Ernest Chinwo in Port Harcourt
The acting Managing Director of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), Prof. Nelson Brambaifa has reiterated the commission’s commitment to girl-child education to build her capacity and enhance her self-esteem so as to contribute positively to nation building.
Speaking while receiving an award from the executives of the National Association of Nigerian Female Students’ (NANFS), who paid him a courtesy visit, he described education as the bedrock of any developing nation and women are strategic in that equation.
“NDDC has embarked on several infrastructural development projects and capacity building programmes in the region. For instance, many female students have benefited from our foreign postgraduate scholarships and other capacity building programmes over the years because we believe in the saying that ‘educate a girl-child and you have educated a nation’.
“In that vein, NDDC is ready to collaborate with any organisation that is ready to promote and safeguard the education of the girl-child to acquire skills and boost her self-confidence. We have your proposal and management will look at it critically to see the area in which we can partner to protect the girl-child,” Brambaifa said.
The President of NANFS, Miss Joan Obi appealed to the NDDC to support the organisation’s fight against the discrimination of women in the society, adding that NANFS has embarked on a sensitisation campaign tagged ‘Say no to Drug Abuse and Violence against Women’.
Obi commended the NDDC for executing people-oriented projects, “the advancement of education in the region through the ongoing scholarship programme, nation building with transparency and integrity, as well as strong advocacy for peace and sustainable development in the Niger Delta Region.”
She presented an award ‘21st Century Icon of Meritorious Service and Role Model to the Younger Generation’ to Brambaifa, saying that it was bestowed on him because of his outstanding leadership qualities, transparency and laudable contribution to the overall development of the Niger Delta Region and Nigeria in general.
