Given its agelong affectionate posture towards children, Bonny Island was almost thrown into confusion when a post surfaced online indicating that an unnamed child was hit by his school bus and abandoned to his hapless parents to find treatment for him. Kristina Reports was alerted to this development and our reporters set out to ascertain what actually happened.

We discovered that the man at the centre of the storm was Paul Umoru, an apostle and general overseer of Toplife International Christian Centre, owners of the school under review, Toplife International School, and eventually got to talk with him on the debacle.

A career professional in the oil and gas sector, husband, father, servant of God, mentor, life coach to many, and lover of children, Umoru took the time to explain what actually transpired and the actions taken by his church and school to remedy what would have turned out a fatal tragedy. He spoke with the Publisher of Kristina Reports, Godswill Jumbo in his church office and it is quite an interesting read. Enjoy!

Kristina Reports: Okay, it’s trending on social media that a child was injured by the bus belonging to the school he’s attending, like that child attends Toplife Christian International school, and now the story is like neither here or there, but from you now as a proprietor, what actually happened?

Paul Umoru: Okay, the child came to school on that day, 23^rd of March, if I’m correct, and at the close of school, we dropped the child off; and then whatever happened. I’m not sure, but we heard that the school bus that dropped the child injured the child. I’m not going into details of how it happened but what’s important is that the child was injured and the school bus is responsible, driven by the school driver. I got to know about it late that night because we were in a program. The following morning, I called the family and I told them we’re sorry for what happened and we are going to take full responsibility, it doesn’t matter whether the child was wrong or right, we will take full responsibility for the incident.

The following day, Saturday, I drove to the house and met with the family, met with the child, after discussing and seeing the condition, we took them to the hospital in my car; this hospital at the former Ecobank Bonny roundabout, Pan-Oj. They x-rayed the child there, picked up the bill and then drove the child back home. Before then, the family, the mother had already consulted with a local bone mender to do it. In fact, it was the bone mender that said he wants to see the x-ray before he knows how to fix it. So, they told me that the bone mender said he was going to charge N30,000 for the work and they need to buy a few things, like Panadol for pain relief. I said ‘OK, don’t worry, I’m going to send them 40k (i.e. N40,000) and I sent them 40k instantly on that day. So they went for the x-ray, and then we came back home.

The bone mender was to start work the following day, which was on Saturday. The bone mender said he’ll start work on the 26^th, I said, Ok. So, while we were on that, I don’t know what she did, the mother or father of the child, who they told and who she consulted with, whether it was the Secretary to the Local Government; but he (the Council Secretary) called and advised that we take the child to the hospital. Like I said, the bone mender idea was not our idea, it was the child’s mother that arranged that and informed us and told us the day. So, I said okay, that will be a better option because I’m not too sure about bone mender, my admin will know his name. I’m not too familiar with it.

So, when they looked at it, they said it’s better we go to orthopaedic hospital where they can have the expert review which is in Port Harcourt.  For me, the child needs the best and as a young child, we don’t want this to come back and hurt him later on. We arranged for him to go to the hospital.

We had them captured in our history. They arrived in Port Harcourt, stayed in Port Harcourt and my pastor went with them, the school admin for almost a week because they had to do several things, like buy somethings and because it was going to be a slow healing process. They did several x-rays; they did full body x-rays in case anything else was wrong. They took full comprehensive critical examination so that they can capture anything that could have been wrong. Fortunately, nothing was found except the fracture on that thigh. So, they said they were going to put a hip cast on the thigh and the child can go home and come back for review.

It will interest you to know that every penny of their stay – their feeding, both for the child, the father, the mother, the two other children, because the entire family went, a family of four – we were taking care of them. They were to come back after about four weeks because they need to observe the child over a period of time and monitor his progress. So, all that time, we were sending them money in Port Harcourt until when they came back. They gave them an appointment that they should come back on the 11^th, which is tomorrow (Thursday). Every week we send them money. We sent them money on Tuesday, 2^nd of May, we sent them yesterday (Tuesday, 9^th May), that was one week after the last one. So, we send them money. But on Monday, the mother called and said that the child was having some bruises – you know the POP, when it was reaching his legs, it was having some bruises and some sores and all that – and they needed to go see a doctor immediately. I said the only way we can go now, now is to take a local boat but would it be safe for the child? This is because for NLNG boat, even though I’m an NLNG staff, I don’t control how it works. So, even though I have an emergency, it is not an emergency that is from the company, so, I cannot influence how it works. I can only put passengers as guests. We tried to see how we can get a boat but we couldn’t, so I got a space for Tuesday first boat in the morning and they left.

Initially, I said since you are talking about bruises and all that, let a doctor look at it in Bonny here, if it’s something we can take care of here because we already have an appointment which is tomorrow, we’re talking about Monday. Let the doctor examine it. If it’s something serious, he will tell us the seriousness and what we can do instead of going to Port Harcourt. He (the child’s father) said no, no, no; they want to go to Port Harcourt, I said no problem. We got a space for them, the father and the son, to Port Harcourt yesterday morning, Tuesday. They got there and they looked at it and said it’s just the POP that’s doing some rubbing over it. So, they cleaned it out and applied some treatment and gave him some medication, some antibiotics and scraped the part of the POP that’s doing the damage so that it will not do more damage; so that they can go back.

But we said since he has appointment for Thursday, going back and coming back again wouldn’t be necessary; so, right now they are in an hotel in Port Harcourt, on our bill, on our account waiting for tomorrow’s appointment in Port Harcourt. As we speak now, the father and the boy are there lodged in an hotel paid for by us. As at now, we have spent about N500,000. As at the time we took out record that was before they went to Port Harcourt, the expenses of hotel is not part of that money I’m talking about and whatever they are going to come out from the examination tomorrow is on us. So, I don’t know where we have erred.

We hear that the leadership of the church had met with, has informed the relevant authorities, can you confirm that?

Yes, we informed the Ministry of Education, the person in charge of Education in Bonny, Mr. Samuel Jumbo. We informed him when the thing happened that our bus was involved in an accident and we are taking full responsibility of taking care of the child.

And you said the council secretary spoke with you, he called?

No, not with me, with my church members, the school admin; so the Local Government is also aware. In fact, we have actually had a meeting. The person in charge of Education in the Local Council said we should have a meeting with him on Monday. I think by then our admin would have come back from Port Harcourt because he was in the front of the whole event. But before then, he has already spoken with him (admin) and said they are going to look at the school and do something and all that; saying they know this pastor and from what they know of him, he’s not the kind of person that can misbehave. When the admin called them, he told them the child is already under treatment, that it was an accident.  

Let’s wrap up with the aspect of perception management, you know majority of people who are concerned about this may be parents, maybe caregivers or people involved in managing children and they could project it to themselves like ‘what if it was my child?’ Now, for this people who have these concerns and you are not just the proprietor of the school, you are the pastor of a church, what is it you want to tell them relating to this

Well, we are a responsible people.  We are also people that have the fear of God in our heart. We have operated here since 2019, about three years now. This incident that happened requires medical attention. We have indicated and show that we are responsible for them. Parents shouldn’t be afraid of what will happen to their children because we are a responsible organisation. The full medical bill of this case up till now has been picked by us plus, beyond the medical bill, the feeding of not just the boy but the entire family because the argument was that the father is staying with the boy, he’s not able to rally around. But this same people have not paid the school fees for the whole of last term for the two children from that family. We gave them free tuition for a whole term and they wrote exams. We didn’t stop them from writing exams, which most schools would have done; if you didn’t pay your school fees, you can’t write exams. But we allowed them to write exams, we allowed them to come to school throughout the term and write their exams.

On the day the event happened, we said children who have written their exams should stay at home. We circulated it round the school. It’s verifiable, it’s conventional because the teachers need time to prepare the children without distraction. Children around means you have to be looking after them. So, those who are not writing exams should stay at home so that the teachers would have focus on the few that are left behind who are writing exams so that they can have the spare time to mark their scripts and organise results then they come for the day of closing for that term where parents can come and see the report cards and all that. And we told parents, these children who don’t have any exams to write should not come to school but they still came to school. This guy came. He had no business being in school that day but we also know too that children coming to school is also a way of relieving the parents and we can understand it from that perspective. I know you said we should not come but this person is coming and all that. We have some minders who can do that because we are a caring body. Well, we have to now review that going forward because of this event. Before now, we normally allow parents, if you call us and tell us, we say okay your child should come to school. As an organisation that is tied to a church, we have a lot of children in the church. We have over 150 children that are children of the church that are here. So, we have a way of looking after children beyond the school because we have children that come to the church and they come here and we have children time. They come, they play, and all manner of things, so we have a good way to handle children and there should be no fear on the part of the parents as to whether the children are safe in our custody. They are safe.

This accident did not happen in the school, it happened in front of the house of this child when they were dropping the child off. So, it’s not as a result of carelessness from the teachers or something. It’s not really a failure of the school, as it were. It was an accident that occurred with the driver who is not a teacher; he’s a driver and not a teacher. This can happen to anybody. Did it happen? Yes, it happened. Can you stop every accident? Of course, no. Did you plan for it to happen? Of course not? Social media saying that we attempted to run away. How can we carry children in a bus and one of them is injured and we now run away with the remaining ones and throw the other ones off and run off?  People should have common sense and think about it before they write them on social media.