Strategic Objectives
1. Promote informed data driven advocacy by deploying findings from locally conducted scientific research
2. Increase access to quality basic healthcare to vulnerable and underserved individuals, groups, and communities
3. Increase access to quality education to orphans and other vulnerable individuals and groups
4. Provide economic empowerment opportunities to youths and women
5. Promote gender fairness and inclusion
6. Promote environmental sustainability through both advocacy and tree planting
7. Provide youths mentorship around our core values of dedication to duty, self-discipline, and compassion
Core Values and Philosophy
Unik Impact Foundation is a non-governmental and non-profit organisation with core values around self discipline, dedication to duty, and compassion.
Our Philosophy is that, even where opportunities abound, applying one’s self to achieve a successful existence is intricately linked to their dedication to duty and self discipline.
We accordingly seek to connect with the outlined problems of society through these values while engaging in compassionate activities that enable opportunities like medical outreaches, small community projects, youth empowerment, drug rehabilitation, scholarships, upsetting medical bills, and environmental protection.
The ultimate aim is to
multiply these opportunities to multitudes while we
offer a mentorship platform around these values to as
many as possible
A Mentorship Platform around the core values of Dedication to Duty (Dedication), Self Discipline (Discipline) & Compassion.
It was the environment that the Founder, Dr Nuruddeen Muhammad, grew in, which prioritized self-discipline, dedication to duty, obsession with education, and compassion (even to the environment), and how he observed these values are linked to enhanced life opportunities that first made its impression on the young Nuruddeen. Coincidentally, his father, Mallam Muhammad Adamu UNIK, an accomplished educationist who was earlier an efficient headmaster while the founder was in those formative years, IMPACTED these societal values on him with his overbearing attitude of a school teacher.
This unique community value IMPACT that Mallam UNIK impacted on the Founder is what the Foundation seeks to harness and deploy on multitudes through mentorship and compassionate activities to the vulnerables in health, education, empowerment, gender relations, and environment. It is our long-term vision that these outlined activities would enable, enhance, and multiply life opportunities across our communities and beyond.
Background
With its estimated population of 226.5 million by January 2024, every fifth of an African is a Nigerian, and Northern Nigeria alone accounts for about 55% of the entire population.
63% of persons living within Nigeria (133 million people) are multidimensionally poor. This is according to the 2022 Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) Survey conducted by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) in collaborative effort with the National Social Safety-Nets Coordinating Office (NASSCO), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI). Again, the study noted that 65% of these poor (86 million people) live in the North. Jigawa State is among the top five poorest states, even in the North!
These grim statistics make Nigeria (moreso the North) home to the highest number of poor people on the entire planet, with significant consequences on disease burdens, low immunisation coverage, illiteracy, out of school children, child and maternal deaths, life expectancy, environmental degradation, and violent extremism. The picture is further complicated with drug abuse, especially up north, with a particular survey quoted by a BBC Africa in a 2018 documentary claiming that as high as 3Million bottles of codeine are consumed daily between Kano and Jigawa States alone.
For example, according to a World Bank report titled Nigeria’s Literacy Rate 1991-2024, the adult literacy rate in Nigeria is 62.02%. The North, however, has the lowest literacy rate in the country, with only 32.5% of the population aged 15 years and above being literate.
Again, about 10.5 million children aged 5-14 years in Nigeria are not in school, and more than 50% of these are from the North where they roam the streets as destitutes and child beggars. This is the highest absolute number in the entire world.
Additionally, Nigeria accounts for the second-highest number of maternal and child deaths globally after India. In the report, titled: ‘Improving maternal and newborn health and survival and reducing stillbirth: Progress Report 2023’ and released by the World Health Organisation (WHO), Nigeria accounts for 12% of the global burden of maternal and neonatal death, and stillbirths with the North carrying the highest burden.
Furthermore, Nigeria also loses aabout 0.6KM to desert encroachment annually, with Jigawa, Katsina, Kano, Yobe, Borno, Zamfara, Kebbi, and Sokoto States as the most prone. This leads to a rise in temperatures, malaria transmission, shortage of drinking water, drought, food insecurity, and often conflict.
It would take more than public sector efforts to address these endemic poverty, unemployment, illiteracy, disease, environmental degradation, and destitution. Specific and deliberate actions would have to be deployed by communities, non-profit organisations, families, and individuals to generate more credible local data through research efforts, conduct sustained advocacy around the issues, and design and implement targeted interventions.
Unik Impact Foundation is a grassroots development action platform in the health, education, empowerment, environment, and gender equity domains, including local research and advocacy, with operational headquarters in Jigawa State, North-West Nigeria.
