Girl’s Education Gets Boost

Nigeria has released $758 million for girl child education
programmes, the Senior Assistant to President Goodluck
Jonathan on Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), Dr
Precious Gbeneol revealed. Speaking at the launching of
3 million free exercise books distributed to pupils across
the 36 states of the federation and Abuja on Tuesday in
Abuja, Gbeneol said that the MDG had initiated
programmes to help Nigeria achieve Universal Basic
Education (UBEC) with focus on the issues of quality,
capacity, access and relevance.
“The MDGs made available over N113.75 billion
(about $758m) of debt relief to the Federal Ministry of
Education from 2006 to date, to implement various
programmes
“The programmes include the girl child education,
National Programme on Almajiri, support to the National
Teachers Institute and support to UBEC for the Federal
Teachers Scheme (FTS),” she said.
She noted that $14 million was invested in 261 local
government areas, with the execution of more than
15,000 high impact projects.
She also said that the projects were in the area of
education, income generation, agriculture, health,water
and sanitation sectors.
According to her, there has been a successful execution
of 12,342 water and sanitation projects nationwide with
the construction, renovation and equipping of 5,206
health facilities.
She said that funding was also provided to 1,704
beneficiaries to aid start-up of agriculture enterprises.
Gbeneol noted that the launching of the books was
another step to attain one of the mandatory targets of
the MDGs on universal primary education.