NEDC launches Education Endowment Fund Scholarship Scheme
By Ben Ngwakwe, Gombe
North East Development Commission has launched Education Endowment Fund Scholarship (NEDC-EEF) Scheme and portal that would cover all aspects of education – primary schools, health and agriculture.
Apart from the Scholarship scheme, the MD/Chief Executive Officer, Alhaji Mohammed Alkali also revealed that the Commission is constructing 500 Housing Units across the LGAs in Gombe and all the other states of the North-East.
Alhaji Alkali said the ongoing reconstruction of road from Gombe Abba to Kirfi in Bauchi State will enhance socio-economic activities between Bauchi- Gombe States.
The MD disclosed that the Commission have graduated a total of 579 graduates since its inception to date in the ICT programme, apart from giving them all the necessary tools and some amount of money to kick start businesses of their choice.
In addition, the Acting Chairperson of NEDC-EEF Hajiya Asmau Mohammed who is also representing North-West in the Board noted that the Commission has a roadmap towards meeting the health needs of the people across the North East Region while the Commission has equally donated a 500KVA Generator set to the Federal Teaching hospital Gombe which in turn promote efficient healthcare services through the provision of uninterrupted power supply and commission shall continue to assist the Federal Teaching Hospital Gombe in several ways towards enhancing its basic operations in the State.
Those assistance and support, Hajiya Mohammed said, included support to strengthen the Hospital’s capacity in the coverage and treatment of Covid 19 cases through donation of preventive items, ambulances, PPEs and other medical consumables as well as the establishment of a molecular laboratory to also treat other diseases.
The launching of the North-East Development Commission Education Endowment Fund Scholarship Scheme and the unveiling of the Scholarship Portal is aimed at re-invigorating the quality of the education sub-sector in the North-East which like the psycho-social and economic strata of the region has suffered serious setback as a result of over ten years of Boko Haram insurgency that destroyed many schools, where a large number of teachers lost their lives and thousands of the youths remained out of school due to internal displacement.
The officially launching of the Education Endowment Fund Scholarship in which 4,953 undergraduates, 102 postgraduates and 42 PhD potential students have a chance of obtaining full scholarship awards will be awarded to deserving science and arts students to be selected equitably from the six states of the North-East.
The Management and Board of the North-East Development Commission considered it necessary to put in place a special purpose vehicle to address the educational needs of the 6 states of the North-East.
Accordingly, this noble objective of the Commission came to fruition when its Governing Board approved the establishment of the Education Endowment Fund on the 12th of December 2019 and inaugurated its Board of Trustees in August, 2020.
“This is to chart a robust support trajectory for the recovery of our decaying education infrastructure and human resource base. Since then, the Education Endowment Fund has embarked upon this
daunting task through skillful planning and program development in the following critical areas: Teachers Training, Resource Mobilization, Scholarship and Grants, Technical, Vocational and
Educational Training (TVET)”.
Other Special Projects that involved campaign against drug abuse, cultism as well as the
promotion of sports in the schools have been supported and encouraged while Basic Education Intervention component focusing on renovation of classrooms, infrastructure, building of new ones, provision of desks and teachers’ furniture as well as other instructional materials were given high priority by the commission.
These interventionistic measures such as Training for Nurses, Midwives and Community Health Workers, as well as welfare support for women and girls were topmost in the agenda of the commission.
She disclosed that the Commission has also commenced the implementation of its planned programs which already, 1,800 teachers of the Basic Education segment from the 6 states of the North-
East, have been trained to improve their skills so as to impart knowledge in their
respective areas of competence while another batch of 1,800 including school administrators will soon be selected across the states to benefit from the same training.
Similarly, a total of 115 schools have been selected and contracts have been awarded for the construction of one block of 3 classrooms each, with the supply of school desks and learning materials.
