As part of efforts to encourage girls’ enrolment in schools in Gombe State, the state government through the Adolescent Girls Initiative for Learning and Empowerment, (AGILE) project has organised sensitisation to schools’ principals and other stakeholders in the state on improving girls child education and empowerment.
Gombe is one of the states in the country with high number of out of schools children especially the girls.
Our correspondent reports that one of the factors that affects girls attendance in schools is the engagement of the girls for farm labour for payment of token sums of money.
However, to encourage the enrolment of the girls in schools, Gombe State through the state ministry of education is implementing the AGILE project.
Coordinator of the project Amina Haruna Abdul during the closing of the sensitisation on AGILE held at Federal College of Education (FCET), Gombe explained that AGILE is a World Bank assisted project of the Federal Ministry of Education geared at improving secondary education opportunities for adolescent girls.
She lamented that the use of girls for farm labour in Gombe was one of the problems hindering them from being in schools assuring that project would empower about 10, 000 girls in the state by teaching them skills to enable them cease hard labour and get the financial wherewithal to enrol in schools.
Also speaking, the state commissioner for education Aisha Maigari said parts of measures to stop the menace of child labour in the state, child protection law was passed into law.