The Legal Defence and Assistance Project, LEDAP, has trained over 20 paralegals on the promotion of the Right of Girl Child to basic education at community levels in Bauchi.
Mrs Pamela Okoroigwe, LEDAP’s Senior Programme Manager, stated this while declaring the training it organised for the paralegals drawn from the 20 local governments of Bauchi State with support from Malala Fund open on Tuesday.
Statistics showed that Bauchi State has the highest number of out of school children to the tune of nearly one million children out of schools in the state.
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The Senior Programmed Manager who was represented by LEDAP Bauchi Coordinator, Mr Mbami Ilya Sabka, said with the current trend of out of school children in the state, LEDAP deemed it necessary to train community paralegals to empower them with skills needed to fish out girls of school age but not yet enrolled.
The Senor Programmed Manager said that it is disheartening enough to see that despite the constitutional proclamation of the provision of free education to Nigerians, “research shows that 50.8% of girls in Northern Nigeria are out of primary school because of poverty, sexual violence and early marriage,” she said.
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She said that the essence of the training is to identify ways through which the right of the girl-child to basic education would be promoted and safeguarded for the overall interest of society.
In his remarks at the end of the training, Mr Mbami recounted some of the achievements of LEDAP in Bauchi to include capturing over 3,000 out of schools children on its register.
He said that “presently, LEDAP has enrolled over 1,000 out of the 3,000 out of girl-child on our register with the little resources we have.”
He said that LEDAP also trained 10 community monitors trained on how to monitor enrollment of girl-child to school in Bauchi State.
Mbami added that with series of advocacy campaign and awareness creation in remote communities and towns in Bauchi State, more people begin to appreciate the existences of free education of Nigerians and the value of girl-child education.
Barrister Jaman, one of the resources persons at the programme said the rate of girl-child enrollment to school will increase provided both the organisers of the training and the participants staged a united consolidated campaign at public fora in their communities.
Some of the paralegals who spoke to WikkiTimes appreciated LEDAP and Malala Fund for the initiative promising to take the campaign the right of girl-child to basic education in their respective communities.
“LEDAP in partnership with Malala Funds is undertaking similar projects in Kano, Kaduna and Adamawa to implement the provisions of Universal Basic Education Act, 2004” in the targeted states.
