© FREE
A typical class at FREE.

The Nigerian NGO, Family Re-orientation Education and Empowerment (FREE) was awarded the UNESCO Confucius Prize for Literacy for creating a network of learning centres. It provides literacy skills to adults, especially to women and out-of-school girls.

The alphabet of poverty
A long time ago, I was a merciless schoolteacher. I was barely ten years old and my pupil was close to sixty. I was arrogant from the height of my good fortune. More

A toothy grin appears on Alaere Alaibe’s face as she reads another testimony: “Thank you Madam for the wonderful opportunity to be back in school. Now I can write letters to my friends to invite them to my party”. This moving testimony was sent by Boma, a former student, to inform Alaibe of her progress since she was transferred to secondary school after spending more than a year at Okolobiri’s Adult Literacy Centre in Bayelsa State, Nigeria.

The centre is one of the 27 built by Alaibe’s Family Reorientation Education and Empowerment (FREE), a non-government organization set up in November 2005 as a private initiative to bring education to women of the oil-rich but restive Niger Delta region of Nigeria.

Reading testimonies of ‘students’ is how Alaibe commences work in her Lagos office. “We tell them to write the letters in their own hand-writings so that we can monitor their progress,” she says. But the bulk of her work is in the rural areas of Bayelsa, an area blessed with multi-billion dollar oil reserves, but where, ironically, stark poverty, infrastructural decay and environmental degradation have persisted due to years of neglect and corrupt misappropriation of funds.

Education and health facilities are two major areas of need among the poor masses of the Delta. These are the key areas where Alaibe’s FREE have been providing support to the neglected people of the region in the last two years. “We do not operate in the urban region. We go deep into the rural areas of Bayelsa and Delta States, where access is difficult. There are many areas that you can’t reach except by spending three or four hours on a boat.”

Poor road and water networks and difficult access in many villages and towns can frustrate development plans for the region. But they do not deter Alaibe, 43, whose background is in Bayelsa though she was born and educated in Lagos. “I come from a family of seven girls and two boys who were educated by a poor and illiterate mother in a poor area of Lagos. I thought if my siblings could take turns to help our mother sell fish in the Ajegunle boundary market, and all nine of us have university education now, I think it is only fair to give back to this region,” Alaibe says.

Three years before the inauguration of her NGO, she had been rousing rural Bayelsa women folk with a new not-for-profit project, FREE, which has become a useful platform for mass literacy programmes, especially for women who missed their first chance of getting educated. It was her personal initiative that started the project with the creation in 2002 of the first Pioneer Adult and Non-Formal Study Centre at Trofani. Another was soon created at Opokuma. The number of centres grew to 16, spanning 12 communities, after FREE became fully operational in 2005. This remarkable educational project now numbers 27 centres that provide literacy training to some 700 learners and it is spreading to more communities.

In 2006 FREE built the Support for Africa Health Centre in Igbainwari Town, in Bayelsa State, in partnership with the UK-based Support for Africa Foundation of Nigerian-born singer, Patti Boulaye. FREE also organizes education and health seminars and a large number of activities, including free eye tests and the distribution of spectacles to students.

Old women with no education at all are a priority target group for FREE which also accepts single mothers and youths with missed opportunities. “Our aim in this area is to design curriculum that will be good enough to make them return to standard schools so that they can fit in with other students,” Alaibe says. Lucky students in this category enjoy free scholarships from a bank, negotiated by FREE. Close to 20% of FREE’s learners wind up returning to formal education.

This method is proving to be a remarkable support system in Nigeria where only 35 per cent of the population is literate. Although public education is free at the primary and secondary levels, many years of infrastructural decay and official neglect have drastically lowered standards, according to Universal Basic Education (UBE), a Federal Government of Nigeria organization. Literacy is even lower among girls and women, due to social and cultural prejudice which still prioritize education opportunities to boys. Many families, unable to afford school uniforms and meals, are prevented from sending their wards to school. Only 15 per cent are able to secure admissions to tertiary institutions every year in a country of 140 million people.

FREE’s initiative bridges the gap between expensive private schools and failing public establishments, especially in the Niger Delta. With support from the National Mass Education Commission and teachers who agree to take less than Nigeria’s minimum wage – of 5000 Niaras monthly (about $40), FREE provides evening classes between 4 and 6 p.m., Monday to Friday, in all its centres.

“It’s a volatile region and sometimes we are greeted with aggression. It takes a lot to convince them that we are not calling them out for political reasons,” says Alaibe, whose husband, Timi, heads the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), the government agency mandated to bring improvement to the region.

Her privileged position, coupled with people’s scepticism about fund-raising methods of NGOs, makes fund-raising difficult. But personal and family resources, corporate support and small contributions from community leaders have helped keep the project alive, and FREE operates with an annual budget of 20 million Niaras, approximately $150,000.

FREE’s message of hope continues through people like Regina Joyful, a community women’s leader in Igbogene. She used to thumb-print to cash her money at banks. But after two years with FREE, she proudly announces that she can now append her signature on the cheque book.

By Steve Ayorinde, Nigerian journalist

© FREE
Patti Boulaye (left) et Alaere Alaibe (right), during the inauguration of the Health Centre at Igbainwari.

© FREE
Welcoming Patti Boulaye at Alaere Alaibe's health centre in Opokuma.