Refugees Commission, Rochas Foundation Partner To Raise Educational Structure For IDPs



Blessing Bature, Abuja

The National Commission for Refugees, Migrants and Internally Displaced Persons (NCFRMI) has said that it is committed to overseeing the education of the less privileged, especially refugees, IDPs and stateless persons in Nigeria.

Addressing newsmen in Abuja during a partnership visit of Rochas Foundation to the Commission, the Federal Commissioner of NCFRMI, Senator Basheer Garba Mohammed, said that there are many IDPs camps across the country, adding that North East alone have 289 camps and 18 camps situated in different parts of the Federal Capital Territory and that the commission will start building schools in the IDPs camps from January next year.

Mohammed said as a commission, we have scaled up intervention with the provision of back to school kids to IDP children in different camps and our focus is to provide succour to those affected by insurgency in different parts of the country and to make education accessible to every Nigerian child and one of the challenges facing the nation is finding durable solution to insurgency and IDPs.

He said starting from January next year, we will build nursery and primary schools in the IDPs camps. We will partner with NGOs, stakeholders and well meaning Nigerians for this purpose.”

In the same vain, founder of the Rochas Foundation and immediate past governor of Imo state, Senator Rochas Okorocha said that he would partner with the NCFRMI, humanitarian Ministry and ministry of education and other stakeholders to ensure the children of the less privileged are educated.

Okorocha said we are here to partner with you and to see how we can make lives better for the children, we know government is making its efforts in addressing this ugly situation but I want to still challenge you to improve in the area of education sector so we are here to see how we can work out modalities together to ensure that the IDPs children go back to school.

Our first action plan is to visit all IDP camps to ascertain the statistics of children that are not going to school, we will establish what is called EMERGENCY schools which will be inform of a tent and teachers will be available to teach them, adding that Rochas Foundation has been in existence in the past twenty years, but this is our first visit to a government agency for partnership. IDPs are in terrible conditions, so we have to intervene. " I recently visited Karamajiji IDPs camp here in the FCT and discovered that more than 1,200 children are out of school. If such a thing is happening here in the FCT, you can imagine the situation in the North East", he said

“We will do our best and partner with stakeholders to provide education for the IDPs, because government cannot do it alone. We will visit the IDPs and get statistics of those out of school and then establish emergency funds to address the issue. We will provide temporary classrooms in the IDPs camps for the children. We don’t know who will eventually find solutions to problems facing Nigeria and Africa, so let us join hands to promote free education,” he said.

He called on all well meaning Nigerians such as Rochas foundation, volunteers in the whole Nation to join the partnership identify children who are not going to school town, villages to introduce to the foundation in order to get them back to school.