The North East Development Commission (NEDC) has empowered 300 scavengers with Briquette Machines to combating Borno’s 105kg monthly waste and increase economic productivity in the state.
Mr. Mohammed Alkali, the NEDC’s Managing Director, made this known at the presentation of the briquette Machines to the scavengers who underwent comprehensive training on Monday, February 10, 2025, in Maiduguri, the state capital.
Alkali said that the strategy adopted by the Commission was aimed at addressing climate change related issues in combating the tonnage of waste being generated in the state monthly for economic prosperity.
He said apart from empowering the scavengers, the Commission had also engaged those who would be fabricating the machine locally in order to incorporate local content.
“So you can see we have trained people to go do something for their benefits. These youths will be producing the locally made briquette to enhanced their skills and create more job opportunities in the state,” the managing director said.
Alkali said that the Commission was intended to retain those who are fabricating the briquette Machine for the benefit of bringing more people into the project for at least one year.
“Those who are fabricating are going to be engage for at least one year. Those we have donated the machines to will be monitored to make sure they use the machines optimally,” he said.
Earlier, the Project Coordinator, Dr Zainab Challube of the University of Maiduguri, said they have trained close to 300 people in two cohorts.
“The first one we are be able to bring scavengers and then trainers. Then the second one was strictly trainers and the trainers were about 120 and the first one we had 152. So you see we having a close of about 300.
“This is an initiative that was actually setup by NEDC in order to addressing one of the confronting issues that is facing Borno State that is the issue of indiscriminate disposal of waste.
“This initiative has been brought into place to see how we could equipped those that are into the business to see the linkage between them and then the theoretical aspect and how they could do it on a very controlled manner to earn a very decent and a lucrative living out of it,” Challube said.
The project coordinator said they have given the scavengers a practical knowledge, a more theoretical aspect so that they would not be doing the business haphazardly as it were.
“Those that are scavenging actually don’t have background knowledge but it may be due to inheritance or passion or how they look at the environment.
“But the training they have, they are going to have like a work ethic in a very conducive manner.
“I believe that the North-east region will be having more and more of these youths as you can see they have given them recycling machines.
“We hope to see that we have a central recycling plant in Borno State where all these people will come and they will be a coordinated body whereby they can bring waste and then it will transfered into wealth,” she said.
Challube said that from available statistics in the state more than 451 tonnes of plastic are being brought into Maiduguri in addition to the one that was being produced internally.
By Hamza Suleiman