3,000 displaced orphans off to school
Thousands
of children whose parents were killed by Boko Haram insurgents have
been enrolled in schools in Gombe State, but they have the Emir Alhaji
Abubakar Shehu Abubakar III to thank for making it possible. VINCENT
OHONBAMU reports
The Emir of Gombe Alhaji Abubakar Shehu Abubakar III has given
thousands of displaced orphaned children the best gift ever: sending
them to school.
Boko Haram fighters set out to make life miserable wherever they set
foot. In the Northeast especially they succeeded in ruining communities,
in many cases, killing couples in the presence of their children.
Thousands of those children ended up in camps built for internally
displaced persons or IDPs, where they depended on charity for
everything. But one thing was missing: education.
Alhaji Abubakar III has filled that void, sending a total of 3000
displaced and other needy children to school, pledging to pick up their
bills.
The children will remain grateful to the federal government and the
military for crippling the terror group and working to restore normalcy
in the devastated region. They will also remember the gesture of
kind-hearted individuals and organisations who supplied their daily
needs. But they are likely to have the emir in their hearts forever for
giving them the best gift they could ever ask for: education.
At his palace on September 9, the emir flagged off the enrolment of
1,500 children into various primary schools across the state, pledging
to bear the full burden of their schooling. It was the second phase of
such enrolment, having enrolled the same number of children at the
beginning of last academic session in the state.
The royal father is worried that Nigeria has 11,000,000 out of school
children, the highest number of such children in the world. He is even
more pained by the fact that these kids were mainly from the northern
part of the country. He was moved by the need to give them hope for a
better life in future and the determination to cut down on the
disturbing figure of out-of-school children which UNICEF says are more
in the Northeast.
It is in this regard that he challenged well-to-do northerners,
especially those in the immediate neighbourhood, to consider the
statistics a serious challenge and wakeup call to help send the children
to school.
He said, “I want to call on well-to-do individuals to assist in
educating the less privileged around them. It is a task for us all to
assist the poor. For that reason, it is important for everyone to begin
to look out for ways to assist the less privileged in order to alleviate
government’s burden,” he said.
Among the recently enrolled children, 50 live with disability while
67 were withdrawn from leading their blind parents or guardians to beg
for alms in the streets.
The Emir in order to make up for the vacuum created by the withdrawal
of those children took it upon himself to feed those they led three
times a day.
An impressed ambassador to the Internally Displaced Children of
Nigeria, Khadijat Salisu Isa at the occasion praised the royal father
for starting the process of giving the children a hope for a good future
by setting them on the path of good education.
“These children,” she said, “are no orphans because they have a
father in you. You have given them fatherhood, then education, then a
future and a dream to live for,” said the elated Children’s Ambassador.
“We will not have out-of-school children in the camps, we will not
have beggars in the streets and we will not have criminals,” she stated.
Ambassador Khadijat spoke further: “These children are no orphans
because they have a father in you. You have given them fatherhood, then
education, then a future and a dream to live for.
“If you continue like this in the next twenty years, there will be no
orphans in Gombe State. In the next thirty years, the children you have
given hope for life and education today will become governor(s), voices
in government and champions in business community. In the next forty
years, who knows, one of these children might become the president of
Nigeria.
“If all rich people in Nigeria take up this kind of challenge by His
Royal Highness, we will not have children roaming IDP Camps aimlessly
and hopelessly today and we will not have beggars in the streets and we
will not have criminals.
“Today we have children in the IDP camps that are out-of-school and
dying of lack of food. We have the money to close the camps in one day
and give every child a hope and a home, but because of corruption and
stealing of relief materials our children are still in camps and dying.”
Three of the children, Hafsat, Abdullahi and Fasuma said they were happy to go to school and thanked the Emir for it.
message by NIGERIAN ORPHANAGES NETWORK
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NIGERIAN ORPHANAGES NETWORK
OUR MISSION; To create awareness about the plight of orphans and stimulate the spirit of the public towards giving.
OUR
VISION;Longing to see the day each an everyone of us will be committed
to lifting the spirit of the less privilege in our midst.
CHARITY WORK ADVOCACY APPEAL FUND.
We are projecting the sum of $5000 for our charity work advocacy programs & appeal for your kind assistance.
DONORS PLEDGES
[PLATINUM] -- $2000
[GOLD] -- $1000
[SILVER]------------ $500
[BRONZE]---------- $300
[OTHERS]-----------$100----$250
Pls. pick any of the pledges to support our welfare work
NIGERIAN ORPHANAGES NETWORK in the past 10 years has been creating
awareness and sensitizing Nigerians on the plight of motherless
orphanages homes, stimulating the spirit of giving in the people and
embark on emergency fundraising for the most distress homes and
individual orphans across the country.
We have created a yellow page Directory for the homes and
link Nigerians at home & Abroad with genuine child adoption in
order to lessen the financial burden of the orphanage homes.
we also adopted a special report on the plight of children orphaned by the Boko Haram insurgency in Benin camp, Edo state.
To verify , visit our webpages below.
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However,
it is becoming increasingly difficult to provide all the above services
due to increase costs and current economic environment.
We need funding for Research,logistics,Documentations,Advert, printing of posters ,building of facebook pages for orphanage homes and to maintain our website.
Our
organization feels very strongly about our welfare work and we can not
afford to discontinue and that is why we are reaching out to every one
out there for financial support.
Any amount you send to us will be highly appreciated, thanking you in advance for your generosity.
METHOD OF DONATION
Japhet Nkwocha
Diamondbank Acct.00210331321
you can also donate via western union money transfer./ worldRemit
Japhet NKwocha
NIGERIAN ORPHANAGES NETWORK
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