Nigeria’s Access Bank donates N10m to UNICEF for Kaduna children

Access Bank of Nigeria on Sunday made a charity donation of N10m to United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in Kaduna State. The Managing Director of Access Bank, Mr. Herbert Wigwe, presented the cheque to UNICEF’s Chief of Field Office, Lagos, Manuel Rosini, at the end of the Access Bank, UNICEF and Fifth Chucker Polo Charity Shield Tournament which was held in Kaduna state.

The Polo Charity Shield Tournament is an annual event organised by Access Bank, UNICEF and Fifth Chucker to mobilise resources for children and orphans.

Wigwe explained to journalists that Access bank has been making charity donations to UNICEF totaling N130m since 2006 with the aim of building a better life for the pupils by giving them a new lease. Prior to the event, the event organizers had paid a visit to the Local Government Education Authority (LEA) Mararaban Jos, one of the benefiting schools, to access the level of interventions and achievements so far.

“When UNICEF, Access Bank and Fifth Chucker began intervening in this school predominated by orphans and vulnerable children years ago, the enrolment was just around 500 pupils.

“Today, this school has an enrolment of about 12,500 pupils. This is the result of partnership and we will continue because children represent the future of our country.

“What we do today to these children will determine where they will be tomorrow. God expected us to support these children to grow and succeed in life, so we will continue to give in support of children future.

“We are impressed with the level of infrastructural development in the school.

“We will build more computer rooms and provide more computers to improve teaching and learning,” Wigwe said.

Manuel Rosini commended Access Bank and Fifth Chucker for their support to UNICEF in ensuring the children’s survival and development.

According to him, 50 percent of all the world’s out of school children are in Nigeria, adding that such support would help a great deal in ensuring that all children are catered for educationally, emotionally, psychologically and socially.

Also speaking, Mr. Adamu Atta, the Proprietor, Fifth Chucker Polo Club, said that the partnership was to deepen nutrition intervention and support the less privileged children in the state.

“We started this school project as pilot programme some years back and we now have other projects around the state focusing on health, nutrition, and education.

“We cannot measure the impact of what we have achieved so far, but as you can see, Access Bank has spent hundreds of millions as part of its contribution and we have all been supportive in different capacities for the past 10 years,” Atta said.