— Northern Education Initiative distributes 35m books to Bauchi school children in five years–
ARMSTRONG ALLAHMAGANI, Bauchi-
Two Civil Society Organizations, Leadtots Human Development Services and Young Men Christian Associations (YMCA) with support from Northern Education Initiative (NEI) Plus have trained and created access to education for no fewer than 12,300 out of school children for reintegration into the formal system of learning.
The Learners were trained on literacy, numeracy and life skills with sponsorship from the United State’s Agency for International Development (USAID).
NATIONAL ACCORD reports that Bauchi State has over 1.3 million out of school children, the highest in any state in the country.
Speaking at the graduation of the last set of 4,000 of the children at Itas Gadau Local Government Area of Bauchi state, the Executive Director, of Human Development Services, Yahaya Bako Galadima, said that the project commenced in 2016.
According to him, from that time till now, many Learners have been mainstreamed into the formal education system.
He said 250 Facilitators were trained to train the children and “so far, 12,300 children have been taken out of the streets and reintegrated into the formal education through this Northern Education Initiative (NEI) Plus project.
Galadima said that during the five year period of the training, about 2,500 members of Center Based Management Committee which takes care of the Non-Formal Learning centers (NFLC) were engaged.
He added that 20 community coalition from the local governments were used and 21 Programme Officers from the LGA which worked under Leadtots and YMCA were also engaged.
He said that local government officials, traditional institutions and all the key stakeholders in Itas Gadau LGA gave their support to ensure that these children acquire quality education.
He said: “These children are used to going to school three times in a week for about two to four hours; now, we are absolving them into the formal education system where they’ll have to go to school from Mondays to Fridays and they will be expected to stay from 8am to about 12.30pm.
“If we don’t make frantic efforts to help these children who are used to few hours of learning, it will be difficult for them to cope and stay in school for hours. We must make them know the importance of education so that they can become future leaders because they have various gifts and potentials of becoming great in life not just in Itas Gadau but even in the country.
“We should help and encourage these children by providing them with books, uniforms, shoes and many other things they need to succeed.”
In her speech, the Access and fragility officer, Northern Education Initiative (NEI) Plus, Hajiya Aisha Kilishi, said that the programme faced a major setback due to the COVID-19 pandemic which forced schools to be closed for nine months.
She said that one of the two major objectives of the NEI is to ensure that all children in Bauchi that are of school age but are not in school are given the opportunity to do so.
“We thought of how best we can take education to the doorsteps of these children and we decided to go the rural areas in northern Nigeria, we went to Bauchi and Sokoto states and decided to open these Non-Formal Learning Centers.
“When we say Non-Formal Learning Centers, we don’t necessarily mean Qur’anic system only, we put up five centers. We have what we call Dandali for young girls between the ages 13 to 17 years, we also have that of the boys of the same age brackets, we have that of female children who are just there in the community and are not in school which we call community center.
“There is also the nomadic where we go to the hinterlands and we meet with fulani herders who move from one place to the other and we stop them and have an arrangement with them. Then we have the non-formal learning center of Qur’anic schools and we liase with them and also Islamiyya schools and also do this arrangement with them”.
“All we hope to achieve is that people acquire education wherever they are, they’ll acquire sound and quality education,” she stated.
She said that her organization’s target is to ensure that children have quality education such that they can learn how to read and write within a short period of time pointing out that if a child learns how to read within that short time, that will form the foundation he needs for making exploits in life.
Hagiya Kilishi said that NEI Plus printed over 35 million books and distributed to pupils across Bauchi State.
She said: “We printed over 35 million books and distributed them across Bauchi state. We gave two books to every child in formal school every term and that means every year, we give six books to each child”.
“We enrolled 134,500 in the non-formal system since we started. We initial target was to get 125,000 children but seeing how enthusiastic the children were and they kept coming, we had to increase the number.”
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