FEATURE ARTICLE

Olusola SanniSunday, May 29, 2016
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Abuja, Nigeria

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NORTH-EAST: A UNIVERSE OF POVERTY AND HOPE

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he North-East geo-political zone is widely known to be playing catch up in Nigeria’s rapid drive to development. A lot of the stunning statistics depicting the deplorable state of human development index in the North-East have often underplayed the narrative. Whereas statistics can capture the number of children out of school and the number of children who lack access to daily balanced diet, but how does statistics help capture the manpower deficit of a largely uneducated and underfed population.

Apart from the statistics, even media reportage of the problems in the North-East has not done justice to the humanitarian problem in the region. Most media reportage on the region in recent times have been from the perspective of the Boko Haram insurgency, and therefore the region has even become victim of journalistic bias because its story tilts towards reporting the exploits of the terrorists than the actual victims of the terror.

No doubt, the North-East needs government’s attention to rebuild its infrastructure in the aftermath of the ruinations of the Boko Haram vandals. But much more than the bridges, roads and private homes that have been destroyed, is the neglect and rustiness that has become of the minds of the young population of the North-East. In many places across the region, schools have been closed for almost three years as a result of the Boko Haram menace. While hospitals are a rare sight, even patent medicines stores have for long been under lock and key, thus shrinking further the already restricted access to health care.

Its out-of-school children is the highest globally and access to good food is an uncommon privilege to many children in the region.

But in the middle of the darkness and gloom that has constricted the North-East is a clear ray of light.

I was an invited guest to the 2016 Commencement ceremony of the American University of Nigeria in Yola. I have heard a lot about the gory tales of poverty and underdevelopment in the North-East; I also have the understanding that the AUN has been in the fore-front of promoting many human capacity development schemes in communities across Adamawa State. The Atiku Media Office where I work, too, has for many years partnered with the AUN in ensuring that the story of the North-East not just gets reported, but gets adequately reported.

So landing inside the expansive campus of the AUN, I wasted no time in finding out details of the humanitarian engagements of the university and its President, Professor Margie Ensign took me through several of those initiatives which included the Adamawa Peace Initiative, the Technology Enhanced Learning for All (TELA) project, the Feed and Read programme among others.

The AUN prides itself as the pioneer community development university in Africa and the credentials of the extensive work it has done across communities in Adamawa State and other parts of the North-East region give fitting testimonials to that claim. Each student of the university has a community development project dedicated to them, and all these programmes are coordinated through the Atiku Abubakar Center for Leadership, Entrepreneurship and Development

Apart from providing a roundtable for Christians and Muslims, the Adamawa Peace Initiative played a crucial role in absorbing the almost three hundred thousand Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) that thronged Yola on the heels of the Boko Haram terror attacks.

According to President Ensign, “As the Boko Haram crisis grew, we found ourselves feeding close to three hundred thousand people for eighteen months with little external governmental or relief agency support. The founder of AUN (Atiku Abubakar) was our biggest supporter who charged us daily never to let his people go hungry.”

The Peace through Literacy, IT and entrepreneurship scheme also recently undertook training for local farmers on how to use mobile telephone technology to obtain information from the internet that could help boost and promote their trade. I was also thrilled to hear that students in the Information Technology Department of the AUN are working on a mobile application that will help local farmers network and share information on current agricultural research.

The AUN-API network has also espoused the Chibok Educational Initiative through which 15 of the 58 girls who escaped from the kidnapping are undergoing intensive individualized academic programme to help prepare them for the JAMB and WAEC examination.

In 2011, students in an AUN entrepreneurship class were tasked to create a sustainable enterprise that is good for the economy, environment and local employment. Through this initiative, locally disempowered women are taught how to craft attractive products, and to market them through a socially responsible brand.

But, of all these initiatives, none caught my fancy like the Feed and Read Programme for vulnerable children, orphans and children from poor homes. Typically, access to good food is a big issue amongst many of the young population of the North-East.

So, how did the AUN manage to introduce reading to these vulnerable children? In finding answer to this puzzle, I met with the Executive Director of the AUN Schools, Nkem Uzowulu – a veteran school administrator, who happens to be the driving force behind the Feed and Read programme.

According to Uzowulu, “The President of the university started the programme by asking a food vendor to prepare meal tickets for the children and AUN pays. Later on, she added the value of also giving education in addition to the food.

“Students of the AUN assembled these children and started giving them literacy. The programme started with the boys, the almajiri boys that stay under Islamic tutelage and they come from far and near.

“The programme extended to the girls and the Irish government assisted with 18,578 Euro for a number of 50 girls. But when the other girls who were not part of initial 50 cried profusely, the programme was expanded to accommodate 289 girls within the Yola community.

“It is amazing to see the joy on the faces of these children, and sometimes the food they eat here is their only meal for the day. The depressing part of the story, however, is that we noticed some of the girls come to school with nylon bags and rather than eat their meals, they will turn the food inside the nylon bags. We asked them why they do that and the response they gave is that they feel guilty eating here while their other siblings at home are hungry, and therefore, they prefer to take the food home and share with their siblings.

“A uniform label in the United States saw the Feed and Read story on the internet and chose to support the programme by giving school uniforms to these children free of charge. Another global courier company, FedEx agreed to ship these uniforms for free and now the children are very proud to wear the AUN uniforms. They never could have imagined that was possible.

“The boys group started with 100 pupils, but today has ballooned to 218 pupils. We had to make them go through thorough security screening before they are admitted.

“We found out that these children are brilliant. They started from baseline zero literacy and now they can read and the programme started in February.

“Some of them trek one hour fifteen minutes to get here. The reading starts for the boys between 4 and 5 pm, while the feeding starts between 5 and 6 pm to allow them do their evening prayers.

“Initially, we didn’t have facilitators. When our students began their exams, they couldn’t continue to teach, so we had to hire five facilitators together with staff members of the Atiku Center.

“The feed and read girls have 5 classes as we have separated them. We also empower local women by contracting the cooking to them. Mondays to Thursdays, the girls are taught literacy and numeracy, and on Fridays we do hygiene and other things outside literacy and numeracy.

“For the girls, we have a mixture of Christians and Muslims. We also give them hygiene materials like sanitary towels, toothpastes, bathing soaps. We don’t give the boys all of these because, in their own case, they make little money.

“The boys schedule starts at 4 pm because we want them to have been through with their Quranic learning and prayers and we convinced them that the programme is not about faith conversion.

“The impact has been enormous. The Feed and Read girls started when they couldn’t look at up and greet. But now, they look at you and say, ‘good afternoon.’

“If we have more resources, we can do much more because we have developed a curriculum for them; so as we graduate one set, we can absorb another.

“We want government engagement by absorbing these children into formal schools. We had a meeting with the Adamawa State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB) to absorb some of the children because by September ending, we will be through with the current set.

“There are some of them who do not want to go to formal schools and for that category we are taking them through our AUN Entrepreneurial Schemes.

“For the girls, the programme ends at the end of May (this year); and for the boys, the USAID funding ends at the end of August at the end of August.

“We have heard real stories of some of the boys who confessed that they didn’t join Boko Haram because of the Feed and read programme. That made us realise that there is an alternative to Boko Haram and that alternative is education and access to opportunity.

“The Founder has helped us in a great lot of ways. The brand of Atiku’s name has helped open a lot of doors for us and these programmes are greatly subsidized by him.”

At the end of my interview session with the Executive Director of the AUN Schools, I found a reason to agree more with one of the AUN valedictorians who said: “the AUN has taught us there is a very thin line between the university and the community.” It is an expression that provides a theoretical framework for how a university can be a source of positive influence to a universe, no matter how dark that universe may be.

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