Kano community enrolls married drop-out girls in school

The Tarda community in Ungogo Local Government Area of Kano State has set in motion initiatives to ensure every girl-child is not only enrolled but stays in school to complete her basic education.

According to Mustapha Abdullahi Tarda, a parent and community leader, one of the initiatives is focused on making sure that girls who were married off earlier go back to school.

He disclosed that it is imperative that every girl in Tarda community is educated, even as he believes that educating a girl is a responsibility which would not only be beneficial to the lives of young ones, parents or the immediate community but Nigeria as a whole.

“It doesn’t matter whether they are already married; we just want all our girls to get the best education here in Ungogo,” Tarda said.

The community leader held that the gap created by child marriage in the northern part of the country can be closed up should everyone contribute their quota to ensuring that no child, especially girls, is left out.

The Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) in 2017 indicates that on average girls in Kano have less than 50 percent chances of enrolling in primary school and a 30 percent less chance of transitioning into secondary school.

Besides, the United Nations Populations Fund and UNICEF states that the percentage of girls who marry before they turn 18 years accounts for an estimated 22 million child brides who live in Nigeria and mostly in the northern part of the country.

And one of the major challenges is that many of the girls, when they are married off, find it difficult to return to the walls of education either due to responsibilities on the home front or shame of mingling with others who might be younger.

However, Abdullahi, an Islamic teacher and the chairman of the School-Based Management Committee (SBMC) in the Tarda community of Ungogo LGA is poised to reverse his team by making education appealing to them.

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“The SBMC makes education appealing to these girls by making them learn in a place of comfort,” he noted.

Furthermore, he explained that the goal of the SBMC policy is to improve learning outcomes by encouraging increased state governments’ commitment to strengthen agencies to ensure inclusiveness in the management of schools, full community participation through improved advocacy and resource mobilization, communities taking ownership of schools, improved transparency and accountability on the part of all stakeholders and increased enrolment, retention of children in schools.

Continuing, the SBMC chairman said he has seen first-hand what deliberate investment in education for girls does in the lives of members of households in several parts of the country and beyond.

That is why the GGJASS runs a combination of Western and Islamic Studies which not only admits young girls but also those who are married and may have dropped out of school across the local government area.

“What we do in the SBMC as a committee is to make sure that no child, no matter your gender is left out.

“When we found out that the challenge was that many girls who were already married and dropped out of school needed to take care of the homefront, we found ways to tweak the system in their favour.

“So, now we run three sessions in the school – morning, afternoon and weekend,” Abdullahi said.

Explaining further, the education advocate said that while some of the pupils attend the morning session, those who cannot make it enrol for the afternoon session.

With pupils studying between Mondays and Friday, the SBMC created a window of opportunity for the married young girls on weekends. The married girls in Tarda community are enrolled in the GGJASS, they attend classes every Saturday and Sunday.

Abdullahi confirmed that what the community has achieved with this is that the young married girls find themselves among their “peers”.

“What we have achieved with this is that you don’t find them ashamed of anything because they are in the midst of people who they believe they are on the same level with.

“They do not feel like the younger ones or think that the other students are laughing or making a mockery of them because they are married or too old to be in school,” he said.

However, calling for government intervention, Abdulahi said the school-built PTE has been standing for over 30 years and would need to be refurbished in order to contain the growing number of enrollment.

Besides, he decried the fact that most residents of the Tarda community do not want to face the challenge of transporting their children far distances to acquire education, hence leaving them at home.

“This defeats our aim in the committee if the school is big enough we can have more children, especially the girl who might not be allowed to go the far distance in pursuit of education.

“At first, we used to come together, to provide stipends for parents as transportation to Ungogo primary and secondary school until this building was constructed. We also need desks and learning materials for the children,” he stated.