Gombe State Project Coordinator of Adolescent Girls Initiative for Learning and Empowerment and former dean of the School of Vocationals at Federal College of Education (Technical), Gombe, Dr Amina Haruna-Abdul, tells CHIMA AZUBUIKE how the right environment can boost girl-child education in the North
You were recently appointed by Governor Muhammadu Yahaya as the head of Adolescent Girls Initiative for Learning and Empowerment in Gombe State, but there are many educational programmes geared towards the development of the girl-child. How different is AGILE?
AGILE is a new project by the World Bank which the Gombe State Government invested in and is a participating state. The project is a comprehensive one for the girl-child, education in Gombe State, secondary schools, and even the boy-child. The project has three major components. The first is creating safe learning spaces, and accessible learning spaces, especially for the girl-child. This will entail building new schools where there are none. Most of our schools don’t give regard to water, sanitation, hygiene, and environmental facilities. This project is specific about it and it will be inclusive. This project focuses on sustainability particularly as we are expected to leverage existing structures. All girls secondary schools will be a priority and we have many of them like the ones in Kuri, Doma, and Kumo. We will look at them and see how to make them conducive for the girl-child.
How is the initiative helping the girl-child to acquire useful skills?
The second component of the project focuses on life skills. It’s expected that every girl-child should complete at least secondary school education before either getting married, going further, or becoming an adult. These digital vocational life skills will equip the girl-child for a successful transition into adulthood. If she is to get married after secondary school, fine, but she would have the knowledge and skills to take care of herself, her baby, her family, and everything. She would have the foundation to build on should she consider going back to school. Also, in this era of digital skills, nothing moves without information and communication technology. In the future, even the teaching and learning process will be through ICT but some of our teachers don’t have enough knowledge on it, not to mention the children. When students go to register for the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board’s examination, they don’t find it easy. So, with this project, it’s expected that every child will be computer literate and will be able to use the Internet for many profitable ventures.
What educational opportunities exist for the girl-child who could not complete secondary education due to early marriage?
We have second-chance education. As the name implies, the girl-child who has yet to complete secondary school for one reason or the other – either due to early marriage or pregnancy – has a chance to enroll to complete their secondary education and hopefully proceed to receive tertiary education. For those with financial difficulties due to poverty, AGILE thought about it and has taken care of that. There will be scholarships for girls from poor backgrounds; a stipend will be paid to the girl-child for the first to third terms for them to remain in school. Naturally, the project aims to increase the enrolment of the girl-child and enable them to complete their secondary education. We have monitoring and evaluation; no project will be complete without effective monitoring, which is the third component of the project to strengthen the system as it will help the World Bank and the State to strategise towards future improvement. This project is comprehensive and we are happy it has come to Gombe.
How would you describe the level of out-of-school children, especially the girl-child, in Gombe State before AGILE was introduced?
We can’t thank the Governor of Gombe State, Muhammadu Yahaya, enough because this is a rare opportunity that he has given to change the situation of the girl-child which has been a cause of worry for me especially in Gombe. Girl-child education is in a bad situation. If you have taken the road to Bauchi, you would have seen many of our girls on the road waiting for someone to hire them for farming. Some are too young, and most of them have not completed secondary school yet they are on the road. They are picked up by unknown people in the name of taking them to farms; some of them get molested and become sick and their parents won’t know their situation.
Half of the number of the girls who enrol for school hardly complete their education up to the secondary school level; they drop out for one reason or the other. Some have to trek long distances to go to school which discourages them. Some of them, because of the nature of the girl-child, are shy. So, if they go to school and the environment is not friendly or safe, they leave. A girl-child experiencing puberty may need special WASH facilities when she goes to school but when none is available, she becomes discouraged. Most of our schools don’t have good toilets, and some don’t have water supply. So, how will the girl-child stay in school in that condition? Poverty is real. Some of them don’t have food to eat, not to mention buying school uniforms and school bags. This AGILE project is God-sent because it will go a long way in improving education quality, especially for the girl-child.
What role does culture play in the education of the girl-child in Nigeria, especially the North?
If I am to rank girl-child education in the North-East and northern Nigeria generally, out of 100 per cent, will I even give it 30 per cent? It goes back to our culture and religious teachings. Culturally, the girl-child is assumed to be seen and not heard. This has brainwashed the girl-child’s parents so that they don’t want to send their children to school; this applies to all the states in the North-East where you have a poor enrolment of girls in schools. Even those that enrol drop out along the line to get married, so they hardly complete their secondary education. The situation needs a lot of intervention in the North-East and the country as a whole.
What would you say helped you to surmount the challenges as a girl-child?
I want to attribute it to the God-sent opportunity and to the fact that my parents were enlightened, and partly because we, the children, were determined to go further in our education. My father was a dispenser. He believed in the education of both boys and girls. In the village where he was a dispenser, I was among the first girls to go to school. Some people kept telling our father that we would get pregnant before we completed secondary school. Some said we would become wayward.
What did he tell them?
He didn’t listen to them; he kept saying that Nigeria had no room for lazy people. He, instead, said if we returned with pregnancy, he would slaughter us like a ram. (Laughs) With that fear in our minds, we were determined to succeed in school.
Did his insistence to send you to school have any impact on your community or influence others positively?
The village head later sent his daughter to school. I have a friend who was a schoolmate at a teachers’ college for women. She is a matron today.
When did you get married?
After the first secondary school I attended, I got married at the age of 16. With marriage comes other responsibilities like childbearing, raising the children, and shuttling between the school and other responsibilities. I had two children.
What informed your career choice?
Well, I didn’t have career guidance at that time. Initially, I wanted to become a nurse after primary school but I was told that I was too small and was advised to go to secondary school. However, I refused because my teacher was already in a college for female teachers. That was why I ended up at the college, graduated, and started teaching. As a married person, I wanted to study further. My husband asked me what I wanted to study at that time. I told him I wanted Health and Physical Education but he didn’t like it. I don’t know whether it was because I was very young and did not know how to cook but he told me to go for Home Economics instead.
I attended Ahmadu Bello University and studied Home Economics. After teaching for some time, I went to the University of Jos to study Guidance and Counselling. When I was teaching at a federal college of education, relevance was a criterion for promotion, so there was a need for me to obtain another master’s in Education and Home Economics at Ahmadu Bello University. It took three years after the completion of the master’s programme before I enrolled for a PhD, which took me four years. I thought I could rest, and just do research but I started lecturing at the College of Education, Azare (Bauchi State). When Gombe State was created in 1996, I returned to the state. I later became a substantive head of department at the Federal College of Education, Gombe. I served as a dean of the School of Vocationals, council member, secretary of the academic union, treasurer of the cooperative society, and president of Women in Colleges of Education.
How did you manage those responsibilities?
I will say that luck was on my side. I have a supportive husband. I was offered admission to study for a doctorate at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, and at that time, my children were six and three years old, so I wondered how I would manage them. My husband urged me to go but I was reluctant and that was how I missed the admission. However, when the children were older, I got an admission in Zaria and left. When I was not at home, a relative was around to look after my children. My husband is supportive; I know friends whose husbands refused to let them go to school.
Are you satisfied with the number of women in politics?
If I say I’m satisfied, I may be deceiving myself, especially with what happened in the last election where many of the female politicians I know didn’t scale through, the bitter experience of (Aishatu) Binani in Adamawa State, and that of (the late) Aisha Al-Hassan, also known as Mama Taraba some years ago in Taraba. Look at my sister, Aishatu Dukkku, a former federal lawmaker from Gombe; she performed, and she was also a vocal person who sponsored a bill on education for girls, especially in Dukku. We are bitter but we are still working towards getting more political positions. We have been talking about affirmative action, and still following the men. We pray that it becomes a reality one day.
Women and girls should not give up easily. They should try and empower themselves economically and educationally. You can’t fold your arms and wait for manner to fall from heaven. You can’t expect the men to give you a political ticket on a silver platter; you need to prove yourself to show you can do it and when they see that, they will even encourage you. It is better than staying idle and grumbling about you being denied your right. You need to prove that you can do it. I like to say that an educated girl-child is beyond price; she is worth more than gold. If we educate our female children we are improving our future and our tomorrow would be better because from a girl-child comes a mother and a nation.
How do you relax?
I’m not the type who does exercises outside because I don’t want people to stare at me. I do light exercises at home to avoid unnecessary attention. I also surf the internet with my phone. I just read posts but I rarely post things online. I still cook. I don’t leave it to the househelp. I cook my meals. I don’t always delegate it because I derive joy from making meals for the family.
What type of music interests you?
I like old-school music. When I play such music, my children usually wonder what I am listening to but I always tell them that if they listen very well, they will understand. My husband, who was a naval officer, also likes music. We have a good collection of songs.
What’s your fashion sense like?
I like being modest.
