Fortune has smiled on a 12-year old street hawker, Onawu Thomas Enefe, as the senator representing Cross River North Senatorial District, Jarigbe Agom Jarigbe, has taken up the responsibility of seeing him through secondary school with the immediate payment of the child hawker’s school fees from Junior Secondary I to Senior Secondary III.
Onawu who had completed primary school but has been unable to proceed to secondary school because his parents cannot foot the bill, stumbled on the senator’s benevolence when he went to hawk fruits at a site where the senator’s billboard was being erected. Awed by the enormous billboard, he began chanting the senator’s name, attracting in the process, the attention of some of the senator’s aides who where on site.
We gathered that upon interrogation, he revealed to the aides that he was out of school because his parents couldn’t afford the fees. When the senator was reached, he is said to have immediately requested to speak to the boy and his family. After the conversation with the boy and his parents, the senator made cash available and facilitated the boy’s admission process to the Government Technical College Abakpa, Ogoja, Cross River State. His mother got a cash cushion of N200,000 (two hundred thousand naira) from the senator, to start a food vending business.
Contacted after registration formalities for the boy were completed and fees paid, Jarigbe told www.calitown.com that it was his “little way of helping out a child in dire need of education and an opportunity to break away from poverty.”