As a social development activist, I believe in giving more effort toward critical challenges affect community development especially in areas like education, health, well-being, gender values and social inclusion.
Last year I had the incredible privilege of traveling to Jigawa state. After a research studies conducted by my team volunteers, Musa and Shafee.
I remember it was a night trip going back to our destination, we had to trek 10 kilometers and got a paid ride that I end up in the car boat.
This word is always in my mind since then “We are just worried about the future of our children without any form of educational institution”. In course of these challenge, we spent 8 hours engaging in this community with youth, elders, women and children. I am an eyes witnessed of boys and girls going to farm during school classes while many of the boys are taking to Almajiri school outside the community and state.
Hara community is located within 20 kilometers from the city of Duste LGA Jigawa state. Almost half of these people depend on farming and rearing animals, a village that have maximum population number of people that politicians are always proud during election but these community is neglected with over 2,000 children, women and young people.
No provision of basic social needs such as education institution, potable water, healthcare, electricity and road. The only government facility in their community is a solar borehole which was Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) project as a result of outbreak of disease suspected to be cholera in 2015. But that’s not a enough, more assistance of basic necessity is needed.
We were disheartened to see how badly the village road damaged because we used bike to continue our journey, no effort of road construction which might help them to transport their farm goods.
The picture of basic social needs for average person is miserable especially in northern Nigeria. In such community about 1,000 youth and children may join the current 13.2 million out of school children because of no any educational institution, and traveling long distance to neighborhood schools. Lack of nearest public healthcare centre causes women to travel 20 Kilometers to the city hospital. While over 2,000 lives are at high risk of dying due to the lack of access to potable water, expose to water borne disease and lack of awareness to prevent sanitation relation illness.
These are daily realities affect over million lives around Nigeria. A problem further worsened for children, women and young people especially in marginalised grassroot places. Our government should know that there’s nothing they can do better than educating the young generation, providing basic social needs to their citizens irrespective of where they live.
Our work through YAPD4Africa on such social development is to address the issues of social needs and build understanding between the community and government.
We see our leaders curating solutions that are only attracting attention during their terms in office and dishing out money to uneducated youth under the false to creating peace and prosperity. Instead of creating systems and policies that can support people to earn more sustainability.
I understand that there’s a need for inclusion of voices for children especially women and community to achieve our social development goals. So we document, amplify marginalised grassroot voices because we believe those voices need to be heard globally.
All of this coupled with the deliberate ignoring of education reforms despite the challenges in times are tainting the future. As usually there are many community facing challenges but it’s time we need to end the silence, improve lives and access to basic social needs in grassroot places like Hara Community.
Idris Bilyaminu Ndasadu’Lau is TheirWorld Global Youth Ambassador, Advocate for Good Governance, Peace Campaigner and also International Member of Grassroots Coalition for Environmental and Economic Justice USA. Contact: bilyaminuidrisndasadulau@gmail.com
