The National Directorate of Employment’s (NDE) community development scheme is not only an opportunity for jobs and skills upgrade but also combines life-changing infrastructure provision, carefully designed and implemented to improve the living condition of benefitting communities and residents. The testimonies of some Baragoni community people in Bwari Area Council FCT, Abuja, who recently benefited from the scheme, support this. CHRISTIAN APPOLOS reports.
BARAGONI is an agrarian community in the Bwari Area Council of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja. On first visit to the community, one might be tempted to ask if one is still in Abuja due to the obvious terrible state of infrastructure such as roads, the only existing government primary and Junior Secondary School in the community.
While the community is praying for a messiah who will come to their aid with the provision of access roads and other infrastructure, the National Directorate of Employment (NDE) surprised the residents of Baragoni with a step-go-further transformative project.
The job creation agency for the Federal Government, through its community-based development scheme recently put smiles on the faces of parents, youths and children in the community with the commissioning of a block of classrooms constructed to ease the teaching and learning challenges faced by teachers and students in the only existing primary and Junior Secondary School in the community.
The praises of NDE was on the lips of everyone present at the commissioning including Bwari Area Council Secretary who represented the Council’s chairman, education Board Secretary of the council, community leaders, principal of the school, teachers and the pupils and students.
The stakeholders spoke on the impact of the project to the entire residents of the community and how the school, its teachers and students have suffered so much to cope with the situation for years.
The community leaders who spoke to Nigerian Tribune during the commissioning said the project was a combo package that residents benefited immensely from. They said NDE ensured that everyone who worked on the project were from the Baragoni community. Besides providing job opportunities through the project while the construction lasted, other residents of the community learning different skills in building construction were also employed to work on the project to enable them to upgrade their skills.
Bwari Area Council Secretary, Honourable Elias Kadeya, said: “We cannot commend the NDE enough for what it has done for us. This project is a life-changing one that will contribute immensely to the development of the children who are already schooling here and many more who will come later.
“It is very sad that in many of our primary and secondary schools, pupils and students are jam-packed into one classroom. In cases where there are classrooms, there won’t be seats for them. That is the reality on ground. It is not easy for someone to build toilets for the children in many government-owned schools let alone a classroom. That is why we are saying that what NDE has done for us is commendable.
“However, we are pleading with NDE to collaborate with us for more projects. Our communities here in Bwari Area Council need more of this kind of help. Importantly, we need NDE in the area of more skills acquisition training and empowerment for our teeming unemployed youths and women. We know that NDE’s core mandate is on job creation through skills acquisition. Only when the youth are equipped with skills or provided with job opportunities can we have a decent society. We all know the rate of crime in the country. But through NDE’s help, we can save our youths and make our country safer. I call on President Bola Tinubu to seriously empower NDE for the task of job creation.”
He noted that Bwari Area Council as an agrarian community, the main business and source of living of many residents is farming and called for support. “So we believe that with empowerment by the NDE, our people will be assisted to sustain their farming business and support their family and relatives especially in these economic hard times.
“The economic situation in the country is so terrible and it is affecting the farmers so much that many are not able to buy fertiliser and other necessaries needed for their farming business. We are really begging the Federal Government to seriously look into the issue, especially as it concerns the assistance our people receive from NDE through community-based schemes such as this.”
A Baragoni Chief, Ibrahim Nana Dankami, said: “The entire community is filled with joy for this wonderful project the NDE did for us. For years, we planned to raise money to build at least one classroom for our children. We did PTA (Parents Teachers Association) meetings many times talking about it but we couldn’t raise good money for the project. Today, our gratitude is beyond measure that this government agency came here and within a few months, they did for us what we couldn’t do for years.
“Apart from our children who sit in this classroom to learn, many of our youths who are into construction worked on the project and made some money. What the NDE did here is something we have not seen before. We are very grateful and we are begging the Director-General to help us more with our youths who want to learn one skill or the other to make a living.”
Principal of Baragoni Junior Secondary School, Mr Tahir Ismaila, said: “My gratitude to the National Directorate of Employment for this wonderful gesture for the good of the children who attend this school is beyond measure. It is unbelievable that there is still a government agency that incorporates programmes that allow it to provide basic needs such as classrooms and other education facilities for the development of the people and communities, in addition to its core mandate. I commend the Federal Government for having such an agency like NDE and urge it to sustain and empower this agency to do more.
“This project is very important to the school, the community and the children most importantly. You can see their faces and how happy they are. We have a shortage of classrooms here. It has been a problem we have been battling. When NDE came, they wanted to renovate the old classrooms we have. But we begged to build a new one for the school.
“We have a large number of pupils in primary school and students in secondary. These two levels of education centres are here together. We don’t have a choice but to converge them within these few classrooms we have here and it unfortunately affects teaching activities. The situation has been a very big challenge but thank God for NDE. This one block of classrooms will go a long way to lessen the challenge, though we need more classrooms.
“Over 160 students sit in one classroom to learn, I can tell you that it is not conducive at all both for students and teachers. Right now, the students are happy and the teachers as well. This classroom provided by the NDE is indeed a life-saving project.”
Aisha Mohammed, a JSS 3 student of the school said: “I am so happy that we have our own classroom now. We have been sharing a classroom with other classes. Sometimes, I don’t want to come to school because of it. And they made so many of us stay in one classroom. We sit on the windows sometimes because the seats do not accommodate everyone. I am really happy and I thank NDE for building our new classroom for us.”
Another JSS 3 student, Victoria Francis said: “We are so many in our classroom that some used to sit on the floor. Some even used to stand outside the classroom and listen to our teachers through the window. And during the dry season the heat used to be too much. My friends and I have been so happy since our principal told us that the new classroom they are building will be ours. Today I am very happy that we will be using it. I thank the government for the new classroom.”
In her remark, Mrs Ifeoma Ezepue, NDE’s Special Public Works Director, said the project is done under the directorate’s Community Development Scheme to meet targeted and urgent needs of communities.
She said: “Under the scheme, we go to communities, dialogue with them, find out what they mostly need and do a project to meet that very need in line with our budgeted projects. Our work is primarily to create jobs and enable employment opportunities. So, our community-based projects like this one are job enabling in nature. The projects are designed and executed in such a way that it must offer some jobs for the people in the very community a project is sited.
“For instance, in executing this particular project, we ensured that everyone that worked on this building is sourced from this Baragoni community whether they are professionals in the work they do or not. The rationale is while they work on the project, those who are professionals will help those who are not to perfect their skills. In the end, they make money while working on the project and also perfected their skills. This way, they will go on making a living.
“Our satisfaction in doing community-based projects such as this is that in the end, we have not just empowered them jobs-wise or created opportunities for them to perfect their skills or put money in their hands, but we have provided an infrastructure to aid the people living in the community. Simultaneously, we have replicated these community-based projects in Kebbi, Kogi, Adamawa, Ekiti, Enugu and Cross River States.”
Also speaking, Mr Noble Chimereze, NDE FCT Coordinator, said: “Our target is to lift communities with poor infrastructure. We chose Baragoni for this project because it is the most backward community in Bwari. The community stood out among others in terms of poor infrastructure. For instance this is the only school around here. The school has a teeming population of students and pupils but there are no classrooms for them. So, this project here is part of our efforts to develop communities. We have done different projects of similar nature in other communities like this in FCT and I am sure that more will come. The NDE does not rest in its quest to provide means of livelihood to different communities in the country according to their need.”
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