PERL partners Kaduna State Government on awareness to end barriers to girl child education

By Mu’azu Abubakar Albarkawa, Kaduna

Partnership to Engage, Reform and Learn (PERL), a United Kingdom Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), programme and journalists in Kaduna, on Tuesday began discussion on how to is increase awareness against barriers to girl-child education in the State.

The State Partnership Facilitator, of PERL Mr Istifanus Akau, at the Media Strategic Session in Zaria noted that media engagement was critical to promoting girl education.

He said the meeting became necessary following the high rate of out of school girls in the state causing by different barriers.

Akau, added that UK new Official Development Assistance (ODA) strategy for Girl Education, will work towards ensuring the UK contributes to get 40 million girls into education and 20 million more girls reading by age of ten.

This He said is also inline with the Sustainable Development Goal 4, which is targeted at ensuring that all girls and boys complete free primary and secondary schooling by 2030.

“It also aims to provide equal access to affordable vocational training, to eliminate gender and wealth disparities, and achieve universal access to a quality higher education.” He said.

The objective of the media strategic session is to push for continued engagement on identified social norms and other barriers and bottlenecks to girl-child education.

Mrs Hadiza Umar, Co-Chair (Citizens), Open Government Partnership, stressed the critical role of the media in creating the needed awareness on girl-child education in Kaduna State.

She said that most of the barriers revolve around security, socio-cultural, economy, infrastructure, and water, sanitation, and hygiene, adding that the media had a critical role to play in addressing the barriers.

Umar explained that the OGP, which Kaduna State had signed unto, had provided a co-creation opportunity for the government and citizens to sit together to plan and implement projects and programmes.

She urged the media to tap into the window provided by the OGP to drive conversation around barriers and bottlenecks to girl education in the state.

The meeting was organised by PERL in collaboration with Kaduna State Basic Education Accountability Mechanism (KADBEAM) and Jalad Media Concept.

The Chief Executive of Kaduna Open Radio and Jalad Media, Joshua James said the Open Government Development Partnership OGDP has led to holding the government accountable on education and health, hence, the media must not rest on its oars in projecting citizens voice that should lead to policy formations, budgetary allocation and implementation, and service delivery.