Girl Child Day: Improved access to ICT is empowering the girl child – Abia First Lady

Nkechi Ikpeazu, wife of the governor of Abia State, has observed that there has been a slight improvement in the status of the girl child in some segments of society.

She however, pointed out that things were far from being idyllic as a lot more needed to be done.

While speaking during the event to mark world International Day of the Girl-child; Ikpeazu said there were still quite a number of problems that confront the Nigeria girl child, directly and indirectly, thereby limiting her development.

She named them to include, sexual abuses, poor access to education, child labour, forced marriage, as well as discrimination in the family nucleus and society.

On the theme of this year’s celebration, the Abia First Lady said the Digital Generation had come up with a new set of challenges that needed new strategies to combat them.

“One of the strategies is to increase access to Information and Communication Technology for the Girl Child. In this twenty-first century, science and technology is the oxygen that keeps society alive and is capable of empowering the girl child beyond the limitations I mentioned before,” she said.

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“As our world becomes a global village where information and knowledge can be gotten at the speed of light, we can close the gender gap by increasing the access girls have to information and communication technology. I must concede that there have been some successes in this regard in the area of early and tertiary education, entrepreneurship, entertainment, marketing and others however things are far from being idyllic as a lot more needs to be done. In Africa, one of the issues would be to increase internet penetration rate and to make access to internet a human right,” Ikpeazu opined.

“We must also promote the girl child as agents of change. We need to invest in them and protect them from gender-based violence. We need to tackle inequalities and discrimination on many fronts,” she added.

Ikpeazu called on governments, community-based organisations, faith-based organisations, civil society groups, human rights groups our husbands, and other stakeholders in society to devote more resources to developing, protecting and empowering the girl child.