Governor Aminu Waziri Tambuwal Tuesday flagged off an enrollment program which seeks to admit one million, two hundred and sixty eight thousand (1,268,000) new pupils into primary and junior secondary schools across the state.
The ambitious program, flagged off at Bodinga LGA of the state, seeks to enhance access to all eligible children to universal basic education and promote retention, completion and transition of students from basic and secondary levels to tertiary institutions in the state.
Speaking at the event, Tambuwal said government will strengthen the enrollment drive to ensure that it achieved its objectives.
He said parents would be supported with a conditional cash transfer programmes by the government to ensure they allowed their children attend classes.
To ensure further success, the government said it will deploy technology for biometric data capture of those enrolled in order to keep track of their school attendance and performance, and at the same time take steps to address constraints and challenges that may arise while they were in schools.
In his remarks, UNICEF’s Chief Field Officer in Sokoto, Mohammad Mohiuddin, said the enrolment campaign could not have come at a time considering the fact that Sokoto had the highest number of primary school children that were out of school in the country.
He, however, said that the state was currently one of the five states in the North that was benefiting from UK and US governments’ funded Girls Education Progect phase 3.
In his remarks, the state commissioner for basic and secondary education, Dr. Muhammad Jabbi Kilgore said the theme for the enrolment drive is ‘catch them early, keep them long.’
He said the campaign will be aggressively conducted to massively register children, with special focus on girl child, with a view to laying solid foundation for gender balance in schools.
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