By Msen Nabo (Digital Media Associate, CODE)

One important lesson being in the civil society space has taught me is: “It doesn’t matter how backward you think a people’s culture and beliefs are, you must approach and engage with respect and carefully plan your actions and execute them in ways that doesn’t expose them to more harm”! The goal is to win them over, not prove a point.

You can’t show up scantily dressed to a meeting with stakeholders who have deep rooted culture of being covered up and hope to convince them on why the girl-child belongs in the classroom. These are people from communities whose larger population believes western education does nothing but makes the girl-child go wild, in their words “lalata, karuwance, da rashin kunya” hausa words loosely translated to mean “getting spoilt, turning to harlots and throwing all moral caution to the wind” if anything, showing up dressed in any way other than what conforms to their culture and beliefs only strengthen their resolve to never let their wards see the four walls of a classroom cause in their mind, “I wouldn’t want my daughter dressed like that”

I had the rare privilege of representing our CEO and Malala Fund Champion, Hamzat Lawal at a two-day capacity building workshop for School Monitoring Teams (SMTs) in Adamawa State Northern Nigeria, for the continuation of the ongoing engagement for Girl-child education in the state. A campaign by Connected development with support from Malala Fund.

During the workshop which had stakeholders comprising of religious leaders, teachers, principals, community leaders, students and other key stakeholders, the team assured them of CODE’s commitment to bridge the communication gap between them and the government in providing a safe, conducive learning environment, with WASH facilities, lack of which has been one of many factors why parents don’t enroll their wards. 

To further sensitize them, I facilitated a session on the role of social media in amplifying conversations around community needs and guided them on how to sign up, use these platforms, add hashtags and tag the appropriate handles to their posts to achieve desired results.

A key advantage for me on this trip was understanding and speaking hausa fluently which is the Lingua Franca in the North. It was handy in facilitating the workshop both in English and Hausa to further drive the message home and ensure no one was left behind due to language barrier. This, in addition to our appearance, helped shape the conversation and strengthen the feeling of “togetherness” which made them see us as the solution and not the threat.

The end result of the team approaching them with the respect they deserve was an engaging two days where participants were actively involved and made contributions towards addressing issues like insecurity that has been ravaging the region, dilapidated school buildings, understaffing of schools due to lack of trained teachers, and cost of Education.  To address these issues, CODE is advocating for 12years free compulsory education in the state and getting the government to commit to recruiting more qualified hands and address insecurity to ensure a safe learning environment.

As we go about seeking to intervene and address injustice in various sectors, I hope we take a step back to look at the broader context. I hope we make a deliberate and conscious effort to put ourselves aside for a moment and “DO NO HARM” while trying to help. The cause will always be bigger than us!

For over a decade, Connected Development has worked hard to empower marginalised communities. In particular, its social accountability initiative, Follow the Money helps these communities hold their governments accountable. This project has become even more important due to COVID-19.

In its Kenya, Malawi, and Cameroon COVID Funds Report, CODE found that due to the lack of financial information it was difficult to track where resources were allocated in Kenya alone. This poses a further challenge for communities rebuilding in the post-COVID era.

In these circumstances, private or non-government-affiliated organisations play a significant role by providing resources where they’re most needed. One standout case in the field of education is Bridge International Academies, an Africa-wide school network that is helping revive post-COVID education in Kenya.

What is Bridge?

This school network spans African countries Kenya, Nigeria, and Uganda, as well as the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. Like its counterparts, Bridge Kenya offers low-cost yet high-quality education to the country’s communities. Its teachers are given data-driven, standardised teaching guides. They are designed to create a dynamic learning environment that gives pupils the opportunity to practice a core set of skills.

Amid COVID-19, Bridge Kenya instituted its ‘@Home’ programme. This provided pupils and their families with the parent-friendly learning guides, self-study activity packs, digital storybooks, and WhatsApp-accessible quizzes needed to continue learning throughout the pandemic.

Currently Bridge provides its education to communities hit hardest by the pandemic as they strive to rehabilitate. The network’s structured teaching system is also helping the pupils close any learning gaps that may have been caused by COVID-19.

The Bridge Effect

Although the structure of learning in a Bridge classroom may seem rigid, the teacher guides that nurture it are just guides. They allow teachers to merge their creativity and innovation with the speed and effectiveness that they deliver their lessons.

2019 Nobel Prize winner Michael Kremer even found that pupils at the pre-primary and primary school levels learn 53% more at Bridge Kenya. In other words, pupils could learn enough in two years’ time that would usually take other schools three and a half years to teach.

This makes a strong case for standardised education, especially today. With pupils going back to school after at-home learning and even younger pupils enrolling for the first time, the low-cost effective lesson plans Bridge provides proves that their method of teaching can quickly help Kenyan education get back on its feet.

Lessons to Share

In reviving post-COVID Kenyan education, we can learn from the challenges that the school network overcame to reach success. One was how to recruit and train teachers best suited to Kenya’s communities. This was solved through the Bridge Teacher Training programme – a rigorous selection process that recruits experienced teachers from their local communities.

Despite being a private institution, Bridge has also gained government support by sharing its “school-in-a-box” methods. This was evident from the launch of the EkoEXCEL programme in Nigeria in 2019 — a programme that’s seen similar results to the findings in Kremer’s study.

Finally, Bridge is taking steps to tackle gender inequality by changing pupils’ perspectives on gender roles while they’re young. All its textbooks, workbooks, and digital storybooks portray male and female characters in equal fashion and represent the latter in empowering and unconventional roles.

When it comes to bolstering Kenyan education post-COVID, Bridge International Academies in Kenya has a lot to offer. Its methods for training teachers, fostering learning, and tackling societal inequalities are definitely something to consider as possible solutions elsewhere in the country.

Article was written for https://www.connecteddevelopment.org/ by Allie Cooper

Allie Cooper is a mother-of-two writer who loves to cover how COVID-19 has impacted different spheres of everyday life – and how we can recover and thrive in the wake of the pandemic. In her free time, she loves reading, baking, and doing crossword puzzles.

Inclusive Education for Children in Marginalised Communities in the Fourth Industrial Revolution

Why education should be prioritised in marginalised communities in the era of COVID19

By Blessing Akpevwe Uwisike

As of the first week of May, The Spectator Index confirmed over four million positive cases of the Corona Virus globally and at least 200,000 deaths. As the virus continues to spread its tentacles across countries, threatening human existence, human lives are being changed in unprecedented ways. As the pandemic affects nearly every sector of human interaction ranging from economic to social, health, education and commercial to mention a few; we are forced to make quick adjustments and life choices to prevent further spread.

While grappling with this new reality, a major change the world has had to make is maintaining social distance. To ensure compliance, the government at the state and federal level enforced a lockdown order where virtually all social activities came to a screeching halt. As expected, education was not excluded, giving that it became imperative to shut down education facilities across Nigeria and many other countries to prevent the pandemic from affecting children’s education and more importantly, their health. 

This move affected 1.3 billion students globally and has forced the government and members of the society to see the shortcomings of the education system in Nigeria. The most glaring of these is the unpreparedness of the system to embrace online and digital learning strategies, and if well attended to, it also gives a laser focus on specific areas of improvement and innovation.  

As COVID-19 widens the margin of education and access to the basic learning amenities, my volunteer experience with OneAfricanChild has enabled me to see first-hand, how children in low-income communities are forced to share rickety desks and uncomfortable wooden chairs, manage their very few books for many subjects, and enjoy internet connectivity/laptops only when we are able to organise our monthly digital classes. With the break of the  pandemic, their learning is currently in a state of hiatus as their main motivation is derived through the school system and informal learning opportunities we provide them. With this disruption, the children are exposed to anxiety and panic alongside learners facing similar struggles. The social skills, emotional well being and educational aspirations of these children are put on the line, worse still if they are enduring these challenging times in a community that undermines the value  of education.

Despite the world tilting towards technocracy, public schools in Nigeria are still grossly underfunded and there are no considerations for digital learning tools. At this point it is difficult to measure Nigeria’s effort towards the Education 2030 agenda aimed at “ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education and promoting lifelong learning opportunities for all.” Several children are still learning under conditions similar to the system their parents’.  While the future of education is progressing exponentially, ours seem to be moving at a slow pace. Education in this part of the world is still largely monolithic and children are not being adequately prepared for the world they are expected to lead.

A risk factor of the pandemic is the possibility of a high school drop-out rate, especially in low-income communities. Deliberate efforts are required to reintegrate children in these communities back to school. According to the World Bank’s “Learning Poverty” indicator, the percentage of children who cannot read and understand at age 10 stood at 53% of children in low- and middle-income countries – before the outbreak. While the situation can still be salvaged, a proactive move by the government will ensure a successful transition back to formal education post COVID. 

Innovation is required to provide quality and sustainable education to learners, and teachers cannot be left behind in this campaign. Understanding that learning can happen anywhere and in different forms, teachers must be trained to embrace this new reality, and as a matter of urgency, be provided with practical materials on how to meet learners where they are. Digital skills training to make learning accessible as well as emotional intelligence and creative teaching styles workshops need to be prioritised for teachers so that they are able to create safe spaces and assume the role of mentors and guides for learners. 

This period, providing content like interactive videos, soft copy materials, class activity, and lectures on websites where teachers can easily access will help them to prepare for a robust teaching-learning experience after the pandemic is over. But while it persists, partnerships with media houses like radio and television stations, to air educational programs for primary and secondary schools like some states in Nigeria have adopted are positive steps in the right direction.

Teachers must also be made to understand the Education 2030 goals as this has not been adequately communicated to them, only when they understand it are they able to run with it and ensure its actualisation. Workshops and materials to enhance this understanding should also be provided, with realistic benchmarks set in place to achieve it.

OneAfricanChild Foundation in partnership with Learning Equality, organises digital skills training for children in select marginalised communities in Nigeria. Through Kolibri, a digital solution developed by Learning Equality to provide offline access to a variety of learning materials, we provide quality education for children in low-income  communities on a broad range of global citizenship education topics such as media literacy, internet safety, fake news spotting, and lots more. We have had virtual learning sessions with students from other countries to share knowledge and exchange experiences. This exposes learners to blended learning that combines digital skills with offline learning. With support from the government and key stakeholders, and the welcome involvement of an  NGO like Follow the Money, which focuses on tracking government spending to ensure transparency and accountability, we can successfully scale this project and double our impact. 

To further ensure inclusive education for marginalised children, learning styles need to be diversified to include project-based and personalised methods so that the children are more engaged, involved and enthusiastic to learn. Their emotional well being needs to be prioritised and the school must be a safe space for them to heal from the instabilities that came with the pandemic. 

As the world around us changes torrentially, it presents opportunities to embrace technology, innovate and improve our education system to be more sustainable and to accommodate the changes that come with this new world, together with its industrial revolution. If other sectors are constantly improving to meet up, the education sector must not be left behind, because in this space, leaders are groomed.

Muazu Alhaji Modu

North East in 2018 ranked highest number of out of school children in Nigeria. This is mainly caused by the devastation of the region by Boko Haram insurgency, impeding academic activities and causing the increase of the number of children that are not in school.

Another contributing factor to the accelerating number of out of school children is the deficiencies in the basic education sector— lack of  basic infrastructures, inadequate teaching material and poor qualification of teachers—are making education in the NorthEast a challenge that needs urgent intervention.

In 2016, the Nigerian Government budgeted NGN 20million, for the construction and furnishing of 2 blocks of 3 Classrooms at Tongo II Primary School in Tongo village, Gombe State under the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC).

Follow The Money, known for its mission to track government spending and ensure transparency and accountability in the implementation of government or international aid projects in grassroots communities, began a campaign, #FurnishTongo, to track and oversee the completing of the Education project in Tongo II Primary School.

Follow The Money is working to achieve the Sustainable Development Goal 4 –improving access to quality basic education and ensuring effective service delivery at grassroots. As the Follow The Money Chapter Lead in Gombo State, I led a team on a preliminary visit to Tongo community. There, we learned that the school had only 4 classrooms  while 2 of these  classrooms were dilapidated but still, they served as learning rooms to over 700 registered Pupils (414 Boys and 286 Girls).

Follow The Money sensitized the people of Tongo and intensively engaged local leaders, women groups, youth groups, religious heads—in the tracking  process so they could ask their elected representatives the right questions and monitor the contractors assigned the project till it is completed. One of the challenges we experienced was harrassment from political persons acusing us of working with opponents to incite rural dwellers against the government. Our lives were threatened and we were told if we did not end our campaigns, we would be locked in cells. We, however, presented documents (page of the budget where project started, tender advertisement, FOI request letters to various MDAs, reports of community outreaches etc.) to them showing FTM’s independence of any group. We told them Follow The Money is a legitimate transparency and accountability movement

We intensified our advocacy on both traditional and social media. Few days later the construction commenced and was completed  within a very short period of time. After the implementation, the ratio of students per classroom drastically reduced at the school and more children were enrolled at Tongo II Primary School. Our advocacy brought about the building of 6 additional classrooms and also created opportunity for hundreds of children to access basic education.

Life has been good so far, but not very good when one has not yet experienced the real world before now!

The reality of life somehow depends on the level of experience one has acquired. These and more were discussions I was having with my brother about my plan to get the real experience that I need and he told me not to worry as he will introduce me to an organisation that will help me realize my dreams, I was very happy with this response from him, I was told to send my  CV together with a cover letter to the CEO of CODE, which I did and, excitingly, I got an email after some days together with a phone call telling to resume on Monday by 8am, that was the turning point of my life, as I was filled with joy.

On that very Monday, the weather was not very friendly as it was raining heavily but I did not bother as I could not afford to miss the opportunity I have been looking for a very long time. When I got to the office on that day, I got many things playing football in my brain as I met with encouraging and vibrant young people as against my expectations of meeting with Chiefs and Alhajis.

The most surprising part was when the CEO of CODE came in and introduced himself as Mr. Hamzat Lawal AKA Hamzy!, I was like is this the almighty Hamzat? Honestly, his name sounds bigger than his appearance, he quickly introduced me to the team at CODE and I was warmly received by everyone and immediately I joined in the team’s meeting, and after I was assigned to work with Mr. Tunde on the Grenade team (Data Mining). Honestly, working with him has been amazing as he’s teaching me everything I need to know about data mining and all about CODE’s work. He has never failed to answer any of my numerous questions or put me through in any difficulty, and, has inspired me so well.

One of the things that CODE has automatically changed in my life is the use of E-MAIL as an important means of communication. I have had many email accounts but only use it when I have something that phone calls or SMS can’t do. Now, I have been able to use one email for a whole month which has never happened in my entire life as I always find myself in the past, each time I want to check my mail, it would have been blocked because I am not very friendly with it as I have always preferred text messages and phone calls as means of communication, I am very happy that CODE has installed the use of email in me.

At CODE, I have been taught the use of Google drive which seems to be a big deal before I got here because I use to hear it from friends, I can remember when a friend asked me to pay him so that he can teach me, I am more excited today because I have learnt more than what he could have taught me, within my first one month in CODE, I can say that I have been able to develop a good working relationship with the team as I have noticed that everyone is committed in bringing out the best in me.

While I still work as an Intern here, I expect to gain writing confidence as I know that I love to write but have always doubted my ability. I strongly believe within my short stay at CODE, I will gain the ability of putting out strong, positive and constructive write ups.

Being too friendly has also been a challenge to me as I am not a very social type, but the CODE family has been of great support and help to me. As I continue as an intern in this great organisation, I intend to learn more than I can as working with CODE has been my best experience in life and i thank the management and staff of CODE for the opportunity given to me and all their commitments and efforts put in place to ensure I become a better person.

“Train your mind to see the good in every situation”.

Background

The mortality rate (Death Rate) is very high to the extent that the population of the country is decreasing. People lost their lives and properties, some were displaced (IDPs), others are refugee while others are been malnourished yet the government takes no action. People are dying due to lack of food in the country especially in the north eastern part of the country.

The country is lacking Potential Security which will definitely lead to the breakdown of the country economic. We need adequate and equipped security in the country which will lead to the success of the nation. Insurgency is all over the places, herdsmen have rampage everywhere yet the government take no action.

Problem:
Notwithstanding the sacrifice of the ill-equipped members of the armed forces the Boko Haram sect appears to have gained upper hand in the war on terror. Large towns like Bama, Gwoza, Mubi and Michika and hundreds of villages have been captured by the terrorists. Hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced while not less than 13,000 have been killed by the criminal gang. Not less than 16 local governments in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa States have been annexed while the combined landmass of the occupied areas is said to be 21,545 square kilometers of territory.

Solution:
Apparently, peoples are raising good points but I still see those solution as something we must all come together to achieve irrespective of tribe, party and affiliation etc.
Northerners has to go back to drawing board and sort out so many issues. Many Yorubas and Igbos and other tribes engage themselves in one handwork or the other in other to make ends meet that if their parents are not buoyant enough to send them to school.
But, up North, the reverse is the case. A gate man that makes 10k in one month ends up having four wives with minimum of 20 children with of them as Almajiris. I still believe that this boko boys are product of Almajiri. North should find a way to abolish that system.North should find a way to abolish that system but course their political class use their acclaimed for their political purposes. Now the population of untrained children with no home training and lack of respect for elders has ended up hurting and hunting the North.

Way forward:
As far as the ongoing war against Boko Haram is concerned, there is no other news that could be cheering news to Nigerians and the international community as the release of the more than 200 schoolgirls, who were abducted from their dormitory in Chibok, Borno State, in April last upper year. Having waited for more than sixteen months, the world seems to have grown impatient, as everyone appears to be waiting with baited breath to receive the news about the girls’ return from the ‘Valley of the shadow of death.’ Even if the military and allied forces spring a surprise, experts believe that there is still a high hurdle to scale before Nigeria and its neighbours can be rid of terrorism.

On behalf of the participating CSOs at this very important retreat, we wish to acknowledge and respectfully appreciate the invitation of the CSOs to be part of this very important retreat on SDGs as it is coming at a no better time than now in line with the spirit of goal 17 on “Partnerships” and in the inclusivity of “Leave No One behind”.

Your Excellences, the Civil Society in Nigeria had been active players in the formulation and designing of the SDGs right from Rio +20 to the Open Working Groups (OWG) and have held key positions why playing very important and sensitive roles all through the negotiations leading to the adoption and signing of the SDGs.

Just as this promising African nation called Nigeria is clothed in rich historical apparel, signifying the process through which it evolved its democratic experience, the stellar role played by civil society in guiding both the needle and the fabric cannot be overemphasized.

The Third Sector, as some would like to call the Civil Society, is a potent molding tool with which Nigeria nurtures its conscience at every given moment.

As a testimony to the central role played by this sector in birthing a new Nigeria, it is instructive to note that some of our present leaders like Mrs. Amina. J. Mohammed, (Minister of Environment and former SA to the President on the MDGs) and Dr. Kayode Fayemi, (former Governor of Ekiti State, and present Minister of Mines and Solid Minerals), are products of the country’s vibrant civil society community.

At the dawn of the twenty first century, our dear country was privileged to receive the cooperation it needed in the implementation of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). While we met few, we backslide on some and many were unmet.  However, the lessons learnt are useful as we set out our implementation of the SDGs.

Therefore, as a sector we are convinced that today, and specifically, this distinguished forum, presents a great opportunity for the CSO community to candidly communicate our expectations, share our experience and hear fromgovernment and other critical stakeholders, on how we can jointly lay out the needed robust implementation plan forattaining the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in Nigeria.

As we all know, following the progress made under the MDGs which drove global development efforts from 2000 to 2015, the world determined that the SDGs for the period 2016 to 2030 would continue to fight against extreme poverty,achieve gender equality and empower all women and girlswould add the challenges of ensuring more equitable development and environment sustainability.

Hence, we must emphasize the need for Nigeria to follow the global trend by upscaling its capacity and sharpening its strategies for international best practices and norms. This basically means that we deploy lessons learnt from the MDGs for the implementation of the SDGs. But more importantly, it recommends a new paradigm shift in the partnership between CSOs, private sector and the government.

Civil society plays a fundamental role at the national and sub-national domestication and implementation of all international protocols and conventions. The trainings, outreaches, data mining, and various interventions of the civil society have helped immensely in ensuring that both national and international agendas are brought closer to the ordinary Nigerians. And in this way, we as a sector along with our stakeholders, the international community and our development partners are able to monitor the impacts of our interventions.

With the SDGs, there is a new, exciting challenge before us all. With our capacity as a sector and using our networks of citizens and citizen organizations, we have started popularizing the SDGs, 17 goals and 169 targets. And, of course, it is our duty to reticulate their impacts. It is also collective responsibility as participants at this forum to ensure that transparency and accountability remain the key words for all SDGs actors, the more reason why we ‘Follow TheMoney’.

The Nigerian civil society has already made some remarkable achievements right from the process of designing the SDGs. For instance, we were part of several consultations that led to the development of the SDGs from 2012 to 2015. We consulted with citizens all over the world through the ‘’my world survey’’ and brought citizens voices to bear on the design and negotiations that led to the development and adoption of the SGDs. We were well represented as active stakeholder’s at all high level events and intergovernmental processes including leading the African Women Major Groups at the UN processes and at the African Regional Consultative Meeting on the SDGs. It might also interest you to know that one of the outcomes of that forum, which was to vigorously utilize data collection, is already being implemented in Nigeria.

We were present as a sector in September 2015 in New York when world leaders including our President Muhammadu Buhari made history by adopting the 2030 agenda. The SDGs, it was agreed, presents a “key window of opportunity to improve the existing, haphazard approach to data collection and reporting”. It was also decided that civil society, private sector and citizens should collaborate with the government to evolve better strategies for strengthening statistical systems that can measure and incentivize progress across the goals.

We are glad to announce to you that Nigerian CSOs are already implementing this strategy in conjunction with the government, as agreed by the international community (Women Environmental Programme in conjunction with the National Bureau of Statistics just finished the first phase of their data collectors training for Nigerian youths).

However, we strongly believe that there are many more things to do for effective implementation of the SDGs, and many other strategies to adopt in order to ensure Nigeria performs better than it did under the MDGs.

Excellences,

Firstly, the government needs to exhibit more willingness to cross the line from average to perfection by creating the enabling environment for optimal multi-stakeholder participation in the framing, development and implementation of national, state and local government plans of action on the attainment of the SDGs. We anticipate a domestication of the SDGs within our national and states development plan.

We recommend seamless coordination between local, states and the federal government; and also between the Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) including synergies with the private sector and civil society sector which of course includes the media and the academia.

Secondly, we recommend a planned upgrade of institutional capacity in order to ensure service delivery and effective project implementation.

Thirdly, a coherent national data management system would be effective in mainstreaming the efforts and interventions of civil society, private sector and development partners while enabling all actors within the development space to carry out their task unencumbered. Strategically, capacity building on the Open Data concept targeted at those who will be implementing the SDGs is a major first step in realizing that at the review and progress of the implementation of the SDGs can only be measured through presentation of data.

We are confident that if collectively we remain positive, focused and determined, our country can achieve the SDGs goals before 2030 and other developmental aspirations we have.

On behalf of the CSOs, I urge our government to see us as allies and partners to achieving the Nigeria we want, with the SDGs, particularly around data at the grassroots to inform policy and decision making, leveraging on innovative technologies.

Thank you for listening and for this opportunity!!! God Bless You All and God Bless the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

Some of our classmates have gone out of the country, some are now graduates, some have married, some have given birth, some are dead don’t forget that too, some are yet to be admitted into the tertiary institution, but you know that feeling when you meet your classmate and it seems like they have achieved their dreams and you’re not yet close to yours.

Yes, somehow feels like jealousy, it’s a normal feeling. But, you must not regret your life because all fingers are not equal. We all are different and our path to greatness is not same in distance. Some might reach before you, some might reach after you, some might not even reach, but whatever level you are presently please keep trying to break the limitations and move further. Celebrate the success of others, it’s an application for yours, rejoice with those that are rejoicing and mourn with them that are mourning. Your friend buys a car now, be happy with him. Remember when you get yours, theirs wouldn’t be the latest again. Life is not by competition but rather endurance.

Life is also a game that some might succeed while others might not. If not we all have been born into one family, one religion and same everything. The passion in you, never quench. The desire in you, keep it burning. The goal in you, keep pursuing it. What you pass through, the challenge you are facing don’t be intimidated rather write it down because one day the world would be ready to read it. There’s no height you cannot attain, just believe, define your goals and recognize distractions, spend time teaching yourself, because the things that mainly take people to the top is the things they devoted day and night and time to time to develop. Don’t be intimidated by your fellow’s success, the sky is too wide that the birds can fly without touching themselves.

The mind is a dangerous thing and if you let it, it will kick you, beat you, and make you want to give up, quit, run for the hills and never, ever look back. Ever. In short, the mind can be a twist. It’s not easy to overcome the thoughts that trip us up. The self-destructive thoughts our minds come up with may be irrational, but when they’re raging inside of your head, well, they seem very real and very serious, and they can be utterly devastating.

Have you ever felt like such a fake as a writer that you wanted to walk away and never feel that way again? I never feel like a fake cause I know where i’m going to and where am from. Think positive, dream positive, Eat positive, Live positive and stop looking down on yourself or somebody but keep but to your dream, vision and goal.

The Stop Don’t Drop group in collaboration with Chanja Datti seeks partnership with Connected Development (CODE) in creating awareness on Environment sustainability and anti-littering stance.

Speaking at an interactive section held at CODE office in Abuja, the convener/Initiator of “Stop Don’t Drop”, Adiza Ujo said a research was conducted shortly after the fuel scarcity hit Nigeria.

She said the outcome of the research showed that many car owners who queued to buy fuel ended up buying eatables after which they littered the environment with wraps of whatever was bought.

“We found out the long queues at the filling Station led to more dirty in our environment, because while they wait for their turns to buy fuel the just buy “Gala and Lacaserra” drinks after which they just throw on the floor,”she said.

Ms Ujo noted that it is therefore necessary to enlighten the public on the use of waste bin or trash bags to deposit waste.

She further added that aside from depositing refuse dumps, such waste could be recycled into other products.

Also speaking,the Managing Director of Chanjia Datti, Ms Funto Boroffice said its not just about throwing dirty into trash bags, adding that when a trash  bag  could be returned back to the company for recycling.

She said it’s a way of also keeping the environment clean and to also create avenues for cab drivers to earn more income regardless of how little it may be

“Our focus are cab drivers and Keke riders, we intend to give them bag so that there passengers can throw their dirty in it,

“Once this is done the cab drivers are meant to bring back the bags to us with the dirty in it, after which they could either get recharge cards or a liter of fuel”, she said.

She said that about 50,000 or more stickers will also be launched, adding that the stickers will be at the bumper of every cabs and keke in Abuja environs.

“The essence of this stickers is to help car owners stop littering the road with dirty, by throwing it out the window while driving,

“I am certain that when the car behind the one that  has a sticker that says “Stop don’t Drop” , he or she will think twice and not throw the dirty outside the window, “she said.

The Chief Executive of CODE, Hamzat Lawal, commended the group for this initiative, adding that CODE will assist in any possible way it can.

“I think it’s important that it is also treated at the senate level, whereby a bill is passed on that effect alongside policies,”he said.

He added that CODE will ensure the media helps broadcasts this initiative so that the information can get to the public as wide and fast as possible

“ We would try and engage  BBC Hausa to help amplifier alongside Wazobia fm, we could also make any of the Host on Wazobia fm an ambassador,”he said.

The monitoring and Evaluation manager of CODE, Oladotun Babayemi, suggested that everybody not just car owners or Keke riders should also engage themselves in recycling.

” i would advice you start publicity through congregation, it would help a lot in sending the message across,”he said.

Chanja Datti is committed to transforming waste to value with an increasing demand to rid the environment of non-biodegradable waste materials.

Stop don’t Drop seeks a green trash free environment.