Niger Govt lauds UNICEF for school enrolment initiative

The Niger Government on Wednesday lauded the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) for supporting the campaign to increase enrolment of children in schools in the state.

Hajiya Hannatu Salihu, the state Commissioner  for Education, gave the commendation during a two-day meeting on dissemination of Rapid Assessment report on Girls Education Programme in Niger State.

Specifically, Salihu commended UNICEF for the initiative for Girls Education Project (GEP III) aimed at increasing girls enrolment in school.

The meeting which had in attendance the members of the school-based management committee, mothers association, policy makers, desk officers and other education stakeholders was organised by the Niger state Universal Basic Education Board (NSUBEB) in collaboration with UNICEF.

The participants were drawn from the nine UNICEF focus local government areas of Munya, Shiroro, Agaie, Mariga, Mashegu, Kontagora, Gbako and Edati and Rafi.

Salihu said the GEP III project had impacted positively towards raising awareness and improved quality education amongst girls.

Also speaking, Dr Isah Adamu, Chairman of NSUBEB lauded UNICEF’ continuous support and participants’ commitment towards building effective teaching and learning systems in schools.

He said the meeting was to ensure the scalability of the project through community engagement and ownership as the project comes to an end.

In his presentation, Mr Olasupo Tajudeen, a facilitator of the initiative, explained that the aim of the rapid assessment was to assess the extent to which GEP III intervention has increased girls enrollment, retention and transition.

He said the statistics for GEP III and none GEP III local governments indicated excellent internal consistency in primary one enrollment indicating the intervention had made a positive impact.

Tajudeen said that the rapid assessment on EDC revealed that girls retention rate to JSS-three had slightly dropped from 86.4 to 81.8 per cent over the years largely due to insecurity and COVID-19 pandemic

He mentioned the recommendations to include; the need for a continuous EDC campaign across GEP III and none GEP III local governments to help sustain the state wide enrolment in schools.

He added that the government at all levels should improve on general security so as to improve and sustain EDC as well as attendance, retention, completion and transition of girls’ education.

One of the participants, Hajiya Hussain Ango, Chairperson of Mothers Association, said the initiative had improved the capacity of children especially girls as those who dropped out of school were now back in school.