FG launches initiative to encourage reading culture among FCT IDPs

The federal government has launched an initiative, tagged: “Project Educate All”, to encourage learning and reading culture among people of concern.

While speaking at the launch of the project at the Waru Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) camp in Abuja, the Federal Commissioner, National Commission for Refugees, Migrants and Internally Displaced Persons (NCFRMI), Ms Imaan Sulaiman-Ibrahim, said the initiative is aimed at complementing the efforts of the Universal Basic Education.

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“Displacement has an especially negative impact on children. According to UNICEF, about 50 percent of persons forced to escape their homes as a result of violence are children, and by 2021, 18.5 million children lack access to education owing to criminal gang assaults on schools, with 60 percent being females. 

“Displacement endangers children’s physical and emotional health and also complicates child protection,” she said.

Sulaiman-Ibrahim said the commission had built six functional vocational training centres and eight schools in some resettlement cities.

Similarly, the representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Mr Ghansa Kapaya, said “About 10.5 million children in Nigeria between the ages of five and 14 are not in school.”

Kapaya, who was represented by Mr Gilbert Mutai of UNHCR, said that “piloting this initiative in IDPs camps by the commission is a welcome development.”