I received a call about abandoned children in a village where no one was taking care of them. My wife and I suspended what we were doing and headed to the community. This was how we met them. One of the children was abandoned by this teenage mother. I cried when I saw him; my wife couldn’t hold her emotions as well. He had already been beaten by humans and life, but he refused to give up. I carried him and washed off layers and layers of blood that had dried on his body. I had to report the case to the police station, got the community involved, and met the family head where he was abandoned. It was a long stressful community engagement, but his life was worth all the efforts. We named him “Savior,” and took him home.
We had to reschedule and readjust our work and slept in the hospital to care for him.

He preferred sleeping on my body because that’s where he found solace and felt safe. It was a hard time because we had to sell our laptop at a point and other things to foot his medical bills, but we are glad we did.
After we brought him home, we noticed he would walk out of his bed at night and walk to the dustbins to look for food. We devised a means to help him overcome that phase of his life. So, we bought a loaf of fresh bread every evening. We would leave the loaf in his hands so he can sleep off and wake up to see the bread, and know he will never have to scavenge for food like he used to in the past. It all paid off, as it built his confidence and trust in our care.

This is him today. We are working on getting Legal custody of him. We went to the ministry of Justice in December and we were asked to come back by the third week of January.

Maybe I’m doing all these because I was an abandoned child too. My father left me when I was eight years old and dumped my mother for another woman. I became a street child after my late mother became depressed and had to go to the village for treatment. I lived on and off the streets until I was 16. It was a Corp Member who came to do his Youth Service in Akwa Ibom State that saved me. He took me off the streets and sent me back to school.

The first picture was taken when he found me at 16. The other was taken 20 years later. He’s lives USA with his family now, and we spoke yesterday. He’s the only Father I have known for twenty-nine now.
For the past 10 years, I have been committed to saving other abandoned children. Savior is one of over 100 children that I have rescued in the past 10 years, through my initiative called “Hold My Hand Foundation.” I am Benjamin Omin Itu, and this is my story.