FCTA pledges to provide basic education to children in IDP camps

THE Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Minister, Malam Muhammad Musa Bello, has pledged that his administration would continue to provide access to basic education for children and other vulnerable persons at the Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps in the territory.

He made this promise, while receiving a delegation from the National Commission for Refugees, Migrants and Internally Displaced Persons (NCRMI) in his office in Abuja.

Malam Bello said that the FCT administration had made available its vocation and rehabilitation centres for use by Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) and other relevant government agencies in the territory for the training of internally displaced persons.

He said this would help at least equipping them with the basic economic skills, while they were still housed at the IDP camps until they went back to their various homes.

“We have tried using our relationship with a number of NGOs to make sure that we concentrate on giving the young boys and girls basic education that they require so that by the time they move back to their communities, at least they would not have missed out too much.

“Within the FCT, we have a number of vocational institutions that we usually make the facilities available to the agencies of government that may want to use them to provide some form of intervention or some kind of skill acquisition training.

“So, in order for every agency not to duplicate by establishing its own vocational centre, I will advise that your organisation leverages on what is already on ground because you are going to cater for people who are really not going to be permanent. All you need to do is to give them some semblance of stability before they move on”, he said.

The minister charged the commission and similar agencies, including those in the FCT to really assist the displaced people, especially the young ones, noting that most of them had missed out of school for four to five sessions.

Earlier, the Federal Commissioner for the Commission, Hajiya Sadiya Umar Faruk said the commission had received many Nigerian nationals who had been deported from various parts of the world.

She said her team was at the FCTA to explore possible areas of collaboration in terms of providing skills for the IDPs and transit camps particularly for deportees.