Borno State Governor, Babagana Umara Zulum, has approved government scholarship for children, most of them orphans, whose fathers were volunteers among Civilian JTF, hunters, and vigilantes killed at battlefronts while fighting Boko Haram in the last seven years.
Zulum also flagged off a welfare package of N50, 000 each for widows of killed volunteers and the distribution of N180m and 27,000 bags and cartons of food variety to 9,000 volunteers.
He announced all the interventions made on Wednesday in Maiduguri, while addressing a gathering of about 9,000 volunteers who have been fighting alongside the Nigerian armed forces to contain Boko Haram insurgency in Borno. The volunteers were gathered at the campus of Borno State University.
Each of the 9,000 volunteers is to receive N20, 000 cash, a 50kg bag of rice, a carton of spaghetti and a gallon of cooking oil, all of which were outside their regular monthly allowances.
He said the state government will award education scholarship to the vulnerable orphans of Civilian JTF who have been killed at battlefronts.
He told a gathering of Civilian JTF personnel in Maiduguri that the scholarship would be awarded in phases, starting with the youngest and most vulnerable families of the earliest fallen volunteers, down to the most recently killed.
Zulum said he would constitute a multi-stakeholder committee which shall thoroughly evaluate vulnerabilities, come up with a list of children to benefit in the first phase, recommend schools, and develop a feasible and sustainable structure of the scholarship. The committee will be tasked with securing admissions, uniforms, fees and monitoring the academic progress of the children.
Ojelabi, the publisher of Freelanews, is an award winning and professionally trained mass communicator and a recipient of the D9112 Superstar Icon Award, who writes ruthlessly about pop culture, religion, politics and entertainment.
