The Presidential Committee on the Victims of Terrorism Support Fund has decried the paucity of infrastructure in the Northeast region.
This was revealed on Monday, when the committee made a trip to Askira-Uba Local Government of Southern Borno to flag-off off its education empowerment program.
The committee had handed over new school bags and books to 4000 children studying in government-owned primary schools in the LGA which is just 5 minutes away from Chibok.
According to Toyosi Akerele-Ogunsiji, a member of the Presidential Committee who made the trip to Askira-Uba, the roads within the area require immediate attention from the government.
Narrating his experience, he said, his body became broken after seeing how dilapidated the roads in Northeast are. ”Some of the worst roads he has ever seen in my life, ” he said.
“I am confident that I’m making the right investment of my time, energy and resources in the future of Nigeria and our children in the North,” Akerele-Ogunsiji said.
He said, “at a point, we all had to alight from our vehicles to navigate a locality from Ganda in Gombi LG in Adamawa to Askira in Borno which is separated by a broken bridge in between two sides of a River.”
Akerele-Ogunsiji explained that the direct impact of poor infrastructure on the education of the children in the North is one government must quickly look into.
“The indigenes of those villages we drove through kept urging us to take the message of these terrible conditions back to our friends in Abuja”.
He said the average poor Nigerian thinks the middle class does not care.
According to him, there is a school where kids need to cross a river to the other side of the village just to use the toilet.
“These risky but important trips to the Northeast keep me very sober and measured and I keep learning about the steep inequalities and scathing history of this country.”
He suggested that Nigeria’s development in all facets will sky-rocket if the average Nigerian child could read, write and do basic arithmetic.