Five Nigerian northern states which include Kano, Katsina, Kaduna, Jigawa and Sokoto are to receive $100 million grant from the Global Partnership on Education (GPE) to shore up basic education.
Minister of Education, Mallam Adamu Adamu, who made the announcement on Monday in Abuja at the launch of the Nigerian Partnership for Education Project (NIPEP), stated that the fund would be used to improve basic education, with emphasis on the girl-child in the five states.
Represented by the Minister of State for Education, Prof. Anthony Anwukah, the minister, explained that the GPE intervention is targeted at states with high number of out-of-school children in the country.
Adamu, explained that the North-West zone had the highest number of out-of-school children even before Boko Haram began in the region.
He urged the benefiting states to utilize the fund transparently in line with the anti-corruption stance of the President Muhammadu Buhari’s government.
According to him, the present administration was commitment to providing quality education to all children across the country.
The minister said: “The North-West geo-political zone has the highest number of out-of-school children even before the insurgency even before the activities of insurgents compounded the problem with the spillover from the North-East.”
Earlier, the World Bank Specialist in Nigeria, Tunde Adekola, said the GPE, which was put in place in 2002 by member states of the United Nations, channelled donations made by international bodies and philanthropists to support educational development.
Adekola said that the bank was saddled with the responsibility of seeing to the success of the GPE intervention in the five states in Nigeria through NIPEP, adding that the programme is expected to run for four years.
On his part, Sokoto State Governor, Aminu Tambuwal, who spoke on behalf of the benefiting states, said that enabling environment would be provided for the utilization of the grants to achieve the desired results.
