115 IDPs get scholarship in Bauchi
About 115 Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) and other vulnerable children have been granted scholarship by the wife of the Bauchi State Governor, Hajia Hadiza Mohammed Abubakar, to acquire formal education in various schools in the state.
Speaking while flagging off the scholarship award on Thursday at the banquet hall of the Bauchi Government House, the Governor’s wife explained that the scholarship was sponsored by her pet project, ‘Bauchi Sustainable Women
Economic Empowerment and Peace Initiative (BSWEEP).
According to the wife of the governor, the scholarship covers the payment of registration fees, purchase of uniforms, bags, text books and exercise books for the beneficiaries, calling on the other Non-Governmental Organisations and philanthropists to support her project in promoting education in the state “as the burden are enormous”.
In a remark, the Coordinator of BSWEEP, Professor Dije Bala, said the NGO was established by Hajiya Abubakar with the set goal of assisting less privileged women and promoting girl child education in the state.
The coordinator while pointing out that the organisation had identified about 6, 000 children who dropped out of school across the state due to poverty and other social problems, said BSWEEP was partnering with UNESCO to re-enroll them back to school.
Also speaking, Permanent Secretary, Bauchi State Ministry of Education, Nasiru Yelwa, explained that the present administration in the state has since inception accorded priority to the education sector by increasing its budgetary allocations to 17 and 27 percent in the 2016 and 2017 respectively as against three percent in 2015.
Samuel Luka, Bauchi
