By Joseph Kingston
Calabar
Succour may have indeed started coming the way of displaced Bakassi women as Akpabuyo local government council of Cross River state yesterday commenced vocational training, estimated to cost N15 million, for them.
The women, who are now putting up in St. Marks Primary School, Akpabuyo, as their temporary refugees’ camp, were sent away from their ancestral home since 2012, allegedly by Cameroon gendarmes.
Speaking at the flagged off of the training programme held at the Women Development centre in the area, wife of Akpabuyo Council Chairman, Mrs. Immaculata Ene-Okon, said women of the host community, Ikot Eyo Edem, would also benefit from the vocational training programme.
Ene-Okon said the ceremony was the beginning of the actualisation of her dreams and aspirations to help the refugees develop capacities that would make them self reliant and fern for themselves.
“It is good to teach a man how to catch a fish rather than giving him fish to eat on daily basis,” she said, explaining that the training was the council’s collaborative effort with Rhema Care Integrated Development Centre and the Swiss Agency for Development Cooperation (SDC) whose target was the Bakassi Peninsular returnees.
Also speaking, the Chief Executive Officer of Rhema Care Integrated Development Centre, Mr. Eric Shu said, the graduands would be taught on how to start and grow their own businesses with an unspecified take-off grant given to them after the training.
The camp Leader for Bakassi Returnees, Mr. Etim Okon Ene, lauded the Bakassi council and the state government for their care since the “unfortunate ceding of our homeland.”
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