Some Traditional leaders inn the country have pledged commitments to promote girl child education.
At a dissemination meeting on “Keeping Girls in School’’ The Traditional leaders, including religious leaders, development partners affirmed determination to empower young girls, women and vulnerable mothers in the country.
Available reports show that in many parts of Africa, girls drop out of school for various reasons such as poverty, early marriage and parent apathy due to poor quality of education.
According to UNICEF, for every twenty five children that completes secondary school, only nine girls do so successfully due to a complex interplay of factors including high rates of poverty safety and security concerns.
At the event, The Shehu of Bama Alhaji Kyari Umar-Elkanemi observed that socioeconomic backwardness and underdevelopment of many African countries was due to poor education of female children.
He further called for support of all stakeholders to reintegrate all out of school children back to school to ensure peace and unity especially in northern Nigeria.
According to Shehu of Bama, “in our area men don’t like taking their wife’s 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 to go to school, so that we will have female Doctors to 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.
Alhaji Mohammed explained further that the emirate council had a counterpart fund to support the indigent children as well as encourage parents on the need to educate the children.
On her part the team lead, Keeping Girls in School, Dr. Mairo Mandara said the project last year enrolled over three hundred out of school children in school from the Internally Displaced Persons Camps and also introduce them to vocational training.
“The children not knowing A, B or b a b a baba in one and half year they were able to pass JSS two examines. This shows that every child has potentials so the programme is targeted at ensuring the education of the girl child is well taking care of, at least senior secondary school.” She said
Dr. Mandara further solicited for more support from Federal government to empower traditional and religious leaders to ensure girl child remain in school.
Reporting by Florence Adewale, editing by Daniel Adejo