….Rep Salam ember offers scholarship to 20 IDP children
By Lubem Gena, Abuja
Nigeria’s development will remain a mirage if the prevailing mirage of the Out-Of-School children is not addressed by the appropriate authorities.
This was the viewpoint of Representative Bamidele Salam, the Founder/President of the Children of Africa Leadership and Values Development Initiative (CALDEV) who bared his mind while speaking at the just concluded National Children Leadership Conference (Abuja 2023).
Rep. Salam who is the Chairman of the Public Account Committee (PAC) of the House of Representatives stated that education remains the best form of every effort to eliminate illiteracy, ignorance, poverty and other social ills.
The Conference with theme “Rebuilding Nigeria through Investment in Children’s Education, Welfare and Security”, is organised by CALDEV, an NGO that teaches and mentor children and young adults on leadership and life values.
According to Salam, the increasing number of out-of-school children in Nigeria is a serious national issue that must be addressed by all stakeholders in order to secure the future.
He noted that the welfare and security of citizens, especially the Nigerian child, cannot be guaranteed now or later, if the menace of out-of-school children is not addressed.
“One of the very important issues this conference is set out to address is the issue of out-of-school children. It is not a cheering news that Africa’s largest economy, the biggest nation in the black world, has a number of out-of-school children that is the most in all the countries of the world, that is 13.5 million children are out of school.
“No nation can expect to accelerate development and growth with this number of children out-of-school, and we should be able to proffer solutions to this problem in a manner that will be sustainable.
“This is to ensure that all stakeholders, government, civil societies, communities, religious bodies, put hands together to make sure that we take off the children from the street from begging, from roaming about the streets and to the school.”
He said discussions and deliberations will centre on causes and make recommendations on how to tackle challenges facing the education, welfare and security of the Nigerian child.
“It is so unfortunate that Nigeria has the largest population of out-of-school children and this is part of our discussions at this conference.
“We believe strongly that one of the ways through which we can tackle this problem is to create awareness and advocate for sensitization on the conscience of parents and government.
“They will talk to everyone that has a duty to ensure that we gradually begin a process of reducing the number and have a zero number of out-of-school children in Nigeria.
“We are going to have more children who will act as advocates to access education for their fellow children in every part of Nigeria.
“I believe that having this number of voices everywhere on the team will help to address this emergency ,” he said.
As part of his efforts to shrink the number, the federal lawmaker announced the scholarship scheme for the 20 Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) children who participated in the Conference.
