Education
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The federal government and the Department for International Development are collaborating to offset the cost of sending girls to school in northern states of Sokoto and Niger
ABOUT 23,000 girls are to benefit from the cash transfer programme to increase girl child enrolment in schools and education in the northern states of Sokoto and Niger. By the next year the number will increase to 50,000 girls who will benefit from the programme jointly implemented by the Nigerian government and United Nations Children Education Fund, UNICEF. It is funded by the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development, DFID. The South African-based Economic Policy Research Institute, EPRI, has been contracted by UNICEF to help design and implement the programme. The programme is expected to expand and also be replicated in other states.
The money is to enable the girls to pay for textbooks and other school-related costs, as part of a UNICEF and DFID supported girls’ education programme. It is aimed at encouraging parents to send their daughters to school.
At the ceremony to launch the programme outside the primary school in Wurno Local Government Area in Sokoto, recently, several mothers received a first quarter payment of 5,000 naira ($31) for each daughter aged 6 to 15, the first payment of an annual N20,000.
“Today, we are here to officially flag off the 2014/2015 enrolment drive campaign disbursement of cash’, said Bello Yusuf Danchadi, Sokoto Education commissioner, who represented Governor Aliyu Magatarda Wamakko at the event. “ The cash disbursement will continue every quarter for the next two years’, he added.
Getting girls to enrol, and remain in school is particularly important in a country where 10.5 million children are out of school, 60 per cent of them in the north, and mostly girls.
According to Utpal Moitra, who heads the UNICEF office for north-central and north-west Nigeria, “An educated girl will have a better life, as will her family. We know that educated girls will have healthier children. Every additional year of schooling further reduces the probability of child mortality.”
His view is against the background that there is still resistance to sending children to school in northern Nigeria, in part because of a low perception of the value of education, particularly for girls, but also because many parents just can’t afford to send their children to school.
Among those who attended the ceremony was Nollywood star Zack Amata, who is producing a film that aims to encourage parents to send their daughters to school.
“We want to tell parents: ‘If you send a girl to secondary school, you will get more money later’,” he said after the ceremony. “The longer she attends school, the greater the economic benefits,” Amata, who heads the Centre for Change and Community Development, said.
— Nov. 17, 2014 @ 01:00 GMT
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