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Early Marriage and rising poverty in rural communities, and inadequate public investment in the education sector, have been identified as the major factors pushing girls out of the formal school system in most of the States in Northern Nigeria.
The identified factors are said to be responsible principally for a situation particularly in Kano, Northern Nigeria’s most populous State, in only about 25% women are literate, despite several billions of naira, the State has invested in education in the recent times.
Rabia Adamu Eshak, Education Specialist, made this submission, while presenting a lead paper, at a Two-Day Kano Girls Education Summit organised by Bridge Connect Africa Initiative in partnership with MALALA Foundation, which was opened on Friday in Kano.
Eshak, who is the former Commissioner for Education in Jigawa Sate, said there is nothing wrong with early marriage, but, marrying out young girls early without empowering them with functional education, implies danger to their future.
She also noted with the dismay the trend in which many young girls are being forced out of schools because their parents are too poor to sponsor their education, or unable to, preferring to marry out them because they believe education has no value.
According to her, in order to address the challenge of the growing out of school children in Northern Nigeria, the educationist, suggested that the culture of marrying out girls at young age needed to be legislated against.
In the same vein, she further suggested that stakeholders in the education sector in Northern Nigeria, particularly, Government at all levels: Federal, State and Local must scale up public their investment in the sector.
She however, commended the present administration in Kano State, for declaring state of emergence in the education sector, noting that the move was a mark of commitment by the Administration to addressing current challenges confronting the sector.
Earlier, Ali Haruna Makoda, Kano State Commissioner for Education, said that the State Government had voted the sum of N13 billion for the re-boarding of 13 Girl Secondary Schools in the state as part of the efforts to boost girl child education in the State.
Makoda said the Government in the outgoing budget circle had scaled up the monetary allocations to the education sector to about 31%, the first to be done in the history of the State.
He commended the Bridge Connect Africa Initiative, and MALLA Foundation for organising the summit which according to him, came at a right time, as it is helping to generate more attention to the prevailing State of the education sector, in the State, and Northern Nigeria.
Fatima Musa Aliyu, Chief Operating Officer of Bridge Connect Africa Initiative, said that the programme with the theme: “Investing in Her Future: Advancing Girls’ Education through Equitable Budgeting”, was organised under the Bridging Access to Girls ` Education programme it is implementing.
“The Summit is convened under the Bridging Access to Girls’ Education (BAGE) Project, with support from Malala Fund and in collaboration with the Kano State Government. It will consolidate reform efforts, amplify grassroots voices, and strengthen political, institutional, and community commitments to equitable education financing and service delivery for girls in Kano State.
“It will also serve as the platform to formally declare the adoption of the Gender Responsive Education Budgeting (GREB) Framework by the Kano state government. High-level and key stakeholders, including the Executive Governor of Kano State, His Excellency Abba Kabir Yusuf, are attending”, she stated.
