By Scholastica JOSEPH, Makurdi
The Catholic Diocese of Makurdi has offered six-year full scholarship to 50 Internally Displaced Persons, IDPs, children in Benue State.
The beneficiaries have been sent to five Catholic schools in Makurdi Diocese, each taking 10 students.
The schools include: Mount St. Michael’s, Aliade, Mount Saint Gabriel’s, Holy Child Secondary School, Makurdi, Mount La Salle College, Naka and Our Lady of Mount Carmel College, Makurdi.
Our correspondent gathered that the 50 students were received by the principals of the five schools on January 12, 2022 after a five-day orientation exercise at Holy Child Secondary School, Makurdi, where the Bishop of Makurdi Diocese, Bishop Wilfred Anagbe addressed and presented the scholarship award letters to them.
The bishop said the beneficiaries were selected based on their performance in the examination which was conducted at the various IDP camps in Makurdi Diocese.
According to him, the 50 beneficiaries are the first batch of “Train an IDP Child” special fund raising appeal launched by the Resource and Planning Commission of Makurdi Diocese in September 2021 to raise a billion naira from the pool of free will donations of at least one thousand naira from one million donors for intervention in the social services institutions of the Catholic Diocese of Makurdi.
Bishop A nag be said the gesture is to avert the social turmoil that awaits the state in the next decade from a generation of children who have not gone to class or skills acquisition centres.
He lamented that sustained attacks on Benue communities by jihadists masquerading as herdsmen have forced many children out of school as they continue to live with their parents in squalid IDP camps, which lack basic educational facilities.
He also said that it is more worrisome that there is no clear hope of how soon the IDPs will be rehabilitated to their ancestral communities as promised by the Federal Government.
He urged Nigerians, Benue people, home and abroad, to lend a helping hand in the car and training of displaced children in the state.
