The Federal Government is planning to increase school enrolment in the country by 13.6 million children in 2020, the focal person of the federal government’s Social Intervention Investment Programme for Niger State, Mrs Afiniki Dauda, has said.
MrsDauda alsospoke of plans by the President Muhammadu Buhari-led administration to ensure that the pupils are physically and mentally fit to face the rigours of not only education, but life itself.
However,she could not give the actual number of children presently in schools across the nation.
“This is one of the reasons the Federal Government introduced the Home Grown School Feeding and Health Programme and other social security schemes,” she said.
Speaking with some select journalists after assuming office as the Focal Person for the Federal Government programmes in Niger State on Wednesday, Mrs Daura said the Federal Ggovernment is also determined to bring back into the school system 11.4 million children, mostly girls.
She said government is worried over the gender discrepancy in schools’ enrolment, which tends to favour the male against their female counterparts.
She added that the policy would “prepare them for tomorrow and discourage them from being involved in crime.”
Daura said the Niger State office of the agency had taken off, and that the first activity to be performed is the flag-off the empowerment scheme, for which participants in its first phase have been selected.
According to her, participants are drawn from the three senatorial zones of the state based on the statistics on the poor and vulnerable of the society as recently provided by the World Bank.
She was, however, quick to add that the agency would be fair to all stakeholders;adding that the federal governments’ empowerment scheme in Niger would be flagged off next week because, “President Buhari is seriously committed to wiping out poverty from our country.”
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