Stakeholders in girl child education have reiterated their commitment to promote and ensure girls in various communities complete secondary school education.
They stated this at a dissemination meeting titled ‘Keeping Girls in Schools’ in Abuja.
The meeting which attracted traditional, religious leaders and development partners was designed to implement cardinal programmes aimed at empowering young girls, women and vulnerable mothers in the country.
Reports show that in many parts of Africa, girls drop out of school for various reasons, this include poverty, early marriage and parent apathy because of poor quality of education.
According to UNICEF, for every 25 boys who complete secondary school education, only 9 girls do so due to a complex interplay of factors including high rates of poverty,, safety and security concerns.
The Shehu of Bama Alhaji Kyari Umar-Elkanemi at the event, observed that socioeconomic backwardness and underdevelopment of many African countries was due to poor education of female children.
He called for support of all stakeholders to reintegrate all out of school children back to school to forestall peace especially in the northern Nigeria.
According to the Shehu of Bama, “in our area men don’t like taking their wives to the hospital because they don’t want a male doctor to attend to them, in our advocacy, we encourage them to allow the female children go to school, so that they produce female Doctors who can then attend to their women.”
Also the emir of Zamfara, Alhaji Attahiru Mohammed said the back to school campaign had yielded a positive impact in the state.
He explained further that the emirate council had a counterpart fund to support the indigent children as well as encourage parents for the need to educate their children.
On her part the team lead, Keeping Girls in School, Dr. Mairo Mandara said the project last year enrolled over 300 out of school children from the Internally Displaced Persons Camps and also introduced them to vocational training.
She said, “the children were able to pass the JSS 2 examines which shows that every child has potentials so the programme is targeted at ensuring the education of the girl child is well taken care off to at least senior secondary school.”
Dr. Mandara further solicited for more support from Federal government to empower traditional and religious leaders to ensure the girl child remain in school.
By Florence Adewale