Girl Child Education in Northern Nigeria- Way Forward
How can we breach the gender gap? A lot of this has arisen in different level and spaces, out of the several ways which may include, Influencing policies that give room for women inclusion in different sectors , mainstream gender sensitivity in workplace, give room for women to attain managerial positions, redress limitation or hinderances to women political participation, advocate for quality maternal health care, bridge the gender gap, equal work for equal pay, strengthening existing community structure that encourage women participation in decision making within their spaces, speaking up against harmful cultural practices that affect women, speaking up against all forms of violence against women and girls, advocate for policies, legislations that guarantee women access to land, advocate for access to internet, phones and technology, breaking and standing up against cultural tides that relegate women to the Home front and nothing more. This list is not exhaustive and there is one which I didn’t mention and its quite deliberate, you may have only notice now, and before I let that out, lets answer this question how can the above mentioned be achieved? For any of this to be possible we need the capacity to engage and demand for these till change occurs, such capacity are built over time, they are not gotten from the classroom but it is the foundation upon which knowledge is birthed, reasoning is born, and a better life is demanded.
Education is that’s one tool that revolves around everything else, that’s the foundation for any given awareness on a situation that’s will trigger demand for change, North east Nigeria is lowest rated region of Nigeria because of the rate of out of school children, this has affected us greatly and has reflected in youths without jobs, increase in drug abuse and misuse by the youths and poverty. Looking at it through gender lenses , we have more out of school girls than boys, several reasons accrue to this, ranging from cultural and societal hindrances to poverty and lack of access to schools, and then the deadliest activities of Boko Haram in the North East which has lingered for over 10 years using abduction of school girls for their fame and element of gaining world recognition by subjecting this young girls to various forms of violence, such as young brides, sex slaves, IED explosive agents among others. Boko haram target on schools girls is a deliberate and conscious action, which is aim at reminding the world of their objectives which include crippling the education system (western education to be precise) and in so doing deterring others who are aspiring to be in schools and change the world, this act of violence against school girls by Boko Haram has affected those society and aspiring young girls, it has instilled fear in parents , community and other places at large. These happenings have served to exacerbate gender inequalities with parents resorting to marrying off their underaged girls to reduce their susceptibility to abduction by Boko Haram.
The closure of schools as a result the insurgency has created a wide gap for education and even more so for girls because of the many reasons stated above stemming from root causes and triggers evident in the area. The retrogression in North eastern Nigeria as it affects girlchild education widens gender gap in all spheres. So the pertinent question is; how can we recover from this?
There is no one size fits all solution to the issues of girl child education. The approach should be multi-dimensional. How do we encourage girl child education in the face of abduction of girls in schools? How can girls be specifically targeted in North Eastern Nigeria without exposing them to more risks? Informal education models targeting more girls in emergency without them leaving their safe zones can be an approach to addressing this gap. The other alternative is relocating school children to safer environment for the purposes of learning, that presupposes emergency expansion of boarding facilities in safer zones so that children especially girls do not loose out in an emergency context. This will require support from the government and parents as well with safety procedures to ensure that the programs support the right to learning in a safe environment.
To ensure the quality of education in the North East we need to raise the bar, Government, Stake holders, Education Parastatal and Educational project can focus on building the capacity of teachers in existing schools to ensure that access to education is also qualitative encompassing life skills and independent livelihoods into educational programmes for better sustainability. this approaches are adoptive but non exhaustive .#NotAnotherNigerian NEIEF FELLOWS Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala
