BY ANKELI EMMANUEL, Sokoto

The Aliko Dangote Foundation through its Food Intervention Programme have donated 40,000 bags of rice to 40,000 families in Borno State.

Registering his appreciation during the flag off of he distribution, Borno State governor, Prof. Babagana Umara Zulum  said the rice donated by Aliko Dangote Foundation will help in the cushioning the economic hardship of the benefiting families.

Beneficiaries receiving the Dangote Foundation Food Intervention in Borno state.

Governor Zulum who was represented by the Director General of Borno State Emergency Management Agency(SEMA) Mr. Ali Abdullahi Isa, appreciated the gesture as timely.

According to the governor, “Today marks a significant milestone in our collective efforts to alleviate the suffering of our people, particularly during the holy month of Ramadan.

”The generous donation is a testament to the Foundation’s commitment to supporting vulnerable communities and promoting social welfare, hence we are deeply thankful to Alhaji Aliko Dangote and the entire foundation for their kindness and philanthropy.”

While urging the people of the state
to use this fasting period and intensify prayers for peace, stability, and prosperity of the state and country, the governor further thanked Aliko Dangote for always giving back to the people.

Speaking earlier,  representative of the Aliko Dangote Foundation, Mr. Usman Muhammad, said the gesture is aimed at supporting government efforts, saying, the Foundation focuses on improving the living conditions of Nigerians.

Mr. Muhammad said the donation is targeted at the poor and the vulnerable persons in the State.

Reacting t the gesture, one of the beneficiaries, 50 years old, Ms Aisha Modu, said as a displaced person,  the donation of rice by the ADF will go a long way in alleviating her economic hardship.

Also with tears of joy hanging on his face, another beneficiary, 60 years old, Umaru Aliyu, said he will use the rice to feed his six children, while praying God to continue to bless the chairman of the Aliko Dangote Foundation.

It will be recalled that
the Aliko Dangote Foundation penultimate week commenced the distribution of one million bags of rice worth N16billion across the 774 local government areas in Nigeria.

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The Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) says it will partner with relevant agencies to boost Artificial Intelligence (AI) studies in the nation’s tertiary institutions.

The Executive Secretary of TETFund, Mr Sonny Echono, said this during an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja on Friday.

He said the Fund had drastically scaled up textbook production in addition to other initiatives such as ICT centres to position Nigeria as a leader in AI in Africa.

He said this was part of TETFund’s contribution to the nation’s quest to tap into the multi-trillion dollars global digital economy.

According to him, AI is one of the few subject areas where the Fund could send scholars abroad for further training because it had not fully developed in Nigeria.

“We don’t send anybody outside anymore. But AI is a new and expanding field. It is one of the few areas we are training people abroad because we want to lead in Africa,’’ he told NAN.

He said the Fund had supported the development of AI textbooks, covering topics such as AI in teaching and learning, ethics, and curriculum development.

Echono said the aim was to boost the use of AI and to get the tertiary institutions to begin to exploit and use it in teaching and learning.

He said that in addition to book development, TETFund had trained over 3,000 scholars in AI and emerging ICT trends in the last two years in collaboration with leading institutions.

He explained that the initiative had resulted in the ICT training of over 17,000 educators through the International Computer Driving License (ICDL) programme.

“We started with general ICT training because we’ve been doing a lot of ICT training. If the teacher is not ICT-savvy, even for him to put his lecture on the platform is a problem.

“For him to interact with the students on the platform or to send his mark, to do his marking scheme, to relate, to get presentations, even zoom meetings would be a problem he must be ICT literate.

“After that we started letting them understand how they can use ICT, how they can leverage on it to improve the quality of their delivery and the experiences of their students,” he said.

“We want to leapfrog others in ICT, robotics. We are coming very strong in robotics now, but we are late comers, some people are already doing it before us.

“But we don’t want anybody to be ahead of us on this continent. So we are pushing those frontiers,” he said.

Echono also said that the present TETFund management inherited a stagnated book development programme that published only 20 books in 13 years.

He said that upon assuming office in 2022, he challenged the book development committee to meet ambitious targets of producing more books.

“I said, in the first year, you must do 50, if not I’m going to disband it, we’re wasting money coming to do meetings, talking, and not seeing the books.

“Later, I said I want to see up to 100 books being published and they said it can be done. We’ll give you all the support, publicise and advertise to Nigerian authors.

“We identified the subjects where we do not have enough textbooks. We Tasked the professors and all the experts in that field to put things in order..

Echono said this challenge spurred the book development committee as TETFund published 50 books in 2023, another 60 shortly after with another tranche of 50 textbooks published recently.

He explained that another batch of 50 textbooks was currently in under production. (NAN)