THE Federal Government has revealed that 11 more states will benefit from the Adolescent Girls Initiative for Learning and Empowerment (AGILE).
The AGILE, is a World Bank assisted project towards improving secondary education opportunities for adolescent girls.
Minister of Education, Professor Tahir Mamman, made this known when he received representatives of the project in his office in Abuja.
He noted that the project had benefitted millions of students with life and digital skills.
The AGILE, initially implemented in seven states namely, Borno, Ekiti, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Kebbi, and Plateau in 2022 was aimed at empowering girls in secondary schools.
The 11 additional states to join the project are Adamawa, Bauchi, Gombe, Jigawa, Kogi, Kwara, Nasarawa, Niger, Sokoto, Yobe and Zamfara.
Mamman called on state governments to complement the intervention of the bank by raising the educational bar of students in the country.
“The schools project, which is for both boys and girls, is out to provide suitable learning environments in terms of infrastructure for a balanced academic education as well as vocational training that can support their livelihood after school,” the Minister said.
The minister, who commended the initiative, informed that parents have started withdrawing their children from private schools into public schools as a result of this innovation.
The task team leader of the World Bank, Mrs Aisha Mohammed, said that the project had impacted over three million students in the states where the project had been implemented.
“We have been able to make provisions for about 200 schools, translating to 11,000 classrooms constructed in four states.
“Also, we have a total of 800 secondary schools about to be constructed in the remaining states under AGILE.
“In all, since the beginning of this project in 2022, we have impacted over three million students in the states where the project is working and also about 13 million community members have benefitted from it,” she said.
She added that the bank was currently working with the Ministry of Finance on agreement on the effective take off of the project in the remaining states.
“The Ministry of Finance has signed the subsidiary loan agreement with the World Bank and so we will be declaring the project effective in one or two weeks from now.
“Once the agreement is effected, AGILE will be declared in all the 18 states and not the initial seven states,” she said.
In the same vein, the operations specialist from Life Skills Lead, Fatima Jagun, explained that about 33,000 girls had so far graduated from the life skill training programme offered through the initiative.
She added that it had also provided vocational skills for girls by training them on how to convert waste to wealth, meaning that they could have both academic and vocational qualifications by the time they were leaving school.
Also, the digital skills lead of the project, Ese Adeluyi, reiterated that the project had encouraged recent transition from private schools to public schools, basically due to the provision of devices for the training of students.
“Currently, we have been able to train over 210,000 students with basic literacy skills. This training in turn helps to prepare them for the Computer Based Testing (CBT) for the final year examinations.
“Teachers are also being trained on digital literacy so as to be efficient on their job,” she said.
Meanwhile, the National Project Coordinator of AGILE, Hajia Amina Haruna noted that the project had not only brought about academic progress but also mastery of hands-on skills to make the students self-reliant and enterprising.
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