.”
Fourteen members of the dance group were at the breakfast meeting, though the home currently has an enrolment of 56 people. They had numbered up to 100 at a certain time, but 45 have graduated, 10 got married, and are pursuing their professional and domestic lives.
Asked how and when the home started, Abraham said “It was established in 2004. I love to dance, and I was dancing in church one day, when God told me that dancing is not enough. I was instructed to take orphans off the streets, and empower them.”
Explicit Home of Favour Initiative is funded from takings at dance appearances and freewill contributions.
Onoriede Florentina, Executive Director of the group, said: “We are short of words. The President is not the way people describe him on social media. He is humorous, fatherly, and very warm. He sat with us, ate with us, and it takes a man with a heart of gold to identify with people like us.”
