By Jessica John Bakari I
The commissioner of Education and human capital development, Doctor Umar Garba Pella, said the Finitiri-led administration is embarking on an aggressive campaign to enrol out-of-school children back in the classrooms.
Doctor Umar Garba Pella made this known during a sensitization programme on the conditional cash transfer program of the Adolescent Girls Initiative for Learning and Empowerment AGILE held at Universal Basic Education Conference Hall.
He explained that the AGILE project is filling in the gap in the areas of out-of-school children, especially the girl child, pointing out that Nigeria shares the largest burden of out-of-school children and the Northeast shares the same, describing it as a big problem that needs to be addressed.
Doctor Umar Garba Pella said that the finance-led administration is embarking on an aggressive campaign for the enrollment of children back to school, particularly the AGILE project.
The commissioner then calls for deliberate efforts from all stakeholders in the education sector to achieve that.
Earlier in his welcome speech, the project coordinator of the Adolescent Girls Initiative for Learning and Empowerment AGILE, Engineer Siddiki Liman stated that the event is a critical aspect of the AGILE project which aims to give incentives to adolescent girls from primary six going to JSS one and JSS three going to SS one to enable her stay in school and learn.
He explained that the targeted participants for the conditional cash transfer were religions, traditional, principals of the targeted schools as well as stakeholders in education sectors.
Engineer Siddiki Liman appeals for wider sensitization of the intervention by the stakeholders to their various communities to enable them to achieve the set objective of the AGILE project.
The project coordinator of AGILE, stresses that the criteria for the girl’s child to get the monthly incentive include, the girl must be between the ages of ten to twenty years, from primary six to just one,jss three going to SS one and must stay in school and the girls must be from the poorest background.
He further added that there is going to be leverage on the soccer register to register the girls as they have already targeted the girls to benefit from the AGILE conditional cash transfer CCT programme.
Giving the overview of the Conditional Cash transfer component of the AGILE project, the lead person of the CCT program Aisha Adamu Isah stated that the CCT is all about giving a financial incentive to the targeted girl child addressing the barriers that prevent her from to school and the money will be given to the mother of the girl or caregiver to enable her to take care of the girls.
Aisha Adamu Isah further said the criteria for selection is the girls must come from a community where poverty is rated at forty to forty-five per cent and must be willing to stay in school to learn.
There were Goodwill messages from the commissioner of women’s affairs, Mrs Neido Kufulto, and the monitoring and Evaluation officer, Mr Bathon Hyelda, among other speakers.
