RC Ikoyi Metro wins 3rd at the Power of Goodness Video Competition after its N150m General Hospital Odan renovation captured global Rotary attention
Rotarian Engineer Alexander Chukwu, PMP, FNSE, FNIEEE, the United President of the Rotary Club of Ikoyi Metro for the 2025 to 2026 Rotary year, has concluded his tenure on a triumphant note, with the Lagos-based club claiming third place in the international Power of Goodness Video Competition spanning Rotary Zones 21 and 22, a contest that reaches across Africa, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe.
The result, announced at the competition’s concluding ceremony, reflects a year of extraordinary service activity brought to life on screen through a partnership with Iretura, an integrated media service provider, and its team lead, Rotarian Victor Ojelabi.
The competition entry that secured the club’s recognition was built around the centrepiece of Rotarian Chukwu’s presidency: the full renovation and equipping of wards C1 and C2 at General Hospital Odan, Lagos Island, a project that ultimately cost over N150 million and was funded entirely by the club’s members and partners without a single naira drawn from Rotary International.
Commissioned on Saturday, 24 January 2026, the intervention encompassed comprehensive refurbishment of hospital facilities, including the replacement of old windows in wards F1 and F2 with durable aluminium frames, fresh exterior painting to improve the safety, comfort, and overall appearance of the facility, and the installation of 41 new hospital beds across private and general wards.
The scope extended well beyond bricks and paint.
The club donated critical medical and support equipment including wheelchairs and crutches, and provided water tanks, a tank stand, and a water treatment facility to enhance hospital operations and ensure reliable access to clean water for patients and medical staff alike.
The ambition behind the intervention was consistent with a broader transformation already under way at General Hospital Odan, which under its former Medical Director, Dr. Adesola Pitan, had seen its total bed capacity expand from 139 to 250 through structural improvements across multiple wards, including the C1 and C2 wards brought to world-class standard by the Rotary Club of Ikoyi Metro.
The weight of the hospital project was such that it drew an unscripted endorsement from the highest level of global Rotary, making the club the pride of Rotary indeed.
Rotary International President Francesco Arezzo, who arrived in Lagos on 13 February 2026 as part of a seven-day tour of Nigeria, made a point of visiting General Hospital Odan to inspect the renovated wards in person before departing for the next leg of his itinerary.
The visit was unrehearsed rather than ceremonial; the quality of what the club had delivered at its own expense made it, in every sense, unmissable.
It was against that backdrop that Iretura, the creative agency appointed at the outset of Rotarian Chukwu’s tenure to handle photography, videography, and media relations for the club, assembled the competition submission.
Working under the close direction of Rotarian Toyin Ojo, the club’s 2025 to 2026 Public Image Director, Rotarian Ojelabi and the Iretura team marshalled before-and-after footage of the renovation into a structured narrative that met the competition’s demanding criteria of creativity, community impact, message content, and technical organisation.
Entries were judged on creativity and weight of impact, message content, technical organisation, and a People’s Choice category awarding points based on the number of online likes attracted by each submission.
The Power of Goodness Video Competition is not a modest platform.
It began in the 2021 to 2022 Rotary year as an initiative by Region 25 of Zone 21 to showcase the impact of Rotary projects through storytelling and visual media, before expanding to include the whole of Zone 21 in the following year.
By 2024, Regions 26, 27, and 28 from Zone 22 had joined, significantly widening its geographic reach.
In this year’s edition, competing against clubs from Morocco, Ukraine, Mauritius, Uganda, Tanzania, Ghana, Turkey, and South Africa, the Rotary Club of Ikoyi Metro finished third overall in Zone 22, behind the Rotary Club of Casablanca City in Morocco and the Rotary Club of Cherkassy-Center in Ukraine.
It is a result that places a Lagos club, self-funded and volunteer-driven, on the same podium as counterparts from across two of Rotary’s most geographically diverse zones.
The significance is sharpened further by the fact that Nigeria itself is emerging as a force within Rotary’s global leadership structure.
At the Rotary International Convention in Taipei in June 2026, Rotarian Olayinka Hakeem Babalola was presented as the incoming Rotary International President for 2026 to 2027, a moment widely regarded as recognition of Nigeria’s growing influence within the organisation.
The Rotary Club of Ikoyi Metro’s achievement, earned through its own enterprise and captured for the world by Iretura, is very much part of that larger story.
Sharmila Bhatt, Regional Public Image Coordinator for Zones 21 and 22 from 2024 to 2027, who played a central role in shaping the competition’s current format, noted that Rotary clubs worldwide undertake outstanding projects.
“While we have awards at the zone level for Membership and The Rotary Foundation, there are no awards dedicated to Public Image especially at the Zone institute level. This contest aims to fill that gap and celebrate exceptional storytelling in Rotary,” she said.
For Ikoyi Metro, exceptional storytelling proved inseparable from exceptional service.
The club was founded in the 1998 to 1999 Rotary year, chartered as an extension of the older Rotary Club of Ikoyi once it became clear that demand for service in the territory had outgrown what a single club could provide.
In the years since, it has built a record of community engagement spanning health, education, economic empowerment, and vocational training. The 2025 to 2026 service year, under Rotarian Chukwu’s leadership, now stands as one of the most decorated in that history.
For Iretura, whose mandate throughout the year was to ensure the club’s humanitarian work reached both the Nigerian media space and the wider international Rotary community, the award represents a validation of the proposition that purposeful media can amplify purposeful service.
For the patients who now receive care in wards that were, not long ago, in urgent need of attention, the impact needs no competition to confirm it.
Ojelabi, the publisher of Freelanews, is an award winning and professionally trained mass communicator, who writes ruthlessly about pop culture, religion, politics and entertainment.
