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From Rose Ejembi, Makurdi
For Sunday Blessing, Enenche Patience and 20 other students of Government Girls College (GGC), Makurdi, Benue State, their Christmas package came in January 2022 when a non-profit organisation, Acorn Initiative, took up the responsibility to pay their registration fees for the 2021/2022 West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE). 
The organisation, which was founded by a United Kingdom-based Benue State indigene, John Igoche, has the passion to support the underprivileged in every way possible. Thus, Acorn Initiative paid N396,000 as registration fees for the 22 final-year students to enable them write the 2021/2022 WASSCE.
According to Blessing, the whole thing sounded like a joke when it was first announced to them in school that those whose parents could not afford their examination fees should put down their names because someone was interested in paying for them.
“I didn’t believe it, initially, but because I had been thinking of how to raise the examination fee, I just wrote down my name. Many others did, too, while some of our classmates were making jest of us that nothing like that would ever happen.
“We were all so surprised when the school authorities told us that the organisation was coming to pay for our WASSCE and asked us to invite our parents to the event. Now, I don’t have to worry about registration fee for my final examination anymore,” she said.
Another beneficiary, Enenche, who spoke during the ceremony at the school hall, thanked Acorn for the gesture and promised that all the beneficiaries would justify the labour of the organisation by working very hard to excel in their examinations.
“We express our profound gratitude for this gesture. We are very happy and we pray to Almighty God to increase your resources to keep doing more for humanity,” Enenche said.
Some parents of benefiting students, including Theophilus Humbe, Stephen Ebuka, Paul Esther and Linus Ityo, could not hide their joy as they openly expressed gratitude to the foundation for taking the bull by the horns to assist their wards, especially at a time when many Nigerian homes were going through economic challenges. Principal of the school, Mrs. Dorathy Ganyam, thanked Acorn Initiative for choosing her school to assist humanity, especially at this time, stressing that “it is not easy for a group of people to distinguish themselves and pool their resources to assist by way of charity.
“That’s what Acorn has done. The money has come from their pocket, especially if they don’t get a donor. I thank them for agreeing to suffer to give charity to the students,” she said.
Ganyam, however, urged the students to study very hard to come out with good results that the donors can be proud of. In her speech, the organisation’s project director, Benue zone, Mrs. Mary Ikwue, explained that the gesture was the second edition of Acorn Initiative’s Library in Box scholarship programme, adding that the first edition held a year ago at the Mount St. Gabriel’s Secondary School, Makurdi. Ikwue said Acorn Initiative, a non-profit organisation registered in the UK and Nigeria in 2019, was founded to assist and create opportunities for persons physically displaced, mentally distressed and emotionally desolated, living in internally displaced persons (IDP) camps, rural communities in Nigeria or migrant families, veterans and the homeless in the UK.
“The organisation has conducted over 35 humanitarian outreaches under five pillars: education, skills acquisition, health, water, sanitation and hygiene, and migration projects. Over the years, the organisation has carried out notable educational and training projects.”
She listed some of the projects to include providing 30 12-graders from underserved communities with sponsorship for their West African Senior Secondary Certificate Examination (WASSCE) that qualified them for university admissions as well as storybooks to over 200 children living in two lDP camps in Nigeria, among others. While positing that education was the bedrock and foundation of one’s journey in life, Ikwue lamented that about 10.5 million of the country’s children aged five to 14 years were not in school.
She added that only 61 per cent of children between the ages of six and 11 regularly attend primary school and only 35.6 per cent of children aged 36 to 59 months receive early childhood education.
“Although Nigeria continues to face struggles in getting its young females to enter and remain in school, the nation has made considerable progress in recent years. According to the World Bank’s Education Data, the number of girls enrolled in primary school increased from 79 per cent to 92.3 per cent between 2008 and 2013.
“The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said over 1.3 million adolescent girls in Nigeria drop out of school every year. UNICEF added 50 per cent of Nigerian women are offline, with no access to the Internet, while 20 per cent are less likely than men to own smartphones, creating an exclusion gap,” Ikwue said.
She explained further that most of the researches on the causes of dropouts in Nigeria isolated poor educational background of parents, failure in school examination, very poor state of facilities in schools, unemployment of graduates, broken homes, parents’ occupation, school discipline policies, teenage pregnancy, early marriage and very early ambition for business and self-employment.
The project coordinator, who identified the underlying cause of school dropouts in Nigeria as the inability of parents to pay their children’s school fees due to different factors, said it was on that note that Acorn decided to bridge the gap in the lives of 22 SS3 students who fall into that category.
“We are here to sponsor them for 2021/2022 WASSCE; we hope that this support will go a long way to help them achieve their future dreams of becoming whatever they desire to be,” she said.
Founder of the organisation, Igoche, in a recorded message at the event, noted that education is the passport to the future, and enjoined the benefitting students to remain focused so that they can achieve their aims in life.
“Tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today. And always remember that you can be whatever you want to be, achieve all your goals and dreams by just believing in yourself and staying focused,” he said.
For the 22 selected students, it was a new lease of life and one they would remember all their days, even as they promised to make very judicious use of the opportunity to better their lives.
