Wife of the President, Mrs Aisha Muhammadu Buhari, has called on caregivers in the country to use modern methods to raise children with special needs.
She made the call during the commencement of a one-week training programme for teachers, health workers and caregivers of children with special needs at the FCT School for Handicapped Children, Kuje, Abuja, on Tuesday.
Mrs Buhari, who was speaking through the Administrative Secretary of the Aisha Buhari Foundation, Mr. Saidu Suleiman, said most of the children do not reach their full potential.
“There is the need to discover the individual qualities of each child with special needs so that this could be harnessed and the child could reach their full potential.”
This however, she said, can best be achieved through modern techniques.
The training, she said is a partnership with a US-based NGO, the Nika Project, which sent experts in the field of augmentative and assistive technology to train Nigerian teachers on the use of modern technology tools and strategies to improve the education of children with special needs.
Mrs Buhari called on the caregivers to take advantage of the new methods and improve the way they teach and raise children with special needs. She also called on all institutions training such children to embrace such modern methods.
Speaking earlier, an administrator with Nika Project, Dan Philips, applauded the partnership with Aisha Buhari Foundation saying the expertise they have to offer should be available to all schools in the country.
He called on other well-meaning Nigerians to support initiatives like these.
“Children with special needs learn differently and therefore they require different tools in order to retain that knowledge and learn successfully” he said, stating that the modern methodology aims to reach kids in ways never believed possible.
The aim of Nika Project in this partnership, he said, is to “plant a seed and provide a new path of educating our kids.
Principal of the School for Handicapped Children, venue of the training, Mrs Musili Yusuf, thanked the wife of the President for this gesture and hoped that other well-to-do Nigerians will come in strong and assist.
The training will end on Saturday, 23rd June, 2018.
