The United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR) has enrolled about 300 children who lost either or both parents in the ongoing Boko Haram insurgency in Future Prowess Islamic Foundation School, a privately-owned school in Maiduguri that has become famous for providing education for kids orphaned by the Boko Haram insurgency. The children were selected from thousands of orphans on a waiting list of admission into the school. At a brief ceremony on Sunday in Maiduguri on March 18, parents and guardians of the selected orphans gathered to watch their children being inducted into the school which provides formal western and Islamic education and also provides for their feeding.
The children received school uniforms, bags, shoes and writing materials presented by the Borno State Government, which was represented at the ceremony by the state’s commissioner of education, Inuwa Kubo, and the Head of the UNHCR, Quang Bui. Zannah Mustapha, the proprietor of the school, said the assistance of the UNHCR will go a long way in relieving the school management of some of the burdens, saying the children’s education at the school was completely free. He said that with the new intakes, the school which started in 2007 now has about 800 pupils. He said some of the orphans that he started with about 11 years ago are currently in tertiary institutions in Borno state.
UNHCR’s head of Borno office, Mr. Bui, said the support to the pupil was in line with the reviewed responsibility of his organization which now goes beyond protection services to providing assistance, including education support to IDPs and persons affected by the ongoing Boko Haram insurgency. He disclosed that the UNHCR has a budget for this year to support the feeding of the orphans in the school.
The commissioner for education, Mr. Kubo, commended the UNHCR for always taking the lead in providing support for the government and people of Borno state. He also commended the founder of the school for helping the state government to provide education to its citizenry which he said is one of the key universal declarations under the sustainable development goal. He said there are over 50,000 orphans currently under the care of the state government. He said the government was building four mega schools to cater for the orphans so that they would not be left stranded when the IDPs return home.
Future Prowess Head of school, Suleiman Aliyu, said there are over 200 orphans on the waiting list for admission into the school, but they had to take only a few of them at a time due to lack of accommodation space.
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