Ex-Customs officer builds orphanage home to mentor needy children

By Steve Agbota

A retired Assistant Comptroller General of Customs (ACG), MM Tilley Gyado, has built an orphanage home named Martinez Children’s Love Home to nurture and mentor needy children in the country.

Speaking with Daily Sun during the launch of State of the Heart in Agbara, Ogun State, she said running an orphanage home is a fulfilment of a dream after she survived multiple cancers in 2013.

She said currently she had over 24 children between the ages of three to 14 at the malt’s orphanage home, saying in the next few days or weeks, more children would be welcome to the home.

She said the children are drawing from internally displaced people (IDP) in Benue State because of the crisis and wars; there are loads of IDP camps in the state.

“When the orphanage was ready for operations, I’m from Benue State. I’m married to a Yoruba man. I thought to myself that I would like to give back to also my people. At least if they could even be part of what I have on the ground. So I talked with the Governor, we finalized the process, and the Governor approved my request, and the children were given to me,” she said.

However, she vowed that with the current facilities on the ground, the home would nurture, mentor and bring out their potential to ensure that the children are useful to themselves and the country.

Speaking on why venturing into an orphanage home project, she said she lost her mother as a little girl and missed her mother’s love while she was growing up.

She disclosed that the second reason was that she survived multiple cancers even when the doctors gave up her condition, saying she has always had a flair for people even while she was in secondary school.

“I knew I had to do this. Secondly, in 2013, I got sick with multiple cancers. Breast, kidney, neck, all at once. Nobody ever believed I would survive. There was a day when the doctors gave up on me. On that very day, I saw myself walking away from my body. I practically turned and saw myself lying on the bed. And people were just there.

“I just watched them. And I just kept walking off. And I was talking to this person. I said I thought we agreed that we were going to do an orphanage. Is this how the dream will end? I said if that’s the way you want it, fine. I was having a conversation and walking away with this person.

“I don’t know who he was. I said if that’s how you want it, fine. But we agreed that we were going to start an orphanage. I think I must have been talking to somebody beyond 85. My sister, who was looking after me then, told me that at the time, I coughed. Because they were already giving me shocks to see if I could come back.

I coughed. I said she’s back, she’s back, and she’s back. I came out of the sickness.

2013, this is 2025. I knew on that day, I told my sister; I was not going to die that I’m back for a purpose,” she explained.

Meanwhile, in the next five years, she said she wants to extend the orphanage home to Lagos, Abuja, Benue state and other parts of the country to cater for needy children, especially the ones in IDPs.