Another group of persons displaced from the Northeast as a result of the activities of Boko Haram has just been discovered in Jos, the Plateau State capital. Apart from the one that has been camping at a school hostel at Zawan Commercial College Bukuru since 2014, another group has been found camping in a village in Bassa Local Government Area the state.

In the Bassa camp, the inmates are mainly children who became orphans when Boko Haram invaded their communities and killed their parents. These children numbering over 200, according to our investigation, were brought from some of the displaced camps in Maiduguri to their current camp in Jos.

A source disclosed to The Nation that the children were brought from their camps in Borno to enable them have Christian education.

The source who pleaded anonymity said, “We realised that in the IDP camps in Maiduguri, they were teaching children in the camp Islamic education and not Western education, but most of these children came from Christian families. So, if these children are allowed to remain in the camp in Maiduguri, they might end up being converted to Islam forcefully. That was why some of them that their parents are alive decided to look for any organisation in Jos that can give their children Christian education. Most of these children don’t even have parents anymore, but we need to rescue them from forceful conversion to Islam, the kind of education the IPDs camp in the far North is mainly Islamic education which is not favorable to victims from Christian backgrounds. That was how this camp was created in Jos for Christian children.”

Meanwhile, the displaced and orphaned children in Bassa camp, Jos, are under the care of a non-governmental organisation known as Youths With a Mission, City of Refuge Centre, Miango, Bassa LGA. The NGO was founded 12 years ago by a couple, Mr. Michael Kurams and his wife Joy, to help the less privileged.

Mr. Kurams said, “Our attention was drawn to the plight of these children at the IDPs camp in Maiduguri and even some that are not in camp in Adamawa, so we went out to fish for such groups of orphans, some of them, their parents brought them voluntarily to enable them access formal education. At the moment we have about 200 of such children in the camp and we have organised formal education for them. We have employed a few teachers to teach them, but there are some youths that have come to do voluntary jobs here to educate the children because my NGO cannot pay to employ enough teachers.

The founder said, “We started the school for them in October last year in whatever way we can hoping that one day government will come to their aid. But even though no government has come to our aid, this particular woman got the information of this camp and visited last year and promised to bring some help to us. Today she has come to make some donations for the food and education of these children. She is God-sent, I don’t know how she got to know we are here, she came on her own. Maybe because she is a mother, she has shown a lot of concern for these children, I hope other Nigerian will emulate her and come to the aid of these orphans,” he said.

The woman in question, Eunice Ayisa Sambo, a Good Samaritan, is a native of Jos East Local Government Area of Plateau State. Mrs Sambo, an All Peoples Congress (APC) stalwart, who resides mostly abroad, involved an international NGO based in the United Kingdom to help the orphans at the Bassa camp when she discovered that they were brought from the Northeast.

The APC stalwart said, “My decision to bring help for these children should not be mistaken as a political campaign because these children are not even from Plateau state, neither are they from my constituency, a time will come when they will return to their original state of origin, so I’m just doing this out of compassion, as a mother I can’t have the knowledge of these kinds of orphans and pretend I don’t know, they are vulnerable, they need help, they have lost their parents, who will cater for their needs. So all these thoughts moved me into coming with the little I can do to help, they are my children, if I’m rich enough I would have adopted all of them and kept them in my house, but I can’t. But I know I am a trustee in an NGO that can help, hence I went back to U.K, and this is how they decided to help these children with this token donation.

While presenting the donations to the camp manager, Mrs Sambo said, “On behalf of myself, a trustee of and co-founder of Amazing Grace Charitable Trust, UK and founder of Jos Wallgate Foundation Nigeria, we make this visit to internally displaced persons including women and children from Borno state domicile in Jos Plateau state. The situation in the North Eastern part of Nigeria over in the past and present has affected lots of communities and forcing inhabitants of affected communities into unimaginable traumatic experiences.

“In our own little way we make this visit and donation to the displaced persons particularly the children whose future has been endangered as a result of the insecurity in the Northeast. It is our belief that the immediate needs of these vulnerable children is not limited to food and shelter, but their education is of utmost important. The future of these children is basically anchored on their education, which is why we decided to support the NGO hosting these children in our little way to an ale the children receive quality education while in this camp” she said.

Items donated during the visit includes; 10 bags of maize, 10 bags of locally-milled rice, 9 bags of beans. The donation also includes the cash sum of N240,000.00 (Two Hundred and Forty Thousand Naira) for the payment of two teachers to be employed for the education of the children for the period of one year begging from January 2017.

Lalasticlala, Mynd44

Lalasticlala, Mynd44