Hands at Work in Africa

Nigeria

Nigeria is Africa’s largest nation. Its people are renowned continent-wide for their drive and energy. Regularly named among the world’s three most corrupt nations and officially one of the world’s top-five petroleum producers, Nigeria bears a mix of lavishly wealthy businessmen alongside millions of poor citizens living in urban slums and undeveloped rural regions. The country is religiously divided with a Muslim majority (50%) mostly living in the north and the Christian population (40%) residing in the south. Though its overall adult HIV-prevalence rate is just above 3%, Nigeria holds the world’s third largest population of HIV-positive people.

In 2006 Hands at Work in Africa began working in the ultra-dense city of Lagos (population estimated at 16 million) in the south, as well as in the Muslim desert region of Kano in the north through partnership with local community organizations. The work has since rapidly multiplied. In 2008 Lagos alone saw Christians in six slum areas begin caring for the poorest of the poor. Work has also begun in rural areas surrounding the ancient southern city of Ibadan, and is planned for the central Nigeria region.

Called to the Slums

“Badia is located within Lagos, and was among the slums identified as completely neglected and needing urgent intervention by the World Bank in 2006. Badia is notorious for its size, and for the murky, trash-filled canals which crisscross the community and regularly flood the streets and homes. Multiple families often share tiny, one-room homes in Badia.

Thousands of children are not in school. Malaria is at epidemic levels: the flooding canals leave black swamp water lying in homes and streets, attracting swarms of mosquitoes. One entire section of Badia is made up only of brothels. Women, most of them poor migrants from rural areas and surrounding countries, live in the same dark, low shacks where they also sell their bodies. Many children are born into this situation,
without fathers or a safe place to live. Some children are completely abandoned to roam the streets.

In 2007, Rev Chris Ufot, a pastor near Badia, attended a Hands at Work Pastors’ training workshop in Lagos, where he was stirred by the challenge to care for the poor in his own community. Immediately he and his wife, Faith, began walking deeper into their community to find the people who were really suffering. And soon they had started a school for fifty of the community’s poorest children, operating just with the funds they and their church had. In 2009, Chris and Faith began challenging and training other Badia church leaders, involving
them in the mission to reach Badia’s poorest children.

Chris and Faith have now built up a team of local care workers from various
churches within Badia. These care workers are all unpaid volunteers with a passion to reach the poorest of the poor, especially to reduce the vulnerability of children in their community.