No fewer than 20, 000 girls are to benefit from the Conditioner-Cash-Transfer from the Adolescent Girls Initiative for Learning and Empowerment (AGILE) in Nasarawa State to ensure improved school enrollment.
Hajjya Aishatu Aliyu-Isoga, Nasarawa State Coordinator of AGILE disclosed this at a training organised for journalists on Wednesday in Lafia.
“All new intakes into Junior Secondary School (JSS) 1 and Senior Secondary School (SSS) 1 are potential beneficiaries of the cash transfer throughout the implementation period of this programme in addition to the 20,000 students already profiled.
“The beneficiaries, who must be between the ages of 10-20 years, would get N15,000 on the transition from primary school into JSS 1 and N25,000 during payment of fees and N10,000 in second and third terms,” she added.
She added that the AGILE project was an initiative of the Federal Government with support from the World Bank and is currently being implemented in 18 states.
Aliyu-Isoga noted that the Nasarawa office of AGILE is currently implementing in seven Local Government Areas (LGAs) of the state with high cases of out-of-school girls.
She listed the LGAs to include Awe, Doma, Lafia, Wamba, Kokona, Keana, and Nasarawa and promised to extend it to the remaining five LGAs in the state for inclusivity.
“The project development objective is to improve secondary education opportunities among adolescent girls in 18 states, including Nasarawa State.
On the training for journalists, the state coordinator explained that it was aimed at equipping journalists with the techniques to prioritise reportage to encourage the enrollment of more female children in school.
She appreciated the partnership by the media since the project started in 2024 and appealed for sustained support to enable them to achieve the objective of the programme.
She also appreciated Gov. Abdullahi Sule for creating an enabling environment and through payment of counterpart, provision of office, vehicles among others and promised not to disappoint him.
Aliyu-Isoga attributed the successes recorded so far to the collaboration by traditional and religious leaders and urged them to continue to encourage the people in their areas to allow the girl-child to go to school and learn a trade or skills.
Grace Amirikpa, a Resource Person, in her paper titled, “Exploring the Impact of Media Representation on the Empowerment of Women and Girls”, shed light on the dangers of negative publicity about women in the media.
The resource person encouraged the media as well as the entertainment industries to project good things about women, assigned them positive roles, and promote stories of successful women.
“This would go a long to give the Girl-Child the necessary encouragement and platforms to know that they can also succeed and achieve whatever they want to become in life,” she added.
The training, which had in attendance journalists from print, electronic, and online media organizations, featured questions and answers as well as discussion by the panelists to shed more light. (NAN).