The Edo National Association worldwide (ENAW) is on a medical mission to Edo state. The chairperson, Mrs. Mercy Grant, a registered nurse based in the United States and Mr. Emma Aigbedion, President- UNIC (UNITED NATIVE EDO IN CANADA), a socio-cultural club of Edo people in Toronto, Canada spoke with Isaac Eranga and Timothy Omobude on the rationale behind their visit to Edo state.

Excerpt:

Q. What are your objectives ?
MERCY GRANT
We are here on a medical mission. This is what we’ve been doing for the past 5 years. I took over as a chairperson last year, 2017. What we do is to come with medical doctors, nurses, social workers and administrative people who are volunteers. All of us involved in this medical mission came from the United States of America and Canada.
We don’t charge anything; we get our donations from the United States and Canada. We have all the medications, we access and treat patients diagnosed of diabetes, high blood pressure, ulcers and other kinds of ailments.. We also do HIV test, optical services, dental services and natural stuff. There are things that our body really need, but we go about westernizing what we have and start going into processed food, whereas we have all we need here.
We also do sex education, self – breast examination, that is what we were taught in the U.S. and Canada. For men, we teach them on testicular examination.

Why did you choose Edo state.?

As the name of our organization implies, Edo National Association Worldwide, our passion is in Edo state. More importantly, those of us on this mission hail from Edo state but we also get donations from the East. The people in the East have gone far in their humanitarian services and have embarked on projects including building of hospitals, community healthcare centres and maternity homes.
I am a nurse and I see professionally the way patients are being treated over there. The doctors over there do not go for big diagnosis, they go for smaller ones.
For example in this part of the world, if an elderly woman, perhaps, a grandmother with nobody to take care of her is talking anyhow, they will say it is witchcraft, that the grandmother has confessed. The truth is that the grandmother may be having urinary tract infection, treat the infection. and that confession will go away. So things like that are things we are not used to here. These are the things that motivated us to come. We raised funds to come here and we told other members if you cannot go, your money can go.
Can you tell us the locations of the communities your body has chosen to carry out these humanitarian services?
We cannot disclose the venues because of security reasons. But we have gone to the Oba’s palace, EBS, Ogbeson, Ekenwan village , Iguobazuwa, Iguoshodi and other outskirts of Benin city.
We have also been to Edo Central and Edo North Senatorial districts.

Emma interjects!
Let me come in here. My name is Emma Aigbedion, a trained social worker. I am the president of UNIC club of Toronto which is United Native Edo in Canada. UNIC is one of the 40 organizations that belong to ENAW. Fortunately for me, I am also the host President of the 2018 ENAW convention that is taking place in September in Toronto.
One of the reasons I’m here is not only to promote the convention coming up in September, but also to be part of this year’s medical mission.

Can you throw more light on your relationship with ENAW?

UNIC is an affiliate club of ENAW. Forty (40) organizations constituted ENAW and in Canada, we have 4 clubs that are also affiliates of ENAW. Majority of the affiliates are affiliates of ENAW and they include: UNIC club of Toronto, Adaze Relief club of Toronto, Dynamic club of Toronto and the Eve’s club of Toronto.
When Was ENAW Formed?
ENAW was formed in Washington DC by organized Edo indigenous people who saw the need for all Edos to come together to have one voice and to come together to ensure things back home are organized and to propagate and to promote the Edo culture and the heritage of our Benin tradition in far away lands, that was the main purpose of ENAW.
But over the years, the philosophy and goals of ENAW has shifted a little bit whereby it is now selfless services to the people back in Nigeria –so we have moved away from the major purpose of promoting the culture and heritage of Benin, to serving the people back home, bringing our expertise, our know how to the people back home so that the Edo people can gain or have a bit of what we do over there in the USA and Canada.

What was the motivation to do humanitarian services?
It is rewarding to give. They said the greatest gift you have or the greatest richness you have is not the money but the people that you lift up, that is the best thing you can do for any human being. So what we are doing is selfless service, going to our people and to offer them what they would not otherwise be able to do for themselves. We are complementing what the government is doing. The government can not do it alone. The government is limited in its ability and resources in what it is doing. Far-away, we realized the sufferings, the medical problems, among others our people are going through and we decided to come up with this initiative. Five years ago we had a pilot project and it was successful. That has informed our yearly medical mission. Yes, we left our homes, jobs and families to come here, it is because of the passion we have for our people. We can send money, that alone will not be enough.