16-year-old girl gives birth assisted by her 10-year-old sister
We have heard of women who gave birth in strange circumstances. Examples include a woman who was headed to the farm, halfway there, she gave birth all by herself without any support and returned home to the wondering stares of her community. Another woman went shopping in the market and birthed her baby right in the market. Yet another woman was recently reported to have given birth in the popular BRT bus in Lagos.
The above-mentioned births are strange because the notion of giving birth properly is for the pregnant woman to do so with the help of a professional midwife or a doctor. Suffice it to say that many women who were being assisted by professional medical practitioners even lost their lives in the process or gave birth to stillborn children.
How then do we explain the case of the above-mentioned births? Do we just say they are strange or even miraculous? How do we even begin to describe the birth of Oluwadara by Damilola Wehbe? Due to the circumstances of Oluwadara’s birth, do we say Damilola’s delivery is the strangest or biggest miracle of them all?
The circumstances surrounding Oluwadara’s birth are indeed “extraordinary,” which is how a medical doctor, Kayode Jaji, describes it. While the other pregnant women mentioned above were matured women used to natal issues, Damilola was a mere 16 years old when she gave birth to Oluwadara on the cold, hard terrazzo floor of her sitting room with just the help of her little 10-year-old sister, Ajila, in the wee hours of May 8th, 2011.
Ajila is indeed a little girl. She is small in stature and is presently in JSS 2 at Saint David’s Cathedral College, Kudeti, Ibadan. Like the little girl she is, she found it difficult to respond coherently to questions. She could do so only in bits.
Shyly, she said, “When my sister asked me to come and help her, I was afraid because I had never seen such (a lady in labour) before and I had never done it before.” How did she then get the strength to assist Damilola? “It was her statement that ‘did I want her to die that gave me the strength to help her’ and I kept praying all along that ‘God, please let my sister and her baby survive and nothing should happen to them.’”
Disclosing that she’s excited about her role in Damilola’s safe delivery, she added candidly that she wasn’t in possession of any information beforehand that guided her. “I didn’t know anything about child birth before. I’m too young.”
Damilola was in a better position to relate that fateful night’s proceedings in detail. “We were watching a movie around 9pm. My mom called around 10.30pm to enquire about how we were. Everything was fine then but my contractions began at 12 midnight. The pain was intense in my back. I couldn’t stand straight for five minutes. The pain was coming in intervals, five minutes of pain, five minutes of relief.
“I called my mother but her number wasn’t going. I got through to our doctor at 2am but he said he couldn’t come from Idimu to Isheri-Igando at that time of the night. He however assured me that I would feel relief after some time to enable me sleep so I could come to the hospital with my mom in the morning.
“By 3.30am, the pain still wasn’t abating and the doctor’s number too wasn’t going like my mom’s. So I started praying. I didn’t want to wake AJ (Ajila) up but then the water broke and brought more pain with it. At that point, I knew I had to do something because I knew from watching a DSTV serial programme, The Doctors, that the baby always comes after the water breaks. So I then tried to wake AJ but she said I should leave her alone.
“The noise I was making from the pain woke up our little sister, Awise. She was the one who then woke AJ. They put on the generator and since we didn’t want to alert the neighbours, we had to do something ourselves. At that point, AJ had to back Awise and I came into the parlour because I was feeling uncomfortable in the room.
“AJ was very scared, like I was. I told her to bring me water but I couldn’t drink it. I told her that it was a matter of life and death and she would have to help me. I had heard about pushing in birth so I started pushing my stomach with my hand. I remembered from watching The Doctors that if I don’t push, I might die, and I certainly didn’t want to die.
“Then I was in two worlds sort of. My head was telling me you have to push to save your life and your baby’s and my mind was just praying and repeating Jesus. So I kept pushing and praying and then I felt the baby’s head between my legs and I told AJ to help me bring her out.
“The baby’s head was slippery so she used a little towel to bring her out. I remembered also about the umbilical cord and I told her to get a scissors for us to cut it. When she brought the scissors from my mom’s drawer, we cut the cord in the middle and remembered to peg the baby’s side of the cord with a clothes peg.
“The water that came out with the baby was so much that we had to start cleaning it as it was about to flow into my mother’s room. While cleaning up, I noticed I still felt dizzy and then I felt another contraction. It made me remember that there’s always a placenta so I lied down again, pushed and AJ used my end of the cord to pull out the placenta and we put it in a bag.”
When their doctor arrived at their abode by 6am, he was astounded, says Damilola. “He cut the cord properly and tied it with thread. My mom arrived at about 6.45am and she was so surprised too that she just knelt down and prayed.”
The birth has posed many questions which Funke, the girls’ mother, didn’t try to evade. Most pertinent of these questions is where she and their father was when all of the heroics or stupidity was taking place?
“My husband is late,” says Funke of Mr Wehbe. “He died in 2006 from armed robbers’ gunshots. That night of Oluwadara’s birth, I was unavoidably in Ibadan. I was supposed to arrive that same day to take AJ, my second daughter, to school, but I couldn’t make it due to circumstances beyond my control.”
Since pregnant women always have an expected delivery date (EDD), was Funke perhaps insensitive by being out of town when her daughter was due?
Again, Funke provides the answer to that logical query. “Actually, her EDD was June 3rd. Since births always have a probability of taking place two weeks before or two weeks after the projected EDD, I never thought she would give birth almost a full month before the EDD.”
Luckily for the Wehbes, the child who was named Oluwadara wasn’t premature at birth, a condition that sometimes occurs to children born before their due dates. But the conditions by which Oluwadara came into the world could almost have led to immediate mortality for her.
Funke wasn’t home when Damilola went into labour. The sensible thing would have been for the neighbours to be alerted since the Wehbes live in a four-apartment house. Yet the neighbours were not alerted by the two little girls who should have done so considering the gravity of the occasion that was definitely beyond them and should have overwhelmed them to go seeking for adult aid.
“The reason they didn’t get in touch with the neighbours was because the neighbours didn’t know she was pregnant,” explains Funke. “So, at that moment, they still didn’t alert them because we had kept up the act for nine months so it was like ingrained in them. I do feel that they should have alerted the neighbours but they didn’t and we thank God that everything still went well.”
The Wehbes’ neighbours weren’t the only ones who were totally in the dark about Damilola’s pregnancy at her minority age. “It is not a thing of joy that you broadcast about when your daughter becomes pregnant at 16 years old,” admitted Funke. “Keeping her pregnancy secret was my way of protecting her. Even all my siblings didn’t know she was pregnant. Only my mum knew and I warned her severely not to tell anyone, even my siblings who are her other children, and she didn’t.”
Funke can be said to be a woman of the world. She has been an air hostess and is presently the personal assistant to the group managing director of a large firm that deals in air and maritime cargo transport. These are both jobs that demand the right response in tense situations, the same she found herself in when she lost her husband with young children to continue caring for alone, and when her first child became pregnant when she was due to write her high school leaving exams.
“When I found out Dammy (Damilola) was pregnant, I was initially very disappointed. Then I cooled down and took stock of the situation. The pregnancy was there and it wouldn’t go away by itself neither could we abort it because that would have been a very terrible sin according to the Word of God.
“The next step was to decide the next best thing for Dammy and the family. Obviously, how it wouldn’t affect her education was the main concern. That was also uppermost in her mind as well as all she kept me asking was about her education while I was remonstrating with her.
“So I thought about it and realised people mustn’t know. People’s comments alone might derail her, and that’s why I impressed the urgency of the secrecy on her. We didn’t pull her out of school in panic. She was supposed to take WAEC in May, June this year so she kept going to school until she was about to start showing.
“That’s when I withdrew her from school and sent her to Ibadan to be with my mother and a teacher was coming to teach her at home. However, she couldn’t take WAEC because there was a problem with her registration at the school we did so in Ibadan so they refunded our money. As it turned out, it was all to the good because she had her baby during that period so she went for NECO which comes in July after WAEC and she passed with 7 credits and she’s now gained admission to the Osun State University to study Agricultural and Economics Extension.”
Offering a view on what made her little girls decide to swim into the unknown waters of child delivery, Funke said, “If I was at home, I would have looked for any available means to convey her to a hospital. I hate the sight of blood. But that they tried to do it themselves, I can only say their attempt might have been borne out of the fact that I bring them up to be independent.
“I’m always thinking to myself that ‘what if I’m not there, how will they survive?’ So I try to instill independence virtues in them. I equip them to do things on their own and I just guide them. I’m a working mother so sometimes I’m not really there but they know what to do on their own. My church, Christ Embassy, also teaches independence. They tell us to put all we know into our children.
“I remember when AJ was 9 years old and she had to go to Ibadan for her common entrance exam. At the same time, I had to go to work. What I did was I put her in the bus at Oshodi in the care of a guy seated beside her and I kept communicating with them by phone. I also called my mother and told her to pick her from the garage. So I think that spirit of independence which is now in them, coupled with the access they have to the right information, were what helped them through that night.”
Funke however refuses to take any blame for Damilola finding herself in the family way. “I know I’m a single mother but it’s not by my choice or because I’m irresponsible. I told you that my husband died. And since then, my utmost priority has been my children. I endeavour to bring them up in the best way possible. They go to the best schools and all that.
“My parents were disciplinarians and I am too with my children. Sometimes being too strict with children is also a problem but I don’t spare the rod spoil the child. Basically, I use the two techniques to raise them properly. I speak with them when I have to and I also use the rod when necessary. Frankly, I don’t think it was my failing that got her pregnant but peer pressure. You know you can bring your children up one way but when they go out there, it’s a different story.”
Part of the measures she uses to check Damilola is monitoring her menses. “When she said she was feeling a bit under the weather, we thought it was malaria. All the same, I asked her about her menses. She was due to see the next one in about a week or so. I told her to go see our doctor, Kayode Jaji. He took her blood to test for typhoid. That was on a Sunday.
“The following day, he called me and said I should stop by to see him. I told him it would be late when I would be returning from work so he should tell me over the phone. I got credit, called him back, and he said I would have to take it easy and be strong as Dammy was pregnant.
“It was almost like the world came to a standstill for me. I wasn’t expecting that and was lost in dreamland. But he jolted me back to reality: what was I going to do, he asked bluntly? One thing struck me then, nobody’s hundred percent perfect, so I couldn’t just decide to be unnecessarily cruel to her for the silly mistake.
“I cried to God and He said ‘if you will listen, I will show you the way.’ Everything that flashed through my mind helped me make up my mind at least on the aspect of abortion. I told Dr Jaji that she would have to keep it as the Word of God says abortion is a sin. And I knew I was right when the doctor himself said he knew what people go through to look for children that he doesn’t advice abortion. And that if his daughter was in the same situation, she would keep it.”
Having come through the ordeal without any mortal loss, Ajila says it has made her “more committed to God” while Damilola says it has made her “know that God will always make a way somehow.” Funke says, “I think God just used it all as a way for people to know His goodness and also to bring my family into the spotlight by making not just AJ, but all of us stars, because in every disappointment, there is an opportunity.”
Now, the charade is over. The Wehbes’ little secret is out and reactions have been pouring in on all fronts.
“It was after the delivery that I called my siblings and told them they had a new grand-daughter. They were all like ‘what are you saying?’ and when I explained, they were very angry. My elder brother is still very angry up till now. He told Dammy that he didn’t expect teenage pregnancy from her. My sister was also crying ‘Funke, why, why didn’t you tell us?’
“After the birth, I didn’t mind people to start knowing because Dammy wouldn’t lose out on her education so people wouldn’t have the opportunity of saying that she is not in school because she had a baby. Now, all they can say that she had a baby but she is in school.”
Even Damilola’s best friend, Ebele Obi, became angry that she didn’t tell her about her condition all along.
“We were very strict about keeping it secret. Dammy never left this apartment while she was here and if she was in Ibadan, she never left my mother’s place too. She was already feeling remorse about her action so she was willing to cooperate for a good ending,” says Funke.
Adding that Damilola didn’t know she was pregnant, Funke said, “If she had known, maybe it would have been a different story we would be saying now. Dr Jaji was also wonderful. He came here to our home all the time to take care of her and never collected a kobo from me, even for all the drugs he gave her.”
Ajila won an award earlier this year for her role in helping her sister, Damilola, deliver baby Oluwadara without adult supervision at her young age of 10 years. The award is known as Indomie Independence Day Heroes Awards and it is given annually to three children who have performed heroic feats.
The first prize was a million naira and the third half a million naira. Ajila won the second prize which came with the hefty sum of N750,000, an amount that should have certainly made the Wehbes splurge on some goodies.
“The money is in her account,” says Funke. “It is meant for her education. We paid tithe to God through my church of course but the rest is there in her account, less some we’ve also used for her education. But we’ve not gone on a shopping trip or anything like that. It is money meant to be spent wisely.”
Ajila seems to be a child destined to be great. The Indomie prize is not her first recognition. “When we ran into her primary school proprietress one day after church, and I told her what happened, she said she wasn’t surprised because she knew all along that AJ is a celebrity. She said AJ won awards while in the school and also represented the school well in school competitions. Right now, she is also Miss Red House at her secondary school.”
Ajila won the prize, but who is the real hero? Is it she or Damilola who actually orchestrated the delivery?
That is of course food for thought.
The above-mentioned births are strange because the notion of giving birth properly is for the pregnant woman to do so with the help of a professional midwife or a doctor. Suffice it to say that many women who were being assisted by professional medical practitioners even lost their lives in the process or gave birth to stillborn children.
How then do we explain the case of the above-mentioned births? Do we just say they are strange or even miraculous? How do we even begin to describe the birth of Oluwadara by Damilola Wehbe? Due to the circumstances of Oluwadara’s birth, do we say Damilola’s delivery is the strangest or biggest miracle of them all?
The circumstances surrounding Oluwadara’s birth are indeed “extraordinary,” which is how a medical doctor, Kayode Jaji, describes it. While the other pregnant women mentioned above were matured women used to natal issues, Damilola was a mere 16 years old when she gave birth to Oluwadara on the cold, hard terrazzo floor of her sitting room with just the help of her little 10-year-old sister, Ajila, in the wee hours of May 8th, 2011.
Ajila is indeed a little girl. She is small in stature and is presently in JSS 2 at Saint David’s Cathedral College, Kudeti, Ibadan. Like the little girl she is, she found it difficult to respond coherently to questions. She could do so only in bits.
Shyly, she said, “When my sister asked me to come and help her, I was afraid because I had never seen such (a lady in labour) before and I had never done it before.” How did she then get the strength to assist Damilola? “It was her statement that ‘did I want her to die that gave me the strength to help her’ and I kept praying all along that ‘God, please let my sister and her baby survive and nothing should happen to them.’”
Disclosing that she’s excited about her role in Damilola’s safe delivery, she added candidly that she wasn’t in possession of any information beforehand that guided her. “I didn’t know anything about child birth before. I’m too young.”
Damilola was in a better position to relate that fateful night’s proceedings in detail. “We were watching a movie around 9pm. My mom called around 10.30pm to enquire about how we were. Everything was fine then but my contractions began at 12 midnight. The pain was intense in my back. I couldn’t stand straight for five minutes. The pain was coming in intervals, five minutes of pain, five minutes of relief.
“I called my mother but her number wasn’t going. I got through to our doctor at 2am but he said he couldn’t come from Idimu to Isheri-Igando at that time of the night. He however assured me that I would feel relief after some time to enable me sleep so I could come to the hospital with my mom in the morning.
“By 3.30am, the pain still wasn’t abating and the doctor’s number too wasn’t going like my mom’s. So I started praying. I didn’t want to wake AJ (Ajila) up but then the water broke and brought more pain with it. At that point, I knew I had to do something because I knew from watching a DSTV serial programme, The Doctors, that the baby always comes after the water breaks. So I then tried to wake AJ but she said I should leave her alone.
“The noise I was making from the pain woke up our little sister, Awise. She was the one who then woke AJ. They put on the generator and since we didn’t want to alert the neighbours, we had to do something ourselves. At that point, AJ had to back Awise and I came into the parlour because I was feeling uncomfortable in the room.
“AJ was very scared, like I was. I told her to bring me water but I couldn’t drink it. I told her that it was a matter of life and death and she would have to help me. I had heard about pushing in birth so I started pushing my stomach with my hand. I remembered from watching The Doctors that if I don’t push, I might die, and I certainly didn’t want to die.
“Then I was in two worlds sort of. My head was telling me you have to push to save your life and your baby’s and my mind was just praying and repeating Jesus. So I kept pushing and praying and then I felt the baby’s head between my legs and I told AJ to help me bring her out.
“The baby’s head was slippery so she used a little towel to bring her out. I remembered also about the umbilical cord and I told her to get a scissors for us to cut it. When she brought the scissors from my mom’s drawer, we cut the cord in the middle and remembered to peg the baby’s side of the cord with a clothes peg.
“The water that came out with the baby was so much that we had to start cleaning it as it was about to flow into my mother’s room. While cleaning up, I noticed I still felt dizzy and then I felt another contraction. It made me remember that there’s always a placenta so I lied down again, pushed and AJ used my end of the cord to pull out the placenta and we put it in a bag.”
When their doctor arrived at their abode by 6am, he was astounded, says Damilola. “He cut the cord properly and tied it with thread. My mom arrived at about 6.45am and she was so surprised too that she just knelt down and prayed.”
The birth has posed many questions which Funke, the girls’ mother, didn’t try to evade. Most pertinent of these questions is where she and their father was when all of the heroics or stupidity was taking place?
“My husband is late,” says Funke of Mr Wehbe. “He died in 2006 from armed robbers’ gunshots. That night of Oluwadara’s birth, I was unavoidably in Ibadan. I was supposed to arrive that same day to take AJ, my second daughter, to school, but I couldn’t make it due to circumstances beyond my control.”
Since pregnant women always have an expected delivery date (EDD), was Funke perhaps insensitive by being out of town when her daughter was due?
Again, Funke provides the answer to that logical query. “Actually, her EDD was June 3rd. Since births always have a probability of taking place two weeks before or two weeks after the projected EDD, I never thought she would give birth almost a full month before the EDD.”
Luckily for the Wehbes, the child who was named Oluwadara wasn’t premature at birth, a condition that sometimes occurs to children born before their due dates. But the conditions by which Oluwadara came into the world could almost have led to immediate mortality for her.
Funke wasn’t home when Damilola went into labour. The sensible thing would have been for the neighbours to be alerted since the Wehbes live in a four-apartment house. Yet the neighbours were not alerted by the two little girls who should have done so considering the gravity of the occasion that was definitely beyond them and should have overwhelmed them to go seeking for adult aid.
“The reason they didn’t get in touch with the neighbours was because the neighbours didn’t know she was pregnant,” explains Funke. “So, at that moment, they still didn’t alert them because we had kept up the act for nine months so it was like ingrained in them. I do feel that they should have alerted the neighbours but they didn’t and we thank God that everything still went well.”
The Wehbes’ neighbours weren’t the only ones who were totally in the dark about Damilola’s pregnancy at her minority age. “It is not a thing of joy that you broadcast about when your daughter becomes pregnant at 16 years old,” admitted Funke. “Keeping her pregnancy secret was my way of protecting her. Even all my siblings didn’t know she was pregnant. Only my mum knew and I warned her severely not to tell anyone, even my siblings who are her other children, and she didn’t.”
Funke can be said to be a woman of the world. She has been an air hostess and is presently the personal assistant to the group managing director of a large firm that deals in air and maritime cargo transport. These are both jobs that demand the right response in tense situations, the same she found herself in when she lost her husband with young children to continue caring for alone, and when her first child became pregnant when she was due to write her high school leaving exams.
“When I found out Dammy (Damilola) was pregnant, I was initially very disappointed. Then I cooled down and took stock of the situation. The pregnancy was there and it wouldn’t go away by itself neither could we abort it because that would have been a very terrible sin according to the Word of God.
“The next step was to decide the next best thing for Dammy and the family. Obviously, how it wouldn’t affect her education was the main concern. That was also uppermost in her mind as well as all she kept me asking was about her education while I was remonstrating with her.
“So I thought about it and realised people mustn’t know. People’s comments alone might derail her, and that’s why I impressed the urgency of the secrecy on her. We didn’t pull her out of school in panic. She was supposed to take WAEC in May, June this year so she kept going to school until she was about to start showing.
“That’s when I withdrew her from school and sent her to Ibadan to be with my mother and a teacher was coming to teach her at home. However, she couldn’t take WAEC because there was a problem with her registration at the school we did so in Ibadan so they refunded our money. As it turned out, it was all to the good because she had her baby during that period so she went for NECO which comes in July after WAEC and she passed with 7 credits and she’s now gained admission to the Osun State University to study Agricultural and Economics Extension.”
Offering a view on what made her little girls decide to swim into the unknown waters of child delivery, Funke said, “If I was at home, I would have looked for any available means to convey her to a hospital. I hate the sight of blood. But that they tried to do it themselves, I can only say their attempt might have been borne out of the fact that I bring them up to be independent.
“I’m always thinking to myself that ‘what if I’m not there, how will they survive?’ So I try to instill independence virtues in them. I equip them to do things on their own and I just guide them. I’m a working mother so sometimes I’m not really there but they know what to do on their own. My church, Christ Embassy, also teaches independence. They tell us to put all we know into our children.
“I remember when AJ was 9 years old and she had to go to Ibadan for her common entrance exam. At the same time, I had to go to work. What I did was I put her in the bus at Oshodi in the care of a guy seated beside her and I kept communicating with them by phone. I also called my mother and told her to pick her from the garage. So I think that spirit of independence which is now in them, coupled with the access they have to the right information, were what helped them through that night.”
Funke however refuses to take any blame for Damilola finding herself in the family way. “I know I’m a single mother but it’s not by my choice or because I’m irresponsible. I told you that my husband died. And since then, my utmost priority has been my children. I endeavour to bring them up in the best way possible. They go to the best schools and all that.
“My parents were disciplinarians and I am too with my children. Sometimes being too strict with children is also a problem but I don’t spare the rod spoil the child. Basically, I use the two techniques to raise them properly. I speak with them when I have to and I also use the rod when necessary. Frankly, I don’t think it was my failing that got her pregnant but peer pressure. You know you can bring your children up one way but when they go out there, it’s a different story.”
Part of the measures she uses to check Damilola is monitoring her menses. “When she said she was feeling a bit under the weather, we thought it was malaria. All the same, I asked her about her menses. She was due to see the next one in about a week or so. I told her to go see our doctor, Kayode Jaji. He took her blood to test for typhoid. That was on a Sunday.
“The following day, he called me and said I should stop by to see him. I told him it would be late when I would be returning from work so he should tell me over the phone. I got credit, called him back, and he said I would have to take it easy and be strong as Dammy was pregnant.
“It was almost like the world came to a standstill for me. I wasn’t expecting that and was lost in dreamland. But he jolted me back to reality: what was I going to do, he asked bluntly? One thing struck me then, nobody’s hundred percent perfect, so I couldn’t just decide to be unnecessarily cruel to her for the silly mistake.
“I cried to God and He said ‘if you will listen, I will show you the way.’ Everything that flashed through my mind helped me make up my mind at least on the aspect of abortion. I told Dr Jaji that she would have to keep it as the Word of God says abortion is a sin. And I knew I was right when the doctor himself said he knew what people go through to look for children that he doesn’t advice abortion. And that if his daughter was in the same situation, she would keep it.”
Having come through the ordeal without any mortal loss, Ajila says it has made her “more committed to God” while Damilola says it has made her “know that God will always make a way somehow.” Funke says, “I think God just used it all as a way for people to know His goodness and also to bring my family into the spotlight by making not just AJ, but all of us stars, because in every disappointment, there is an opportunity.”
Now, the charade is over. The Wehbes’ little secret is out and reactions have been pouring in on all fronts.
“It was after the delivery that I called my siblings and told them they had a new grand-daughter. They were all like ‘what are you saying?’ and when I explained, they were very angry. My elder brother is still very angry up till now. He told Dammy that he didn’t expect teenage pregnancy from her. My sister was also crying ‘Funke, why, why didn’t you tell us?’
“After the birth, I didn’t mind people to start knowing because Dammy wouldn’t lose out on her education so people wouldn’t have the opportunity of saying that she is not in school because she had a baby. Now, all they can say that she had a baby but she is in school.”
Even Damilola’s best friend, Ebele Obi, became angry that she didn’t tell her about her condition all along.
“We were very strict about keeping it secret. Dammy never left this apartment while she was here and if she was in Ibadan, she never left my mother’s place too. She was already feeling remorse about her action so she was willing to cooperate for a good ending,” says Funke.
Adding that Damilola didn’t know she was pregnant, Funke said, “If she had known, maybe it would have been a different story we would be saying now. Dr Jaji was also wonderful. He came here to our home all the time to take care of her and never collected a kobo from me, even for all the drugs he gave her.”
Ajila won an award earlier this year for her role in helping her sister, Damilola, deliver baby Oluwadara without adult supervision at her young age of 10 years. The award is known as Indomie Independence Day Heroes Awards and it is given annually to three children who have performed heroic feats.
The first prize was a million naira and the third half a million naira. Ajila won the second prize which came with the hefty sum of N750,000, an amount that should have certainly made the Wehbes splurge on some goodies.
“The money is in her account,” says Funke. “It is meant for her education. We paid tithe to God through my church of course but the rest is there in her account, less some we’ve also used for her education. But we’ve not gone on a shopping trip or anything like that. It is money meant to be spent wisely.”
Ajila seems to be a child destined to be great. The Indomie prize is not her first recognition. “When we ran into her primary school proprietress one day after church, and I told her what happened, she said she wasn’t surprised because she knew all along that AJ is a celebrity. She said AJ won awards while in the school and also represented the school well in school competitions. Right now, she is also Miss Red House at her secondary school.”
Ajila won the prize, but who is the real hero? Is it she or Damilola who actually orchestrated the delivery?
That is of course food for thought.
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