Agaju Madugba, Gusua
Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, has commended the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) over its efforts at ensuring basic education for the girl-child in northern Nigeria.
The minister spoke, on Monday, in Gusau, Zamfara State, at the opening of a two-day media dialogue workshop for the Girls For Girls (G4G) Initiative of the Advocacy and Child Rights Information Bureau (CRIB) of the Federal Ministry Information, in collaboration with the UNICEF.
According to the minister, “It is worthy to note that girls are very important part of our society and, indeed, a high percentage of success in developmental processes in any society can be associated to them because of the peculiar space they occupy in homes and the roles they play in the society at large.
“We all know that the G4G Initiative is a component of the Girls’ Education Project Phase 3 being implemented in northern Nigeria to help support girls to remain in school and improve their learning achievement.
“There is need to appreciate that some progress has been made in this bid but a lot still needs to be done considering the fact that a large number of girl children are yet to be captured in the programme.”
The minister also said that the dialogue was designed to enlighten the media on girl-child education issues in the focus states.
In his remarks, the CRIB Head of Advocacy, Olumide Osanyinpeju, said the project was launched in August 2017 and identified the focus states for the G4G Initiative as Bauchi, Niger, Katsina, Sokoto and Zamfara states.
According to him, the media dialogue would also enable participants, “To experience firsthand and gain insight into how the project affects the lives of girls who have participated in the G4G Initiative.”