Under its feed and read initiative, the American University of Nigeria (AUN) in Yola, Adamawa, has enrolled no fewer than 1,232 out-of-school children.
Nkem Uzowulu, Principal of AUN School, said this on Friday at the enrollment of 100 out-of-school children from the host town of Yola.
According to Uzowulu, the program aims to reduce the number of children roaming the streets without any type of formal education.
According to her, the programme was lunched in 2015 and in 2016, about 400 children were graduated, 200 girls and 200 boys for each section.
“We fed a total of 432 additional pupils, summing up our number of pupils to 832,” she said.
She added that in 2017, 300 children comprising 150 boys and 150 girls were fully registered and graduated.
“This year, we are starting with a total of 100 pupils, 50 boys and 50 girls carefully drawn from host community to impact on their lives” she said.
Dr Magee Ensign, President of AUN, said insurgency had contributed to having huge number of out-of-school children in the North Eastern part of the country, especially in Adamawa, Borno and Yobe.
According to her, the programmes are to help impact on the lives of the children and put smiles in their faces to be able to contribute their own quotas in future.
She added that when such children go to schools, especially girls help the society to progress.
“When girls go to school through secondary, society flourishes because a lot of good things happen, infant child mortality decline, maternal mortality also decline, economy growth increases and corruption reduces,” she said.
Dr Jocob Jocob, Dean Postgraduate Studies, AUN, said the teaching and the feeding needed resources and funding.
He said focusing on the host community is very important as what affects the community affects the AUN and what affects AUN will affect the community.
“AUN is development university, we see and know that what affects the community affects us we are an extension of the community, ” he said