Primary two class of Internally displaced persons children in session. pix by Femi Ipaye 2

By Femi Ipaye/ Abuja.

New Kuchingoro, a village just about 200 meters from the popular Games Village, is a typical slum settlement, lacking basic amenities required for decent, modern living. However, annual house rents range from N9,000 (boys quarters), 1.5m (two bedrooms) and 3.5m naira (four bedrooms)

In spite of its shortcomings in terms of amenities, New Kuchingoro is also host to one of the camps where the over five million Nigerians who have been displaced by the Boko Haram insurgency are taking refuge in Abuja.

Apart from displaced persons from Gwoza Local government area of Borno State, the camp has also provided refuge for people rendered homeless through clashes between Fulani herdsmen and indigenous people of various ethnic groups in Kaduna and Nasarawa States.

The Internally Displaced Persons, IDPs, live in batches in the camp, with as many as nine persons per batch.

Typical of such IDPs camps in other parts of the country, the youths are jobless and cannot even find menial jobs to do while the children are at home with no schools to attend. Worse still, politicians have somewhat forgoten them.

While public spirited individuals and groups have taken over the task of helping the IDPs meet their basic needs through the provision of various forms of humanitarian assistance, lack of education for the children and the joblessness of youths in the camp remain a big challenge until the intervention of Mr. Sanwo Olatunji and his medical doctor wife, Folake.

The couple now spends over N480, 000.00 monthly to fund the education of 300 hundred children of the displaced persons in the camp.

Olatunji, the founder of Life Builders Initiative, an NGO said of how he came to be involved in providing education for the children at the camp: “I felt bad when I visited IDP’s camp at 9.am one Tuesday, and I observed the children were roaming and I asked the parents why the children were not at school, they made me realize their financial plight, the non-availability of a Government school within a five kilometer radius from their settlement and the hazard of sending little children who are complete strangers in the city to a school 5 kms away and most significantly the condition for admission in the schools were impossible for them to meet.”

This led him to establish a sort of school without walls located right inside the camp where about 300 children are being provided education. The children are also fed in the school which is now operating under tents.

Olatunji said the school cannot have a permanent structure because the IDPs are frequently being displaced from one location to the other.

The New Kuchingoro camp, he said, is the sixth location the IDPs are occupying.
As they are displaced, the school without walls follows the IDPs to their new location, say Olatunji.