Borno state government says about fifty thousand adolescent girls will be empowered with life skills in one hundred schools across the state between 2020 and 2025.
State Programme Coordinator Adolescent Girls Initiative for Learning and Empowerment AGILE , Alhaji Ibrahim Baba stated this at a sensitisation workshop on domestication of safe spaces handbook organised by Girl Child Concerns in Maiduguri.
Represented by Component Lead Life Skills of AGILE Hajiya Jalo Ahmed, the Coordinator said the skills will be in areas of reproductive health, leadership and communication skills, climate change among other.
According to him, the Initiative is expected to reach fifteen thousand adolescent girls with life skills in the first and second phase of the programme.
Alhaji Ibrahim Baba called for collective effort to sustain the programme.
“In anything that you wanted to do in terms of schools, in terms of sustainability, in terms of retention and transition you suppose to involve the stakeholders because they are the key gatekeepers, if you want sustainability you have to be with the stakeholders that is community leaders, traditional rulers so that the sustainability can be planned ” Baba said.
The Coordinator Girl Child Concerns Hajiya Hauwa Musa Goma observed that girl child education has been seriously disrupted by the thirteen years insurgency.
She noted that the Academy has been sensitising IDP girls, orphans and the vulnerable on the importance of education and contribute their qouta in development of the society.
“It is our believe that at the end of this training, they are going into their various communities to ensure that they encourage parents to enrol their girls in particular into various schools and we are hoping that it will work ” Hajiya Goma remarked.
Some of the stakeholders at the workshop Dr. Maryam Bukar of Borno state University and Education Secretary Konduga local government Malam Bunu Mustapha who lauded the effort, however called for the inclusion of boy child in the programme to give them a sense of belonging.
Cov/Dauda Iliya
