THE Federal Government has launched a campaign for increased access to secondary education for adolescent girls, in a bid to reduce the number of out-of-school girls in the country.
The Federal Government, in partnership with the World Bank, is advocating for female children to be retained in school and allowed to complete their secondary education.
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This development was disclosed in a statement on Thursday, May 11 by the Secretariat of the Adolescent Girls Initiative for Learning and Empowerment (AGILE) project.
AGILE is a World Bank-assisted project geared toward improving secondary education for adolescent girls aged between 10 and 20 years.
The project runs in Borno, Ekiti, Kaduna, Kano, Kebbi, Plateau and Katsina states.
According to the statement, the national project coordinator of AGILE, Amina Haruna, disclosed that the campaign is tagged ‘Madubi’, a Hausa word for Mirror.
According to her, the campaign will expand the intervention to more Nigerian states and reduce the gender gap in secondary school completion rates and labour market transition.
She said the project is focused on providing education benefits to 21.5 million direct and indirect young girls.
“The AGILE project seeks to eliminate the barriers to knowledge experienced by girls in targeted areas. By scaling investment in girls’ secondary education, It offers a window to tackle other problems such as poverty, child marriage, maternal and child mortality, and gender-based violence.
“Adolescence is a critical stage in human development; more so for girls. After the early years, adolescence and secondary education are the periods most capable of influencing the kind of woman and humans that they turn to become.
“AGILE is one intervention tackling multi-sectoral issues. It addresses the concerns on the demand and supply ends of the education divide,” she said.
The ICIR had earlier reported the request by the Ministry of Education to the World Bank for assistance to reduce the number of out-of-children from 10 to 5 million by 2023.
According to the Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu, the call for assistance was to ensure that Nigerian children have access to qualitative education irrespective of their economic backgrounds.
He said, “The Federal Government is keen on reducing the number of out-of-school children in the country. This will also improve the country’s standard of education.”
A Demographic Health Survey (DHS) conducted by UNICEF and the Nigerian government revealed that Nigeria has the highest number of out-of-school children worldwide, with 13.2 million children. About 60 per cent of this number are girls.
The report also said that about 69 per cent of the country’s out-of-school children are spread across the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) and 10 states in the North.
The states include Bauchi, Niger, Katsina, Kano, Sokoto, Zamfara, Kebbi, Gombe, Adamawa and Taraba.
Beloved John is an investigative reporter with International Centre for Investigative Reporting.
You can reach her via: Bjohn@icirnigeria.org