He said the commission would soon introduce a policy to check the rampant cases of the girl-child’s inability to transit from primary to secondary school.

Bobboyi spoke yesterday in Kano when he opened a two-day regional consultative meeting on “Adolescent Girls on Challenges of Transiting to Junior Secondary School in Nigeria,” in Kano.

He said founded on available statistics there are over 1.5 million out-of-school children in northern Nigeria alone. “Most of these children are facing various kinds of challenges, and these include poverty, economic, social, religious and cultural problems,” he added.

He said having taken cognizance of the myriad of problems hindering the transition of the girl child from primary to secondary schools, UBEC and UNICEF had decided to invite selected victims from Kaduna, Kano, Jigawa, Katsina, Zamfara, Sokoto, Kogi, Niger, and FCT, to come and share their experiences in Kano with the stakeholders in education across the country.

He said the meeting was aimed at creating a very good atmosphere for the girls and policymakers to not only interface but interact closely and find a lasting solution to the lingering problems facing the girls. He said the choice of Sadiyya Sani popularly known as the Water Vendor and Hassana who were allowed to speak at the meeting was apt, given the fact that ” through their personal experiences we were able to hear from them how the girl-child often got involved on minimal jobs to paying school fees for themselves.”

He said the situation is so pathetic that the government must lend a listening ear to the plights of the girl child who are not given the opportunity to go beyond the primary education due to cultural, and religious considerations that encouraged early marriage in our societies.

On his part, the UNICEF education manager Mr. Michael Banda expressed happiness with the way UBEC is taking the issue of girl child reforms with all the seriousness it deserves.