In a new development, The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in collaboration and with the support of some of their other developmental partners have reiterated on the importance of collaborating with the governments to build a better capacity of School-Based Management Committees (SBMCs) which will go a long way to implement on the safety and security in schools.
Mr Rahama Farah, who is the Head of the Kano Field Office of the Agency put out this statement on Wednesday, in Kano at a Media Dialogue on Girls’ Education.
He had made it clear that the that the capacity building would also run on the inclusion of the Community Based Management Committees (CBMCs) in schools to make communities more resilient.
“In Kano State through the Girls’ Education Project 3 (GEP3), funded by the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) of the UK, 300 SBMCs members have been trained.
“Schools supported through the GEP 3 have also developed School Emergency Preparedness and Response Plans to mitigate the impact of potential and actual threats on schools,” he said.
He added that multi-sectoral task teams on school safety had also been established across the 34 local government areas of Katsina state to provide quick networking among actors on school security.
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These interventions, according to Farah, are to encourage girls to attend school.
He also stressed that in spite of these efforts, a lot still needed to be done to ensure that every girl in Nigeria was enrolled, attended school and completed her education. In a bid to achieve this objective, Farah suggested that there was a need for collective support of stakeholders, especially the media.
He further expressed UNICEF’s appreciation to the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) of the UK, for funding the GEP 3 which started in 2012.
The support, he said, had expanded access to education for girls, resulting in no fewer than 1.3 million girls having access to education in the six targeted northern states of Kano, Katsina, Zamfara, Sokoto, Bauchi and Niger.
UNICEF is implementing a media dialogue on girls’ education, funded by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) of the UK and about 45 journalists have been billed to attend the dialogue and they were drawn from Northern states of Kano, Kaduna, Katsina, Sokoto, Zamfara and the FCT Abuja.