Sokoto Commissioner pledges to support AGILE projects

Sokoto State Commissioner for women and children affairs, Hajia Hadiza Shagari, has assure of her ministry support to the projects of Adolescent Girls Initiative for Learning and Empowerment (AGILE) in the state.

The Commissioner disclosed this on her remarks in Monday when the leadership of AGILE in Sokoto led by it’s project coordinator, Dr Mansur Buhari, paid her a courtesy call in her office.

She said her ministry is ready to cooperate with the project especially in terms of menstrual hygiene, WASH, women empowerment among others.

She commend AGILE for all their efforts in promoting education among girl child in the state which she said will put the state on better scale in the future.

She, however, called on AGILE team to partner with the ministry in the construction of Junior Secondary School in addition to the tuition free nursery and primary school of the ministry.

“We have a Nursery and Primary school being managed by the ministry, it is a tuition free school and we want to seek your support to add to your project the construction of new junior secondary school .

“We also want you to assist us in the training of our women, we have a computer room but we will like it if you can help us get people that will train our women on how to operate computer.

“We also look for a way to train some of our VVF survivors, some of them cannot relocate back to their communities again because of stigma, we are thinking of how to empower them to make them stand on their own.”

The Commissioner, while assuring of her presence in any AGILE programme henceforth, also calls for the provision of sanitary pads to schools in order to encourage more girls are back in school in the state.

Earlier in his remarks, the AGILE project coordinator in the state, Dr Mansur Buhari, assured the Commissioner of his team readiness to partners with the ministry to achieve it’s aim and objectives.

While highlighting some of the importance of the program, the project coordinator said if not that the project is about education, it would have been housed in the ministry of women affairs because it’s all about the girl child.

“The ministry also has a special department called child department. We are here to seek collaboration with them, to see how we in the course of our implementation, work together.

“We are ready to support the ministry with any intervention it intend to give to the girl child especially those that are in school so as to improve the girl child education.”

He expressed satisfaction with the outcome of the meeting with the Commissioner which he said has given the members of the project implementation more insights on some of the challenges of girl child education which he said will be added to their plan.

He explained that as part of the intervention of the project in the state this year, 56 blocks of classrooms which comprises of 28 junior secondary schools and another 28 senior secondary schools will be constructed this year.

This he said is in addition to other projects which includes construction of school toilets especially for the girl child, provision of solar powered light in the schools, provision of WASH facilities among others.

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