No fewer than 43 survivors at the Home for the Needy Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) camp in Uhorgua, Edo, would be graduating from tertiary institutions at the end of the ongoing academic session.
The Coordinator of the camp Pastor Solomon Folorunsho, disclosed this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), Abuja, on Tuesday.
Folorunsho said that the soon to be graduates were in various tertiary institutions across the country reading courses ranging from Engineering, Medicine, Accounting, Nursing, Law to Business Administration, Pharmacy, Laboratory Technology among others.
He also said that no fewer than 147 survivors in the camp recently completed the Senior Secondary School Examination (SSCE).
According to him, in the just concluded NECO and NABTEB examination, we were able to register 147 of our children for each of the examination.
‘’140 out the 147 sat for the Joint Admission Matriculation Board (JAMB) examination, and they did very well as one person scored above 300 and more than 123 scored above 200.
‘’However we are expecting admission for about 145 of them taking into cognisance the released cut off mark for admission into tertiary institutions by JAMB some time ago.’’
The coordinator also told NAN that six of the survivors were currently undergoing the mandatory National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) programme, while five were recently called to the Nigerian Bar.
‘’You are aware that five of our children were called to the Nigerian Bar last month, those ones will be practicing in the supreme court, because that is the Bar they were called to,’’ he said.
Folorunsho however said that it had not been easy taking care of the survivors, especially in terms of their feeding and education as there were presently more than 4,000 survivors in the camp.
‘’In spite of the success story from the Home for the Needy IDP camp on these our children, I must confess that it hasn’t been easy taking care of the feeding of more than 4,000 survivors, funding the education of those in schools, and the children.
‘’Sometimes we barely have enough food for them, and honestly, my heart breaks at such times seeing the children looking up to me, and maybe at that moment I can’t do anything.
‘’These situation are quite often and that is because we don’t get assistance from any government, except very few private individuals, and few clerics too.
‘’None of these big corporate organisations who are always in the news over one charity donation or the other has even assisted us, maybe some time in the past, yes, but since COVID-19, I think not.
‘’I must tell you this, some time ago, when we heard that musician David Adeleke, popular known as Davido was donating funds to orphanages and the needy, we seriously prayed and hoped that, we will be lucky with him, but sadly, we were not,’’ he said.
Folorunsho said that in spite of the challenges, he was undaunted as he and his team would not allow the dreams of the survivors die.
‘’Yes before insurgency made them leave their ancestral homes, they had dreams, so we will not allow their dreams die; instead we will strive and nurture them to achieve those dreams.
‘’That is what we want to continue to do this. It is what we have pleasure to do. We don’t care whether you are a Christian or Muslim or you are none of the two, but just have a good heart.
‘’You want to be somebody. You want to develop your potential. We want to stand with you. Not because we own everything, but we have the passion and we want to draw people into it,’’ he added.
He therefore called on Nigerians to join hands with the management of the camp to help the survivors achieve their dreams.
By Deborah Coker
(NAN)
