Members of the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) at the International Christian Centre, Home for the Needy, Uhogua Camp in Ovia North-East local government area of Edo State, have celebrated their first class graduate and other graduates from various universities.
The camp is home to over 3,000 IDPs including children, men, women, widows and students from different ethnic groups in the country.
Among the over 200 undergraduates studying various courses in Nigerian universities, the camp coordinator presented 16 fresh graduates to the admiration of other IDPs.
One of the first class chemical engineering graduates from Edo State University, Iyamho and Boko Haram escapee, Amos Ishaku, who came to the facility in 2014, expressed gratitude to the founder, Pastor Solomon Folorunsho, for the opportunity to live a new and meaningful life.
Also, Rufikatu Ali from Borno State and a graduate from the Faculty of Law, University of Benin (UNIBEN), said her motivation to study Law was to join the fight in protecting the rights of the vulnerable and the oppressed in the society.
Despite the academic strides by some of the IDPs, the founder (Folorunsho) said the camp was grappling with difficulties in providing food items and other consumables for the IDPs, prompting the management to cry out to government at all levels and other privileged Nigerians to assist the IDPs.
Folorunsho said, “We are very excited seeing what is happening here. Today’s ashes are becoming very beautiful. However, the situation is really very critical. The food situation is number one. We don’t have food at all and food is getting so expensive and even the donors themselves are crying with the way things are in the country. The children are very, very hungry.
“These are children who had no hope before and now have gotten good education and they want to pursue their education so that they can earn a living for themselves and even better this country.
“We need urgent support especially in paying the school fees of those that are in schools and some of the schools are not allowing them to write exams right now because they could not afford to pay. We have some of them studying courses such as Medicine, Law, Business Administration and others.”
