The United Nations Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA) Country Representative in Nigeria, Ms Ratidzai Ndhluvo, has called for effective synergy among stakeholders to strengthen adolescent girls programmes in Northern Nigeria.
Ndhluvo made the appeal while speaking at a two-day meeting jointly convened by the fund and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation today in Abuja.
She stated the forum was designed to evolve better strategies on how to empower the girl child through education.
She advised parents, governments, technical partners and civil society organizations, among others, to partner in scaling up adolescent girls education programme in Northern Nigeria.
Ndhluvo urged the stakeholders to provide the needed financial and technical support to drive the programme.
She stated the interventions should be made more sustainable, promising and viable.
As stated by her, early marriage, school dropout, adolescent pregnancy, abortion, unsafe delivery and s3xual violence are some of the challenges facing young girls in the region.
She disclosed that there are about 14 million adolescent girls in Nigeria and about three million adolescent girls in Northern Nigeria.
“Out of this figure, only about four per cent complete secondary school in Northern Nigeria,” she regretted.
The envoy explained that an effective collaboration between and among stakeholders would help address the aforementioned problems.
However, she noted that underinvestment in human resources development, poor service delivery and lack of effective information system were hindering programmes designed to empower adolescent girls in developing societies.
On the part of UNFPA, Ndhluvo stated that the intervention of the fund had led to increased public awareness, community buy-in and ownership of the programme in the region.
She also claimed that the UNFPA support had improved reproductive health education, rights and services as well as increased enrolment of girls in schools.