An Abuja-based education foundation, Munemi Ilimi, has embarked on the construction of schools, boreholes and skills acquisition centres worth millions of naira for pastoral communities in Taraba.
Speaking at the groundbreaking exercise at Miri-Miri-Donkola pastoral community in Bali Local Government Area of the state, on Monday, the chairman, board of trustees of the foundation, Alhaji Mohammed Kabir, said the foundation was out to help the less privileged in society to have access to education.
Kabir, a former council member of Lagos Business School, explained that education was the bedrock for development in every society, and that no set of people should be left behind in its pursuit.
He observed that pastoralists’ women and children in Nigeria were targeted for the exercise because they were backward in all forms of education.
The chairman stated that the increasing vices among pastoralists called for urgent efforts to help provide them with sound education to make them more useful to the society.
“With sound education, the rising level of crime and criminality among the pastoralists’ youths would be tamed,” the chairman said.
He also said while the foundation sourced for funding from well-meaning individuals and donor agencies, it is also in collaboration with another NGO, the Fulbe Development and Cultural Organisation (FUDECO) to identify sites for establishing schools, skills acquisition centres and other facilities.
Earlier, the Chairman of FUDECO, Hajja Aishatu Ardo, expressed appreciation for the intervention and called on the leadership of the pastoralists to mobilise their women and children to embrace education which, she said, is now at their doorsteps.
“We are working with the leadership of pastoralists in the state to encourage their children’s education as well as teaching them other trades apart from herding cows,” she said.
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