Theirworld

Road trip to take education message to children in rural Nigeria


If you love to travel, I’m sure you’ll include the lovely cities of Lagos and Abuja in Nigeria – but probably not Ayede in Kogi or Ilogun village. I love to travel and I’ve been in those two lovely cities but passion made me attempt the latter two.

After scheduling a visit for Ilogun village (40 minutes rough ride from Ayede town) on a Sunday and Ayede town the next Tuesday, I became happily curious. My key mission was first to inspire the youth then to promote education.

In Ilogun, the youth and child population is high but there is only one primary school and no secondary school. Very few attend the school as they spend their time farming and hunting. Those able to complete primary school find it hard to attend secondary school but join the farming or hunting teams because the nearest secondary school is 40 minutes drive away.

Before proceeding, here are some few warnings:

• There’s no available mobile network so it is best to switch off your phone
• To be on the safe side, go with an interpreter
• There are plenty of cashew trees along the way – and I love cashews!

God helping, I met with the youths and engaged in conversations and had counseling/inspirational sessions with them. I was overjoyed when positive responses started pouring in from kids and youths promising to go back to school or convince their parents to send them back to school. Others promised to read more, shun malpractices and achieve as much as possible. 

My trip to Ayede was rough but fun. I spoke to a set of children and youths from one secondary school, one junior school and two primary schools in the town. 

With eight key topics to cover by eight facilitators and an interpreter, I facilitated the session on Millennium Development Goal 2 – achieving universal primary education. I highlighted five stakeholders in achieving universal primary education, which are:

  • Me (the individual)
  • My teacher (quality, willingness, communication)
  • Government (laws, budgets, infrastructures)
  • Corpers (volunteers, passion)
  • International organisations/NGOs (UN, AWAS, UNICEF, MDGs, BTC)

Then we had group sessions with different youths before leaving them inspired to achieve more, thanks to great contributions from other facilitators and our interpreter.

The recital of the five stakeholders in my sessions gave me confidence that the message got through and it helped me remember Mandela’s words: “Education is the best weapon which we can use to change the world.”

I’m happy to be a Global Youth Ambassador making an impact. I thank A World At School for this opportunity – 58 million children are out of school and I’m here to change that. I’m #UpForSchool – join me by signing the petition.