Munemi Ilimi Foundation, an Abuja-based philanthropic organisation, says it is establishing schools, boreholes and skills acquisition centres worth millions of Naira for pastoral communities in Taraba.
Speaking at the ground breaking exercise for providing the facilities at Miri-Miri-Donkola pastoral community in Bali Loca Government Area of the state, on Monday, Chairman Board of Trustees of the Foundation, Alhaji Mohammed Kabir, said the foundation was out to help the less privileged in the society to access education.
Kabir, an accomplished Nigerian technocrat and a former council member of Lagos Business School, also explained that since education was the bedrock for development in every society, 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 seemed to be very backward in all forms of education.
He said the increasing vices among them and the need to make them better equipped in carrying out their socio-cultural and economic activities called for an urgent need for them to be provided with sound education.
“With sound education, the rising level of crime and criminality among the pastoralists youths would be tamed,” the chairman said.
He also said that while their Foundation would source for project funding from well meaning individuals and donor agencies, it was also in collaboration with another NGO, the Fulbe Development and Cultural Organization (FUDECO) to identify sites for establishing schools, skills acquisition centres and solar-powered boreholes that would service the pastoralists and their livestock.
Earlier, in an address of welcome, the Chairman of FUDECO in Taraba,Hajja Aishatu Ardo,expressed appreciation for the intervention from Munemi Ilimi Foundation.
Ardo called on the leadership of the pastoralists to mobilise their women and children to embrace education which she said was now brought to their doorsteps.
She disclosed that through similar interventions from donors, FUDECO had provided classrooms, boreholes and some level of training for pastoralists in some Local Government Areas across Taraba.
“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.
In his remarks,Alhaji Muhammadu Gongola, Chairman of the Taraba Chapter of Tabbital Pulaku International,thanked the donors for the intervention.
Gongola assured of maintaining the facilities provided, as well as mobilising other pastoralists within his jurisdiction to embrace education, which he said, was the best option out of the present circumstances they had found themselves in the country.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the drilling of the solar-powered borehole with a 20,000 liter capacity overhead tank had been completed, while foundation for the building of a block of six classrooms and skills acquisition centres had been laid. (NAN)
