Wives of northern state governors have keyed into the Adolescent Girl Initiative programme of the United Nations Population Fund (UNPFA) in conjunction with Canadian Embassy to train131, 000 adolescent girls from the north. ABDULRAHEEM AODU reports.
Despite being blessed with over 10.7 million adolescent girls between the ages of 10 to 19, only 56.7 per cent of the girls have access to primary education, not more than 45.7 per cent of the girls enjoy secondary education, while 11.6 per cent are given into marriage at the age of 15 thus curtailing their education.
These debilitating statistics led the United Nations Population Fund (UNPFA) to initiate the Adolescent Girl Initiative programme with the support of the Canadian Embassy to provide the girl child in Nigeria with accessible and affordable education that would make their future better and as well improve the poor education and health statistics of the country, especially as it pertains to maternal and child mortality, child marriage and teenage pregnancy.
To ensure the success of the AGI programme, three Northern states namely; Kaduna, Kebbi and Sokoto states were picked as pilot states. Kaduna state has 40.3 per centgirls without education with only 11.4 per cent completing their secondary education.
Kebbi state has worse statistics as 75 per cent girls without education, while only 2.3per cent complete their secondary education, Sokoto state is worst with 78.5 per cent, while 1.8 per cent girls complete secondary school.
The goal of the AGI, according to UNFPA, is to contribute to improve in social, economic and health wellbeing of rural and low income urban adolescent in northern Nigeria, specifically Kaduna, Kebbi and Sokoto and build their assets through increased access to education, reproductive health information and services and life skills that would positively impact on health choices.
The AGI is a scale up of a joint programme, Center for Girls Education (CGE) of Ahmadu Bello University’s Population and Reproductive Health Initiative and the Bixby Center for Population, Health and Sustainability at the University of California, Berkeley.
The CGE reaches 800 girls and through the pilot phase of the AGI, UNFPA supports the enrolment of an additional 425 young girls in school, but the scale up targets approximately 114, 000 young girls between the ages of 10 and 14.
Addressing the launch of the AGI in Kaduna, Kaduna state Governor, Malam Nasir Ahmad El-Rufai warned that adolescents, who constitute 31.7 per cent of the Nigerian population must be given quality education to avoid future tragedy for the country.
He said the Adolescent Girl Initiative in Northern Nigeria led by the UNFPA and CIDA is in response to violence suffered by school girls, early marriage and low female empowerment from poor access to education, noting that if the country is able to educate its adolescents, they will contribute meaningfully to the nation’s social and economic development.
El-Rufai said “according to the Nigerian Population Commission, adolescents constitute 31.7 per cent of our population; this percentage is divided in nearly equal proportions of 50.1per cent of male and 49.9 per cent female. Interestingly, of Nigeria’s youthful population put at 44.5per cent is less than 15 years of age, while 16.4 per cent are young people aged 15 to 24 and 49 per cent are 10 to 24 years.
“This underscores the importance of investing and developing our young population to the extent that they contribute effectively to national development. It is an opportunity if we are able to make this demography healthy and educated thereby enabling it to contribute to social and economic development. It becomes a tragedy when they grow to adulthood unhealthy or ignorant or both. This tragedy even gets worse as according to estimates, this figure is expected to grow to 2 billion young people by 2050,” he said.
El-Rufai said, his government has identified the dearth of quality and free basic education as an impediment to its continued growth and has demonstrated a commitment to addressing it through provision of bursaries and scholarships, a free 9-year education policy which covers tuition, uniform and all associated costs from primary 1 to JSS III in addition to its School Feeding Programme that ensures that nearly 1.8 million pupils gets at least one meal a day in the schools.
“In spite of these measures, we know that there is still much to be done: we must support policies that address retention in secondary schools to the extent that the large dropout rates and high levels of illiteracy are reduced drastically. This is why we seek to expand our education policy to include senior secondary schools, and as soon as we can marginally increase our internally generated revenues, we will ensure that education is free and compulsory at the primary and secondary levels.”
El-Rufai reiterated that the large number of school-aged children currently engaged in street hawking or begging and other inhumane practices is appalling at best and they were taking measures to arrest it.
“We have enacted the Street Begging and Hawking (Prohibition) Law that will come into effect next month to ensure that every child above the age of six in Kaduna goes to school.
“We are pleased with the pilot of the Adolescent Girls Initiative in Northern Nigeria spearheaded by the UNFPA and CIDA in response to improved safety for school girls, delayed marriage and female empowerment through access to education took off in Zaria.
“This collaborative event with the Ahmadu Bello University’s Population and Reproductive Health Initiative, and the Bixby Center for Population, Health & Sustainability at the University of California, Berkeley, is a commendable and timely response which so far, has benefitted 425 of Kaduna’s adolescent girls.
“We thank the government of Canada for their belief in the future of the adolescent Nigerian girl with the additional funding they are providing to scale-up the Adolescent Girl Initiative to an estimated reach of 9,250 more girls both here and in other Northern states,” El-Rufai said.
Representative of the Canadian High Commission, Miss. Nancy Smith said Northern Nigeria has the highest rate of female illiteracy in the country and account for negative health outcomes which include the highest maternal mortality ratio and infant mortality as well as the highest rate of early marriage.
She said, the Adolescent Girls Initiative in Northern Nigeria, is a UNFPA-supported programme that teaches vulnerable girls about their rights, bodies and health.
“The goal of the Initiative is to improve the socio economic and health wellbeing of rural and low-income urban adolescent girls and secure their future through increased access to education, sexual reproductive health information/services and life-skills that will positively impact on health choices.”
She pledged the commitment of the Canadian government to the girl child education project in Nigeria, noting that the issue of girls child education is very important to the government of Canada, which is proud to work with local partners, United Nation agencies, to raise awareness on girl child challenges and see how the such challenges can be surmounted.
UNFPA Country Representative in Nigeria, Mrs. Ratidzai Ndhlovu, expressed the need to invest in girl child education, social protection, empowerment, sexual and reproductive health as well as skill acquisition, as panacea to underdevelopment, poverty, and general societal backwardness.
“As we dress the bed of the young girls, we need to address the need of the community. At the national level we have been able to generate evidence of best practices, we have met with various stakeholders on global programme to accelerate action to end girl marriage. Girls are tasked to read and write, to become someone and and help family and did community, improve leadership skill, self expression and build societal network.”
Wives of the Northern states governors, from Kaduna, Kebbi, Taraba and Bauchi states, in persons of Hajiya Hadiza Isma el-Rufai, Dr Zainab Atiku Bagudu, Mrs. Hannah Ishaku and Hajiya Hadiza Abubakar, respectively, expressed their readiness to take ownership of the programme and drive it to success.
Hajiya Hadiza Abubakar who spoke on behalf of the Northern states governors’ wives, equally made public commitment to work towards promotion of girl child education in their respective states and Northern Nigeria.
