Boko Haram: NEDC approves N6bn education fund

The North-East Development Commission (NEDC) has approved the establishment of a N6bn Education Endowment Fund (EEF) to resuscitate the devastated education sector and boost the human capital required to re-build the region’s infrastructure and economy.

The Head, Corporate Services of NEDC, Mallam Abba Musa, who revealed this on Friday said the EEF was part of the resolutions of the Board at the end of its last meeting in Abuja.

According to him, following the enactment of the NEDC (Establishment) Act, 2017 and the inauguration of the Commission’s Governing Board by President Muhammadu Buhari on May 8, 2019, the commission had been putting together series of impactful interventions to address most of the immediate challenges bedeviling the North-East states caused by the decade-long Boko Haram insurgency, inter-ethnic strifes and other challenges across the region.

“The fund will provide an avenue for the engagement of over 20,000 beneficiaries annually across the region in accessing academic and professional capacity development in various fields. The target is to reach a minimum 0f 150,000 beneficiaries in five years,” Musa said.

He said the commission understands that, until hostilities cease to a larger degree, development efforts will amount to nothing.

“It also realizes that aside the direct military action, a number of targeted interventions can contribute to assuaging the pains of conflict and bringing about a permanent peace. The Commission had, therefore, been working on these non-kinetic possibilities for a start,” he added.

Musa said the rollout of Rapid Response Intervention programmes was to address the challenge of damaged infrastructures and other facilities in the 112 LGAs in the region by the rehabilitation and/or reconstruction of at least two projects in each LGA during the first quarter of 2020 in the education, health, agriculture, WASH and social infrastructure.

“With a total of 224 projects for a start. The Education Endowment Fund will provide the required back-up in the training of Teachers, Nurses, Civil servants amongst others; support to smallholder farmers through all-seasons by providing access to inputs, improved varieties of seedlings, mechanisation and extension/advisory services, marketing, warehousing and other logistics.

While listing the commission’s intervention in ICT and environment through tree planting, Musa said the commission’s Board also approved funding to stockpile food and non-food items to cater for internally displaced persons (IDPs) housed in camps and in host communities as well as for returnees in places that have been recovered and secured.