spot_img
HomeEducationFG Should Empower Traditional, Religious Leaders To Retain Girls In School –...

FG Should Empower Traditional, Religious Leaders To Retain Girls In School – Group

Dr. Mairo Mandara, African Lead, Keeping Girls in School, Africa initiative (KGIS) has called on the Federal Government to give traditional and religious leaders central role in ensuring every child attends school.

Mandara was speaking at a dissemination meeting with the theme: “African Traditional and Religious Leaders Taking the Lead in Keeping Girls in School’’ on Monday in Abuja.

She said that giving the traditional and religious leaders this key role would translate into ensuring rigorous enlightenment within their communities that would ensure girl-child complete schooling.

According to her, religious and traditional leaders are capable of disseminating the message and the desired change needed to transform the country.

She described the initiative, KGIS as a two-year scheme introduced in Nigeria and Ethiopia, to make traditional and religious leaders champions for retaining girls in schools.

“What has resulted in the two years pilot of KGIS in Nigeria and Ethiopia is that we have been able to inculcate over 800 traditional leaders and religious leaders to be champions for keeping girls in school.

“Before, we used to say that our culture and religion do not encourage education, what we found out is that this is not true, but our approach to doing things.

“What we have also achieved is ensuring traditional leaders take the lead in advocating and ensuring girls complete at least secondary school.

“When these religious and traditional leaders talk to parents who do not go to school, they actually listen to them and so, they put their children in school,’’ she said.

Mandara said that getting the girl-child in school and ensuring they completed their secondary education would go a long way in addressing poverty, maternal and child mortality, increase family health and income.

“We need to ensure that traditional and religious leaders are given central role in monitoring schools, in ensuring every child goes to school and in ensuring every teacher goes to school.

“This is because they are the closest to the community, so the government needs to give them that role to play.

“We need to use the power of religion to ensure that girls go to school.

“Because the data that we have seen shows that when girls complete secondary school, it will reduce maternal and child mortality, increase family health and also increase family income,’’ she added.

Mandara also advocated making secondary education the minimum benchmark, compulsory for every child rather that the basic education which it used to be.

She said that through the initiative, a secondary school had been established in Borno that accommodated over 300 girls, affected by the insurgency.

The African lead said that those girls within the space of one and a half years could now read and write, were computer literate and also could have a skill to learn.

The Shehu of Bama, Umar El-Kanemi, said that the role of traditional leaders was vital in ensuring that the girl-child remained in school.

“We try to encourage girls into schools and with this, we have recorded improvement and are happy seeing our girls returning to school.

“When you go to our area, most people don’t like to take their wives to the hospital because male doctors attend to their wives.

“So, in that line, we try to encourage them and as well try to unify the whole community to love one another and as well forget about the past,’’ he said.
The Emir of Zamfara, Alhaji Attahiru Mohammad, said that the state had also engaged in advocacy, sensitisation and enlightenment programmes to have girls in school.

“During the advocacy, we have made it clear to parents that this is beyond the government and a lot of them are doing well by providing what they require concerning education.

“For the poor families who could not sponsor the education of their child, we have the Emirate Foundation where we raise appeal fund to help them,’’ he said.

In the same vein, Dr. Saadhna Panday-Soobrayar, the Chief Education, UNICEF Nigeria, said investment in girls’ education, in particular secondary education, would dramatically increase the lifetime earnings of girls.

She said that this would also reduce early child marriage, child mortality rate and child stunting.

“In my home country, South Africa, we demonstrated that simply keeping girls in secondary school (with no other intervention), was enough to protect girls from early pregnancy and HIV.’’

Panday-Soobrayar said that Nigeria had advanced in closing the gender gap in education, but significant regional disparities that remained was in enrolment, retention, and transition rates for girls.

“One in two girls do not transit to junior secondary school and in rural areas. For every 25 boys, who complete junior secondary school, only nine girls do so.

“This is fuelled by a complex interplay of factors including high rates of poverty, safety and security concerns, gender biases and social norms and traditions.

“There is no magic bullet to solve girls’ access to quality education. It needs sustained, comprehensive, multi-sectoral and multi-stakeholder initiatives that are delivered with speed, scale, and quality.

“ While government attends to improving the supply of quality education, provision must be matched with demand for high quality education,’’ she said. (NAN)

Related Posts

spot_img

latest articles

explore more