Edo IDP centre operator raises alarm over imminent dropout of undergraduates

The founder of Home for the Needy Foundation for Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), Edo State, Pastor Solomon Folorunsho, on Wednesday raised the alarm that over 200 undergraduates of the centre in various tertiary institutions across the country, risked dropping out of school due to inability of the camp management to pay their tuition fee.

The camp run by the International Christian Centre, Uhogua Camp in Ovia North-East Local Government Area of Edo State, according to the founder, was also grappling with difficulties in providing food items and other consumables, prompting the management to cry out to government at all levels and Nigerian to come to the aid of the over 3,000 refugees in the IDPs in the facility.

Pastor Folorunsho disclosed that the centre had succeeded in sponsoring graduates in different fields of human endeavours, adding that at the moment, the centre had about 50 undergraduates studying various courses at the Western Delta University, but might risk not graduating owing to the lack of tuition fee.  

The founder, who made the appeal, while speaking with journalists at the camp, lamented that the camp was contending with paucity of funds and acute hunger among the displaced persons, and urged government at various levels to extend their social service interventions in the areas of education, food supply, and medical support amongst others, to the camp.

According to him, some of the students from the camp who were currently studying in tertiary institutions in the country were being forced to withdraw as the IDP management could not meet up with the payment of their tuition.

“The situation is really very critical. The food situation is number one. We don’t have food at all, and food is getting so expensive and even the donors themselves are crying with the way things are in the country. The children are very, very hungry.

“The other situation is that there’s beginning to be a drawback in their education. But they are intelligent and mindful of their studies with over 200 students in the universities reading professional courses and now a lot of the schools are sending them back home because we couldn’t pay their school fees. Like Western Delta University is not allowing our children to write exams and there are over 50 there and some other schools.

“These are children who had no hope before and now have gotten good education and they want to pursue their education so that they can earn a living for themselves and even better this country”, he added. 

The camp is a home to over 3,000 IDPs including children, men, women, widows and students from different ethnic groups in the country.

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