The Minister of State for Education, Prof. Suwaiba Ahmed says the ministry is planning a new programme targetted at the education of girls in hard-to-reach locations.
Ahmed disclosed this in Abuja on Friday at the re-launch of the Adolescent Girls Initiative for Learning and Empowerment (AGILE) project.
The event, with the theme: “Madubi :Empowering Girls, Transforming Communities” aimed at increasing enrolment, retention and completion of adolescent girls.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the AGILE project is a World Bank-assisted project of the Federal Ministry of Education geared at improving secondary education opportunities for adolescent girls aged between 10 and 20.
According to the Minister, every young child deserves a chance to dream, hence the girls must be supported to actualise their dreams.
“At the ministry, we are coming up with another initiative, called ‘LUMINA’ that targets girls in hard-to-reach locations, to provide them with opportunities of education and vocational training.
“This programme that we will launch is not only for the girls, but it’s also for their mothers. It’s also for the adolescent girls, and girls that have dropped out of school for one reason or another,” she said.
She called for partnership with educators, parents, media, and community stakeholders to ensure that every young child gets an education.
She urged stakeholders to remain resolute to challenge the barriers that stood in the way of girls’ education while also creating a Nigeria where all girls could look into the new millennium.
On her part, the National Project Coordinator of AGILE, Mrs Amina Haruna, said the AGILE project had enrolled 3.9 million girls in secondary schools across 18 states.
“We have constructed and completed over 200 Junior and Senior Secondary Schools, renovated 8,800 WASH/toilet facilities with boreholes and solar facilities.
“More than 460,949 furniture have been provided. AGILE has recruited and deployed 16,232 teachers with 50 per cent of these figures being female.
“53,491 teaching and learning materials were also provided to Schools for effective and efficient teaching and learning,” she said.
Haruna added that more than one million girls had graduated from life skills and digital literacy acquisition trainings of the programme.(NAN)
