A Lagos-based NGO, DNA Vision Foundation, has said that the nation’s health and education sectors required emergency attention for the sake of the less-privileged and the vulnerable in the society.
Chief Bolale Akinyemi, a member of the Board of Trustee of the NGO, made the appeal in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos on Wednesday.
NAN reports that the NGO provides educational scholarship, vocational training, as well as health and food outreaches, particularly at the grassroots level.
Akinyemi said: “The government’s impact is very thin on the ground, and its efforts are not really felt by the downtrodden in the society, in terms of healthcare and education for the less-privileged; there is a huge deficit.
“It is our hope that a lot of well-meaning and spirited people will follow suit in what we are doing to help the less-privileged in our society.
” We cannot change the lives of everybody, but if we succeed in changing the life of one person, it can go a very long way to change things.
“Government will have to redouble its efforts if much impact would be made in the lives of the poor. There is a very huge gap in health and education sectors,” he said.
Akinyemi said that during a recent medical screening carried out by the DNA Vision, it was discovered that a lot of people going around as though they were healthy, were really diabetic and did not even know.
He said that the huge gap in the health sector had also made many of the less-privileged people to resort to the use of herbs.
Akinyemi, who is also the Akinrogun of Iwayaland, Lagos, said that the NGO had provided free treatment for many residents of the state, especially the vulnerable living in the slums.
According to him, no fewer than 88 less-privileged enjoyed the group’s medical outreach at Iwaya, while over 220 people were trained in various vocations, with seed money and certificates given to them.
He said that the training programme was part of poverty alleviation efforts and to help the beneficiaries in empowering themselves to solve their immediate problems and have something to fall back on.
Akinyemi said that three talented indigent students in the area were also given scholarships, promising that the group would continue to support the vulnerable.
He said that the group was also looking at helping young single mothers to go back to school and empowering them with vocational training.
On education, Akinyemi said: “We have enough schools, but schools are not classrooms. Schools are good teachers, schools are facilities.
“Most of these schools do not have facilities.
“Even if we have the best of teachers, and we don’t have teaching facilities, we can’t achieve anything.”
(NAN)
