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UNICEF GEP3 `ll bring additional 1m girls to school by 2020

Published

6 years ago

August 27, 2019

The United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) says the Girls Education Project in six participating states will bring an additional one million girls to school by 2020.

Mr Richard Akanet, Kano State UNICEF Coordinator of the project, made the disclosure on Tuesday at a two-Day Media Dialogue on School Based Management Committee (SBMC) in Kano.

The project, funded by the Department for International Development (DFID), is expected to span through eight years from 2012 to 2020, aimed at contributing to improving the social and economic opportunity for girls.

Akanet, presenting the overview on the GEP3 project in the participating states- Bauchi, Zamfara, Kastina, Niger, Sokoto and Kano, said the project had integrated Quranic education into the formal education.

He said that the SBMC was a national strategy which was employed to get school age girls to school without neglecting the boys’ enrollment.

Akanet said that the SBMC had been able to incorporate a huge number of Quranic schools into the formal education.

He said each school has one SBMC which focus on the need of the school improvement, planning as well as improving enrollment and reducing out of school children.

According to him, target of the project is to ensure more girls in the targeted states in Northern Nigeria complete basic education, while also acquiring skills for life and livelihood.

“GEP3 has achieved a lot, especially in building the capacity of SBMCs and this allows them to prioritise the needs of their schools.

“With advocacy, we are now able to convince the Quranic schools to integrate their schools into the formal education and Quranic schools have now been integrated into the formal education.

“The work that takes place in Quranic schools under the GEP 3 is for the schools to be controlled by the state mechanism.

“We have also inculcated the core subjects to match the Islamic education. The out-of-school children have now been integrated,” he said.

Akanet also explained that the GEP 3 SBMC initiative had created 1,539 female teachers in Kano State to ease learning outcome.

He also said that by 2020, 1.6 million girls would be reached by improved teaching and girls-friendly learning environment.

The UNICEF coordinator said that by the target year, 42,000 primary and Quranic school teachers would have also been trained and mentored in child centre pedagogy.

He added that the expected result of the initiative was to ensure that 15,300 head teachers would have been trained in school effectiveness, efficiency and curriculum management.

“The programme is not focussing on girls alone, but also to make sure that by 2020, an approximate 1.9 million boys will also benefit from the GEP 3 investment through improvement to teachers quality and school governance,” Akanet said.

Also, Mr Muntaka Muktar, UNICEF Education Specialist in Kano, said that the Integrated Quranic Schools had been introduced in the state to afford children the opportunities to have formal education.

Muktar said the Quranic schools afforded children to learn within their environment, while the core subjects had been integrated into the schools.

“The integration of core subjects like Mathematics, English and others into the Quranic schools will enable children to have the opportunity to read.

“After learning from the Quranic schools, they can now mainstream it to any public school close to them,” he said. (NAN)

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Business

Tax Reform Bills: The Verdict of Nigerians

Published

2 weeks ago

March 6, 2025

The Gleamer

Ismaila Ahmad Abdullahi Ph.D

The public hearings conducted recently by the two Chambers of the National Assembly have elicited positive responses from a broad spectrum of Nigerians, cutting across regional interest groups, government agencies, civil society groups, concerned individuals, the academia, and Labour Unions, among diverse others. Contrary to a few dissensions hitherto expressed in the media, almost all the stakeholders who spoke during the week-long sessions were unanimous in their declaration that the hallowed Chambers should pass the tax reform bills after a clean-up of the grey areas.

The public hearings were auspicious for all Nigerians desirous of economic growth and fiscal responsibility. They were also a watershed moment for the Federal Inland Revenue Service, which had been upbeat about the tax reforms. Indeed, the public hearings had rekindled hope in the tenets of democracy that guarantee freedom of expression and equitable space for cross-fertilisation of ideas. Without gainsaying the fact, the tax reform bills have been unarguably about the most thought-provoking issues in Nigeria today, drawing variegated perspectives and commentaries from even unlikely quarters such as the faith-based leaders, student bodies, and trade unions, which speaks much about the importance of the bills.

In the build-up to the public hearings, not many people believed that the bills would make it to the second reading, much less the public hearings. Even the Northern stakeholders who seemed unlikely to support the passage of the bills have softened their stance and have given valuable suggestions that would enrich the substance of the bills. The Arewa Consultative Forum came to the public hearings well-prepared with a printed booklet that addressed their concerns. It concluded with an advisory that the bills should be “Well planned, properly communicated, strategically implemented and ample dialogue and political consensus allowed for the reforms to be accepted.”

The concerns of ACF ranged from the composition of the proposed Nigeria Revenue Service Board as contained in Part 111, Section 7 of the bill, the unlimited Presidential power to exempt/wave tax payment as proposed in Section 75(1) of the bill, the family income or inheritance tax as contained in Part 1, Section 4(3) of the bill, to the issues around development levy and VAT. On the development levy, the ACF stated that unless the Federal Government is considering budgetary funding for TETFUND, NASENI and NITDA, it does not see the “wisdom behind the plan to replace (them) with NELFUND”.

The position of the North was equally reinforced by the Supreme Council for Shariah in Nigeria, Northern Elders Forum, Kano State Government, Professor Auwalu Yadudu, and the FCT Imams. Like the ACF, these stakeholders lent their respective voices to the Section on the Inheritance Tax in Part 1 of the bill and the use of the term ‘ecclesiastical’, which, in their views, undermines certain religious rights and beliefs. The Kano State Government, represented by Mahmud Sagagi, affirmed that “we support tax modernisation” but cautioned that “we must ensure that this process does not come at the expense of states’ constitutional rights and economic stability”. Professor Auwalu Yadudu, a constitutional law professor, drew attention to the use of the ‘supremacy clause’ and cautioned that the repeated use of “notwithstanding” in the bills would undermine the supremacy of the Nigerian constitution if passed as such.

Other stakeholders that made contributions at the sessions included the Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas, Fiscal Responsibility Commission, Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission, Federal Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment, Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria, Chartered Institute of Taxation of Nigeria, Nigeria Customs Service, and a host of others. While most of their concerns bordered on technical issues requiring fine-tuning, they were unanimous in their support for the bills. They aligned with the position of the Executive Chairman of the Federal Inland Revenue Service, Zacch Adedeji, Ph.D. and the Chairman of the Presidential Committee on Fiscal Policy and Tax Reforms, Mr Taiwo Oyedele, which is that the extant tax laws and fiscal regulations are obsolete necessitating reforms aimed at creating a fair and equitable tax and fiscal space to grow Nigeria’s economy.

In one of the sessions, Dr Zaach Adedeji expounded on the criss-cross of trade activities in the Free Trade Zone whereby companies misuse tax waivers as exporters to sell their goods or services in the Customs Area at an amount usually less than the price the operators in the Customs Area who pay VAT and other taxes sell theirs thereby disrupting business transactions. This way, the operators in the Free Trade Zone shortchange the government in paying their due taxes by circumventing extant regulations, which are inimical to the economy’s growth.

Overall, the presentations were forthright, foresighted, and helpful in elucidating the issues contained in the bills. According to the statistics read out at the end of the hearings at the Senate, 75 stakeholders were invited, 65 made submissions, and 61 made presentations. At the House of Representatives 53 stakeholders made presentations. By all means, this is a fair representation. Given the presentations, it is evident that the National Assembly has gathered enough materials to guide its deliberations on the bills. As we look forward to the passage of the bills, we commend the leadership of the National Assembly for their unwavering commitment to making the bills see the light of the day.

Abdullahi is the Director of the Communications and Liaison Department, FIRS.

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