By Funmi Adeyemi
Plan International Nigeria has called on the Federal Government to implement policies that would promote girl-child education in the country.
The Gender Equality and Social Inclusion, Plan international, Gift Zagi, disclosed this at a forum to commemorate the 2024 International Day of the Girl-Child with students from FCT Senior Education Board (SEB).
Zagi said there was need to recognise the barriers that girls faced around the world while focusing on the lack of representation in the global development agenda.
She said the 2024 theme : “Girls’ Vision for the Future” was aimed at conveying the need for urgent action and persistent hope, driven by the power of girl’s voices for the future.
“In terms of law and policies, Nigeria is doing well in relation to girls education, because we have Child Rights Acts which makes education compulsory for all children Nigeria.
“However, when we come to the implementation of these laws and these policies that we have, you can definitely see that Nigeria is performing poorly.
“This is especially because we have challenges that affect girls ability to go to school. There’s the financial challenges, and we know that states of the economy now, it’s not very friendly.
“So when parents are thinking of how to cut down costs in their family. They can’t feed themselves. How would they now take their children to school?
“So obviously, that automatically means that girls are not going to school, then we can talk about the facilities that are in school for girls,’: she said.
In the same vein, Samuel Victor, Programme Manager, Action Against Child Sexual Abuse Initiative said the legislative system should help in facilitating laws that would be to tue advantage of girl-child education.
Victor noted if there were right policies in place as pertaining the education of the girl-child, their rights would be protected in every aspect.
“Our legislative system needs to go back and check the laws that concern and pertain the girl-child, because most of our laws are not actually strong enough to actually uphold the girl-child.
“Even the existing laws are not actually properly implemented. So this has limited the space in which the girl-child can thrive.
“If our policies are actually strong, we won’t have girl-child involving themselves in child labour and girl child who get themselves involved with child marriage,” he said.
One of the participating students, Whino Epeno, an SS3 student of Santa Virgo International Academy, called on teachers and parents to instill self esteem on the female students so they could speak out when faced with challenges.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the International Day of Girl-Child is an international observance declared by the United Nations observed yearly on Oct. 11.
The Theme for this year’s celebration is ”Girls Vision for the Future”.(NAN)
