By Dirisu Yakubu
ABUJA – Administrative Manager, Abuja School for the handicapped, Kuje, Mr. Yahaya Mohammed yesterday told journalists that it takes as much as ten million naira to adequately care for a handicapped child per annum.
He stated this while receiving members of the Aham Rochas Foundation (ARO) which visited the school on the occasion of the Valentine’s Day on Wednesday. Mr. Mohammed who could barely hide his joy at receiving the gift items which included cartons of biscuits, crates of non-alcoholic beverages, greeting cards amongst others, also lauded the federal government for its support since the establishment of the school in 1999.
“Taking care of these children is quite challenging. It requires about ten million naira to take a good care of one handicapped child per annum.
“God will bless this foundation for what it is doing, for remembering our school and I pray that you will continue to remember us. This school was established by government and it is doing very well in meeting its needs. The school is completely free of charge for all the students that you see here. That is tuition, accommodation, upkeep and feeding.
“Although government is doing very well, more still need to be done considering the special needs of these children. All the structures you see here were put in place by government.
“We don’t have enough classrooms but again, government has been doing well in this regard. It is currently putting up the recreation centre for these handicapped children. More wheelchairs will also be a welcome development for us as you can see that most of them are in different categories of disabilities,” he said.
Speaking earlier, Adeola Adewunmi, Project Manager, One Home One World Project of the foundation said the non-profit organization chose to embark on visitation to sick and vulnerable children as part of its thematic focus of spreading love at all times.
According to her, the foundation’s “One Home One World Project is reaching out to less privileged brothers and sisters in the society. The love trip we embarked upon in the past three days is to see children in hospitals, orphanages as well as children in IDP camps. We are sharing love and kindness and valentine gifts to these children. We are reaching out to sick children in the society, spreading love to them.”
Adewunmi said under the foundation’s emergency education program, scores of vulnerable children have been given the right to education despite the glaring difficulties they faced.
She added: “We have about 200 children at the Karmajiji IDP camp here in the Federal Capital Territory. We set up a school for them teaching them Mathematics, English language, Basic Science and Computer Science. We’ve been doing this for six months now.”
We also have the female entrepreneurial programme where we empower women with basic skills to promote self reliance. We also have the peace campaign initiative where we spread the message of peace and harmony, encouraging the youths and everyone out there to hold on to peace.
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