Use modern methods to raise children with special needs, Aisha Buhari charges Care Givers

By Lawrence Olaoye

Wife of the President has charged caregivers in the country to use modern methods to raise children with special needs.
According to a statement made available to newsmen yesterday by Suleiman Haruna, Director of Information to Wife of the President, Mrs. Buhari made the call during the commencement of a one-week training programme for teachers, health workers and care givers of children with special needs at the FCT School for Handicapped Children, Kuje, Abuja, on Tuesday 19th June 2018.
Mrs. Buhari, who was speaking through the Administrative Secretary of the Aisha Buhari Foundation, Mr. Saidu Suleiman, said most of these 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.