The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF),says it has exceeded its initial target of attracting 1 million girls back to school through its Girl Education Project (GEP).
Senior Education Officer, UNICEF Field Office, Kano, Michael Banda, confirmed that in 10 years of implementing the GEP programme, over 1.4million young girls have been enrolled in schools in six northern states where it was piloted.
The sum of US$109,196,039 has so far been expended on the programme, implemented largely by UNICEF, in collaboration with development partners, through funding from the Foreign and Commonwealth Development Office (FCDO) of the UK,Banda confirmed .
Beyond the six northern states captured in the programme, namely Kano, Katsina, Niger, Sokoto, Bauchi and Zamfara, existing social-cultural factors tend to hinder girls from attending schools.
In most of these states, girls of school age are believed to suffer marginalisation educationally owing to perceptions and cultural norms, ranging from early marriages, street hawking, farming activities, undue preference for male children than females, among others.
Banda also re-echoed the need for state governments to take up the sustenance of the programme owing to its impact.
The UNICEF field officer said the project was a huge success as it exceeded the target set before the beginning of the project in 2012 with initial 5 states before Kano was included in 2018.
He added: “the aim of the project was to ensure that at the end of the implementation of the GEP, not fewer than one million girls would have been enrolled into the various stages of schools.The good news is that by the end of the project in September 2022, the project would have recorded a total of 1.4 million girls across the 6 implementing states. The aim and objectives of the project have been achieved”.
He noted, the success story agency has recorded so far in the implementing states, should not be allowed to go down the drain, if respective state governments can step up and take ownership of the project by allocating funds to its continuation, the girl child and society at large will be the better for it.