Her Excellency, Mrs. Aisha Muhammadu Buhari birthed Future Assured Programme to focus attention and make a difference in the lives of women and children by addressing challenges in the area of reproductive, maternal, new-born, child and adolescent health. She is conscious of the pervasive health outcomes which have remained unchanged over time and the need to compliment the effort of government to facilitate the achievement of better health outcomes.
Along the way, however, Future Assured has ventured into other activities that have impacted on the livelihood of women, affecting them negatively and increasing these negative health outcomes. These are issues related to education and empowerment.
Let us review the efforts of Her Excellency in all these areas.
SUPPORT TO VICTIMS OF INSURGENCY
Support to IDPs that return to their communities with relief materials including foodstuff, clothing, beddings, plastic containers, mats, blankets, and building materials. Over 6 trailer loads of roofing zinc, roofing and noggin wood, assorted nails and asbestos ceiling were distributed.
Parents of Buni Yadi Boys and Chibok girls were supported with 55 million naira being total proceeds of Her Excellency’s book launch.
She has commenced construction of an orphanage and school primarily for the children in the IDP camps.
EDUCATION
Her Excellency is at the forefront of the campaign for women and girl-child education. Both in school and outside school.
She presently supports school girls with school bags and writing materials across the country.
Efforts are underway to rebuild broken down community learning centers and scale up on their spread nationwide, so that women who did not complete their education can return and complete their education through these centers.
Youth Education Empowerment Programme (YEEP) assists the large number of youths struggling to transit from secondary to tertiary institutions through tutorial classes, for WAEC, NECO, NABTEB and JAMB. Pilot already successful and scale up being discussed with stakeholders. YEEP also trains youths to develop writing, communication and public speaking skills.
Empowering women across the country is viewed by Her Excellency as very critical to family sustenance. Pilots in Kano, Katsina and Lagos were successful with over 5000 trained in various trades. National programme is about to commence.
To encourage women farmers, women are mobilized to venture into agriculture and take advantage of opportunities provided by government in terms of improved seedlings, fertilizer and other agricultural inputs especially in the area of fisheries, livestock and poultry.
She also encourages them to access loans and facilities provided by the Bank of Industry, Bank of Agriculture, CBNs NIRSAL and Micro-finance Banks.
She recently acquired 20 rice milling machines and 25 fish driers for the use of women farmers across the country at no cost to them.
Get involved was launched as an initiative of Future Assured to generate funds for the improvement of the nutritional level among malnourished children across the country, especially those in IDP camps. Over N200 million worth of goods was raised and distributed across the country.
Health screening exercises were conducted for women to encourage them to be health conscious, diseases that kill women in focus, these are high blood pressure, high blood sugar, breast cancer, cervical cancer, and kidney function. They also go through eye checks and are presented with glasses free of charge if required and provide family planning counsel. Over thirty thousand women have so far been reached in the 10 states so far covered.
Health screening for children checks them for worms, oral hygiene and eye problems. Children go home with dental packs after the screening.
Nutritional supplements supplied to lactating mothers across the country with over 250,000 women having been reached so far.
Nutritional supplements supplied to malnourished children across the country has over 100 tons of these supplements distributed.
In the same vein, nutrition-based food items were distributed to the needy in all the states of the country to cushion the effect of poverty and improve nutritional status where hundreds of thousands of Nigerians have been reached.
She has presently commenced construction of a maternity ward at the Daura General Hospital, Katsina State with a view to expanding the network of maternity services accessible to women across the country.
Her Excellency has always been on the vanguard of women that have suffered gender-based violence including battery and rape.
She has also been an advocate against rape of minors, which is becoming more rampant.
