Girl-Child Education: A 500 Capacity Girls-Only School in Adamawa Now Has Only 17 Students, 7 Teachers -C-CAGE Sounds the Alarm

Daily Rendezvous

The Community Led Collective Action for Girl-child Education, (C-CAGE) has raised the alarm over the deplorable situation at a Girls-Only school in Pare, Numan, where a 500 plus Government Girls Secondary School, has sharply declined to a School with only 17 students and 7 teachers.

C-CAGE said, its investigation shows that the school lacks basic WASH facilities, delapidated structures, lacks perimeter fencing and that the area where the school is located has been a subject of conflict in the past.

The organisation said, there is an urgent need for government to restore the school to its lost glory and include the plan to revamp the school in the 2022 budget in order boost the female chilld access to safe and qaulity education.

This was made known at a press briefing by the Senior Programme Manager, of the Community Led Collective Action for Girl-child Education (C-CAGE), Lawal Amodu, and made available to Daily Sun, over the weekend in Yola, Adamawa state.

Outlining some of its notable achievements, C-CAGE said it, has been able to draw the attention of government to a girls school at Pare, where the structure has delapidated and the 500-student capacity school has shrivelled into a worrisome state where there are only 17 students and 7 staff including the principal.

The organization used the occasion to call on the Adamawa state government to pay special attention to the Government Girls Secondary School, Pare and include in in its 2022 budget in order to boost the girl-child's enrollment into school in the state.

While commending the Fintiri led government for its outstanding work in education in the state, C-CAGE, however, laments that the best intentions of government could be threatened by the shoddy activities perpetrated in some some schools as observed in its focal LGAs.

It notes that, some principals in Numan and Maiha, still impose payment of fees on students and that it is still a common practice in some remote villages of the state, to charge for school fees, thus, deterring several female children the opportunity to enroll for formal education against government's best intentions of declarating free education in the state. 

It states that some parents in Maiha still adamantly hold back their female children from school and that it would continue to draw the attention of government to such ills until it is corrected.

C-CAGE speaking on its core mandate of boosting the female child enrollment I school, it said,"it has added additional nine (9) safe spaces for the Girl-child in Za-Dumne, Hombo, Bakka (Song), Gwaida-Malam, Pare, Sabon-Pegi (Numan) and Hole, Maksha and Lugdere (Maiha), across the three targeted local governments in the senatorial districts of the state.

"As at today, the total school girls enrolled by the project is 1221 away from the initial figure of 960.

"This figure is expected to increase in the coming weeks because of massive mobilisation efforts of the community gate keepers who feel obliged to ensure that out of school girls in their community go to school.

"Twenty-five safe spaces have been established so far, while each of the newly established nine safe spaces for in and out of school has the capacity to host fifty girls on the average."

The coordinator of the programmed said, the peer learning clubs or safe space created by C-CAGE has become the springboard for admitting girls into the formal school system and for equipping girls with skills and trades, in order to help them become self-reliant and productive members of the society.