Foundation distributes uniforms, books to pupils in Makoko schools

A nonprofit, Family Bond Helping Foundation, distributed school uniforms, footwear, writing materials, school bags, and food to pupils of schools in Makoko, a floating slum settlement at the Yaba axis of Lagos, on Friday.

The pupils, drawn from three schools in the settlement (Wesley Nursery and Primary School and two others), numbered over 360. Most of the pupils, all from poor homes in the slum, had no school uniforms, writing materials, or school bags; they looked malnourished and in dire need of help.

Juliet Ihiabe is the president and founder of Family Bond Helping Foundation. Speaking to journalists after the event, she described the condition in the schools and the entire settlement as dire and explained that the urgent need for help motivated her and the foundation’s team to gather resources and provide the assistance they did to the pupils.

“Our organisation is a faith-based NGO and our sole aim is to reach out to the less privileged, starting with the elderly. We offer the elderly medical care and clothing and we have done that on many occasions in different locations. We also give grants to indigent women to start up small-scale businesses to help their families. For the underprivileged students, we offer as much as scholarships to them,” Ihiabe said.

She further explained that “while we are still working on the scholarship project and believing that funders will come soon, we are reaching out to indigent pupils, like we are doing today by giving out school uniforms to all the three schools, school bags, footwear and writing materials. We are also giving out food because we know children love food a lot.”

Ihiabe added that the foundation is embarking on a project to rehabilitate prostitutes, has been able to acquire an acre of land and will soon kick off.

Oke Dennis is the founder of Wesley Nursery and Primary School, one of the benefiting schools and the venue of the outreach. While expressing gratitude to Family Bond Helping Foundation for the materials they provided, he told journalists that the school and many others in the settlement need help to continue educating the children in the slum.

“The uncompleted building we are using is not ours and we lack materials to teach the pupils with. For instance, we only have a few old, rickety benches and chairs for the pupils,” Dennis said.

“The pupils are not supposed to sit on benches because it usually gives them backaches and some sit on the floor. The few whiteboards we have have broken. We use our money to pay for boats to bring the pupils from the shanty they live in on the water and take them back after school. Any day we fail to pick them up, they will not attend school because the parents are so poor that paying the N100 or N50 daily school fees we charge is a huge burden, which they do not pay. Imagine when you ask them to pay for boat fares when they are not able to buy pencils, books, school uniforms, or schools for the children to attend school,” he decried.