24,000 get scholarships

Cleric advocates free education for girl-child to university
More than 24,000 girls of school age have been granted scholarships at the pre-primary and primary education levels in five states of Nigeria. The five states are Kano, Kaduna, Katsina, Jigawa and Sokoto.

The girls are sponsored under the $100 million Nigerian Partnership for Education Project (NIPEP) funded by development partners and managed by the World Bank. The development partners include DFID, USAID, JICA and UNICEF.

The programme is being executed by the Federal Ministry of Education in collaboration with the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) in the five states.

State co-ordinators of the project at the first national steering committee meeting yesterday in Abuja told the Minister of Education, Malam Adamu Adamu, that thousands of schools, female students and teachers have benefited from the project.

The minister, in his remark, stated that 12,179 schools across the five states are to benefit from the school grant, while 18,421 female teachers are to be given scholarships to improve competence.

According to him, the NIPEP programme is designed “to improve professional knowledge, quality of classroom instruction and teacher assessment skills.”

Meanwhile, Chief Executive Officer of Caritas Nigeria, Rev. Fr. Evaristus Bassey, has called on countries that intend to return Nigeria’s stolen assets to put as a pre-condition free education of girls from upper secondary to university level.

He implored the Nigerian authorities to do more in terms of joint initiatives with other countries to monitor migration routes, adding that the porous nature of Nigerian borders not only facilitates trafficking, but also creates insecurity.

Speaking at the International Conference on Human Trafficking within and from Africa in Abuja yesterday, Bassey appealed to churches in Europe, Asia and North America to amplify campaign to free up stolen Nigerian assets and engage governments to return these stolen and hidden assets within their financial systems.