Chris Igbokwe Foundation, a charity organization, has awarded scholarships to 20 internally displaced persons (IDPs) living in the Wasa community in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja.
The IDPs, ten females and ten males, from Borno, Adamawa and Yobe states are to study at Grand Plus College of Education, Ilorin, Kwara State.
Insurgency in the three states had led to the displacement of over 1.8 million people before the end of 2020, a report by the UNDP stated.
“Boko Haram attacks have led to massive internal displacement. More than 1.8 million Nigerians are displaced in Adamawa, Borno, and Yobe states, with the vast majority (nearly 1.5 million) located in Borno,” the report said.
Chief Chris Igbokwe, the foundation’s president, said the beneficiaries would pursue careers in ICT, entrepreneurship, agriculture, and home economics while issuing the scholarships on Saturday in Abuja.
“You don’t have to be a politician to help the masses. We will continue to spread these philanthropic gestures to many Nigerians. As God gives us, we must extend the same to God because we are partnering with God,” Igbokwe said at the event.
“It is when there is peace that foreign direct investment can come for the benefit of all Nigerians.”
The Foundation also gave 40 IDPs free skills acquisition training, food items, financial support and a generator set to power their boreholes.
Chief Igbokwe appealed to Nigerians to help those living in internally displaced camps, noting that the IDPs need better training “so they would not be used as objects of national destabilisation”.
Mike Obienyi, the patron of the Foundation, reassured Nigerians of the Foundation’s readiness to complement the government’s effort to train more youth and women with relevant skills and empower them enough to make them add positive value to the nation.
He said that Chris Igbokwe Foundation’s commitment, in partnership with God, is passionately committed to making a better life for millions of vulnerable youths and women.
Chris Igbokwe established the Foundation to help the downtrodden and the vulnerable so that poverty in Nigeria can reduce, create employment, and address insecurity.
