The Northwest region of the United States will benefit from an additional 5.4 million euros in funding from the European Union (EU).
At the official inauguration of the 40 million euro intervention program on education and youth development in North Western Nigeria under the Global Gateway project, the EU Commissioner for International Partnerships, Jutta Urpilainen, said this.
The initiative, according to Urpilainen, is in accordance with the EU’s commitment to reduce the high number of children who are not enrolled in school in the Northwest region of Nigeria by enhancing access to high-quality education and empowering young people in the area.
“This component is supported by a 5.4 million euro separate initiative that we signed today and is intended for teachers in order to help them develop their competence and resilience in difficult conditions.
“We must keep in mind that education is not possible without instructors, which is why we must also fund teacher education.
According to her, “the third goal of our program is really that it empowers youth with the skills they need, providing vocational education as well as promoting behavioral change campaigns to challenge harmful social norms and empower girls,”
According to Urpilainen, the European Union is similarly committed to provide vocational education and training to Nigerian young in order to give them the skills they need to succeed on the job market.
“This ambitious program, which was just begun, was created in collaboration with Nigerian authorities to ensure ownership and a suitable response to local requirements.
“The EU is not only focusing on the youth through this particular program; it is also giving the youth the opportunity to take the lead, which is why the EU established the Youth Sounding Board, also in Nigeria and in many other countries, to ensure that what we do is for the youth but also by the youth.”
According to Urpilainen, young people must be involved in making decisions by building environments and institutions that make them feel visible.
Nigeria, the most populous nation in Africa and the continent’s economic superpower, she claimed, was also a strategic partner of the EU in the West.
As a result, she stated that the initiative would be centered on getting out-of-school children off the streets and into schools, especially for girls, through a variety of components that were all geared toward accomplishing the same goal: access to high-quality education and youth empowerment.
“Education is the most revolutionary industry we can invest in, and it is the basis for building resilient societies and coming up with answers to the greatest problems of our day.
Therefore, all these many elements are actually brought together by the EU’s investment in access, skills, quality education, and youth empowerment in northwestern Nigeria. The deployment will take place in Northwest Nigeria.
In addition to addressing the issue of out-of-school children, Urpilainen stated that the program would also provide direct assistance to families, monetary transfers, social protection, income generating, gifts, and indirect assistance through agricultural techniques.
She stated that promoting validated teaching and learning in the targeted schools is another goal of the program.
She claimed that the initiative would promote community-based and state-level capacity to deliver on education, as well as child-centered medical, sexual and reproductive health, and racial gender equality training.
Gov. Umar Namadi if Jigawa responded on behalf of the Northwest governors, thanking EU for helping the area combat the plague of out-of-school children.
“The Northwestern states have the biggest population in the nation and are more educationally underprivileged, so this support is timely.
Education is a top concern for everyone of us, and we have each made a personal and group decision to invest in it. We are prepared to change the narrative over the next four years.
“This contribution has arrived at the perfect time, and I can guarantee you that it will play a significant role in aiding our efforts to reform education in our various states.
The outputs will be something commendable to strengthen our educational system and other areas of social development, he assured. “This intervention will be used in the best way possible,” he stated.
Tahir Mamman, the minister of education, asserted that youth empowerment and education were essential for growth.
“We are playing with the nation’s future if we do not properly care for, educate, and empower our kids. If you don’t take care of them, poverty and insecurity will spread.
Mamman urged state governors to prioritize empowering young through education and noted that the European Union’s goals for reforming the sector were covered in the soon-to-be-released strategy for the education sector.
He stated that in order to address out-of-school children and adolescent girls who need to be trained and given power, the Ministry’s attention is shifting to basic education.
He continued by saying that the administration is prepared to devote 25% of the budget to education.
The policies that would support that budget are all that the President, in his opinion, requires, and that is what we are working on, Mamman added.
