For years now, the issue of the education of the girl-child in northern Nigeria has been of source of worry for the Nigerian government.
It is believed that over 10.5 million children of school age, most of whom are children from northern Nigeria, are out of school. Some of them are either married at an early age or engaged in domestic or odd jobs. But the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) has said that the figure was incorrect.
Efforts by successive federal and state administrations as well as their international development partners have not yielded the desired fruit.
Two years ago, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) carried out a research in some northern states and discovered that poverty and ignorance were the major factors militating against the education of the girl-child in the northern part of the country. The UN agency, thereafter, launched the Girls Education Project Phase (GEP3) and Cash Transfer Programme (CTP) in some of the states in the North to provide financial assistance to some rural women on the condition that they must send their daughters to school.
The objective was to drive a project that would increase girl’s enrolment in formal education in the educationally disadvantaged states of Bauchi, Katsina, Niger, Sokoto and Zamfara.
Six local government areas each in Sokoto and Niger states were chosen for the first phase of the programme. Seventy-two schools in Niger and 62 in Sokoto, and the project lasted for two years.
Read more at: http://sunnewsonline.com/unicef-boosts-girl-child-education-in-niger-sokoto/
