Over 100,000 Gombe Children back to School- Deputy Gov
Chima Azubuike, Gombe
Gombe State Deputy Governor, Dr. Manassah Jatau, says over 100,000 out of school children have been returned to class rooms across the state.
Jatau made this revelation at the 7th Annual Gombe Day of Literature and Creativity with the general theme Creativity Amidst Pandemic: The New Normal, organized by HalimaFactor Community Initiative, which was held at the new multi purpose hall, Gombe State University.
“On coming coming to power there was 700,000 out of school children in Gombe state, I can assure you we have reduced it to the bearest minimum to possible about 100,000 and we are still on, we have the BESDA programme. We are not just mentioning figures, this is a government that goes to see them learning and we intend to improve on that,” Jatau said.
While emphasizing the need for ethical integration Jatau added that as the reason why the Inuwa Yahaya led administration created Ministry of Internal Security and Ethical Orientation.
He said, “The initiative of catching them young is one thing we really appreciate this one of the few states that has a ministry of internal security and ethical orientation; we added orientation because we believe our youths will go through a sort of reorientation, gone are the days the youths will wake up and meet the day as it comes.
“The fact that Halima factor brought it right while they are young we are sure there is hope that in the not too distant future we are going to have youths that know their problems, address their issues and will not be too dependent on their parents who them selves are depending on nothing.”
He added that creativity must be enthroned ahead of the era of the pandemic stressing that folklores should be included as a means of knowing history.
“As we address issues relating to creativity during the pandemic, perhaps Coronavirus is the pandemic now but i can assure you creativity must continue because aside coronavirus other viruses will come up and we catch us napping. I still believe there are a lot of pandemics that only creativity can solve.
“My observation would should not limit this to the youths but we should go back bring our old people by bringing them on board. There are songs in our language; songs are history and as they tell us about ourselves. The youths won’t know the songs we used to in the ancient things,” he stated.
Speaking earlier, chairperson of HalimaFactor Community Initiative, Halima Usman said the challenges of the pandemic requires serious and frantic effort towards overcoming them.
Usman said, “Some of our programmes include scholarship which you are all aware; we have children on scholarship, we call them HalimaFactor ambassadors, their educational needs are been taken care of, as well as students who are also on scholarship at the tertiary institutions and many other activities which we do.
“As you can see here we have items here hand made, it was as a result of our collaboration with Industrial Training Fund (ITF) and those are the results of what was done during the training. We are involved in a lot of activities apart from just encouraging literature education.”
While appreciating the Gombe state government and partners, Usman said her initiative is committed to doing more.
“We are making frantic efforts especially after 7 years of doing this to move the Gombe day of literature and our other programmes a niche higher. From the 8th edition you will witness an improved Gombe day of literature one that we will be proud of, a literary festival that will put Gombe state on National and International literary map. It will serve as a spring board for identifying young talents and boosting the economy Gombe state through Literature,” she added.
