First lady of Nigeria, HE Dr Mrs. Aisha Muhammadu Buhari through her foundation, Future Assured Initiative, with support from Presidential Committee on Northeast and funds from Petroleum Equalization Fund (PEP) has enrolled 639 out-of-school youths for WAEC and NECO exams for free in Adamawa State.
Lead project coordinator of the Youth Educational Program (YEP), Nasir Sani disclosed this to journalists during a monitoring session of some of the out-of-school youth taking lessons in preparatory for the exams at Aliyu Mustapha Secondary School in Yola.
He said the selected candidates are those who have lost hope in education due to their families’ financial background and those who have written the WAEC and NECO exams once and could not write again due to their financial status.
He said the program will cover three zones—the central zone hosted in Aliyu Mustapha, Southern zone at College of Agriculture Ganye and northern zone at the Adamawa State University, Mubi.
Sani said the programme, which started in 2017 with 135 out of 350 candidates registered for both WAEC and NECO, amidst poor performance. In order to change the narrative, they thought there is a problem in the teaching methods and decided to come up with a different system of using ICT so as to make learning easier with e-books installed in Tablets given to each of the 639 out-of-school youths.
Alh Yau Umar added that they have received much support from the Adamawa state government, Ganwari Ganye and the Emir of Mubi.
A beneficiary, Mariya Muhammad, who dreamed of becoming a doctor one day said the training has broadened her horizon.