By Sani Idris
Hajiya Maryam Dangaji, the Coordinator, Adolescent Girls Initiative for Learning and Empowerment (AGILE) Project in Kaduna, has restated the initiative’s commitment to its mandate of ensuring adolescent girls’ education.
Dangaji restated the initiative’s commitment in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) at the AGILE office on Thursday in Kaduna.
NAN reports that AGILE is a World Bank-assisted Project of the Federal Ministry of Education geared at improving secondary education opportunities for adolescent girls aged between 10 years and 20 years.
Dangaji lamented that adolescent girls in Kaduna State and Nigeria at large are generally faced with challenges that prevent them from accessing and completing secondary education due to socio-cultural and financial constraints, as well as infrastructural deficits.
She said that after primary six, enrolling into junior secondary school by the adolescent girls becomes an issue, which most times lead to the end of their schooling, especially in rural areas.
“For those who are poor and vulnerable, AGILE seeks to engage them to enroll into the junior secondary. When they are done with JSS 3, they also hardly transit to senior secondary.
“AGILE ensures that there is completion of secondary school education from primary school,” she said.
Speaking further, the coordinator said AGILE ensured conducive learning environment by prioritising wash facilities such as toilets and borehole water to enable the girls feel comfortable in school.
She urged all the people of Kaduna State and other relevant stakeholders in education to ensure deliberate investment in education of adolescents girls in the state. (NAN)