Igali battles to fund Nigerian school project

February 13 2003

TORONTO -- Olympic gold-medal wrestler Daniel Igali's toughest battle is to find the money to complete a school he promised the children and families in his impoverished tribal village in Nigeria.
The Surrey, B.C.-based star has teamed with CUSO (formerly the Canadian University Service Overseas), a humanitarian and development agency, to raise another $240,000 to finish the building he'd hoped would open its doors next month. So far, he has raised $60,000 and the block foundation is in place, on land donated by his hometown of Eniwari in the Niger Delta. Most of the labour has been voluntary.

"As a school, it would serve about 500 kids in the vicinity, but it's much more important than just a six-room primary school," Igali said on a visit to Toronto this week.

"It would be a community centre and adult education centre after hours. Most of the villagers can't read and write. They need the basics so they can learn how to save their own lives," Igali said.

People are dying of AIDS throughout Africa because they don't understand how to prevent the spread of the disease.

"[U.S. President] George Bush talked of giving $15-billion to fight AIDS in Africa, but I can tell you that traditionally that kind of grant gets spent in big cities of Africa, on billboards. That's not where the people are dying. Eighty per cent of the population is in rural areas like Eniwari. They've never been to the big cities and they couldn't read billboards if they went.

"The school would serve as a base for people to learn about AIDS. They don't know about condoms."

Education and the promise of a future, he said, would change the lives of girls in his old community. "Teen pregnancies are almost an epidemic. Children are having children. Vaginal mutilations are still going on," he said of the the painful cultural practice of female genital circumcision. It has been done to four of his five sisters, and he has told his youngest sister not to let it happen.

"All these things have to be addressed, and the school building can be a starting place to change the way of life."

The town also desperately needs a clean water source, and Igali envisions one will be created near the school via a partnership with the Ryan's Well Foundation, an organization that has financed wells in many Third World locations after being founded by an ambitious child humanitarian in Kemptville, Ont., Ryan Hreljac. "Right now, people are drinking from the same river they bathe in and defecate in," Igali said.

Igali is using his name as best he can to open doors. "I wish I could just write a cheque for it, but I'm not a professional athlete. I tried to ask [basketball star] Hakeem Olajuwon as a fellow African. He never actually talked to me directly. It was always through some third party. I didn't want to be treated like that."

When he went to Nigeria at Christmas, Igali had no new funds for the project as the locals had hoped. "I felt so bad that I brought nothing, I couldn't stay in town. I went to the city. I almost wished I hadn't gone."

Igali approached CUSO as a Canadian non-governmental agency to help with managing the school project and the funds as they come in, said Claire Dansereau, CUSO's executive director. "We respect what he's done in his own life and what he's going to do in his original community.

"Education is a first step in fighting AIDS, fighting repression and building democracy."

Donations should be marked Daniel Igali School Construction Project and made payable to CUSO and mailed to: CUSO Revenue Generation Department, #500-2255 Carling Ave., Ottawa, Ont, K2B 1A6