They were in Abuja to show their dancing prowess at the National Convention of the All Progressives Congress (APC), but Sunday morning found them at breakfast table with President Muhammadu Buhari at State House. No wonder their coordinator said, “this is like a dream, from which I don’t want to wake.”
Xplicit Dancers are young boys and girls who engage in vigorous and scintillating dancing to entertain their audiences. Their performance at Eagle Square on Saturday night earned them an invitation to breakfast at State House on Sunday, during which President Buhari said: “I am very impressed with your performance. It must have taken a lot of discipline and training. To dance with such dexterity is fantastic. I congratulate you.”
The young dancers, aged between 11 and 27 years, are mostly orphans taken off the streets, and brought up at Explicit Home of Favour Initiative, Ibadan, Oyo State.
The father of the home is David Abraham, a graduate of Business Administration. His wife, Oluwakemi, serves as mother, and they jointly run the registered welfare home. They have two biological children of their own.
“I still feel this is a dream, and if it is, I don’t want to wake from it,” Abraham, in his 40s, told the President. “Thanks sir, for being a father. Because you invited us to have breakfast with you, came down to our level, stood on the line with us to take your own meal, ate with us, favour will not depart from you.”
Fourteen members of the dance group were at the breakfast meeting, though the home currently has an enrolment of 56 people. They had numbered up to 100 at a certain time, but 45 have graduated, 10 got married, and are pursuing their professional and domestic lives.
How and when was the home established?
“It was established in 2004. I love to dance, and I was dancing in church one day, when God told me that dancing is not enough. I was instructed to take orphans off the streets, and empower them,” Abraham said.
Explicit Home of Favour Initiative is funded from takings at dance appearances and freewill contributions.
Onoriede Florentina, Executive Director of the group, said: “We are short of words. The President is not the way people describe him on social media. He is humorous, fatherly, and very warm. He sat with us, ate with us, and it takes a man with a heart of gold to identify with people like us.”
Source: Femi Adesina, Special Adviser to the President, (Media and Publicity), October 7, 2018
