Gov. Bello’s lifeline for baby with hole in the heart
Luck smiled broadly on a 10-month-old baby at the venue of the on-going Kogi State Civil Service Appeals Committee sitting near the Government House, Lokoja, when Governor Yahaya Bello came across him, strapped to the mother’s chest. He has a hole in the heart. The mother, a civil servant with the state government, had reported at the venue to make a case as to why her name should not be taken off the payroll.
Mrs. Habibat Abubakar Abdulkareem bore Abdulfatai Abdulkareem with a hole in the heart and had been told by doctors to correct the ailment through corrective surgery.Bello was at the venue of the screening to see the progress of work being done and how the workers were responding to the exercise which has a six-week deadline. As fate would have it.
The governor immediately noticed the distressed nursing mother with her ailing baby and asked her what the problem was with the child. As the governor moved close to her, the woman was afraid that he had come to chide her for coming to the venue with a sick baby and looked frightened.
But Bello beckoned on her to keep calm. “He was born like that with the hole in his heart and we do not have the kind of money the doctors are calling for us to carry out a corrective surgery,” the woman told the governor, sobbing.
Even if I sell everything I have, it would be impossible for me to raise the millions the doctors have told me to get in order to take this baby out for surgery to fix the hole in his heart”. Moved by pity for the toddler, Bello promised to sponsor the treatment of the child anywhere the mother wanted him taken to so as to save his life. The mother, who could not hide her joy, broke into tears of joy.
The governor, who spent over 30 minutes interacting with the committee members and civil servants, expressed satisfaction with the quality of job work being done by the committee. He praised the dedication of the committee members, who are working hard in order to meet the six-week deadline to finish their job.
