Pakistani Rights Activist Malala and Acting President Osinbajo

Pakistani Rights Activist, Malala Yousafzai, has advised the Federal Government to declare a state emergency on education  to address the challenges in the sector.

Yousafzai, made the call shortly after meeting with Acting President Yemi Osinbajo in the Presidential Villa on Monday.

The 20-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner is in Nigeria to canvass for education opportunity for the girl-child as she did in 2014 when she first visited.

She described her meeting with the acting president as very “good and fruitful’’.

Malala said: “It was a very good meeting. We had a fruitful discussion with his Excellency, the Acting President.

“I highlighted on the need to scale up education, that the government should declare a state of emergency in education because education of girls and boys in Nigeria is important.

“The federal, state and local governments need to be united on this.’’

According to Malala, her goal is to ensure that children, particularly the girl-child’s right for quality education, is protected.

“My goal is that no child should be deprived of the basic right that they have.

“So, I am campaigning for this and I hope that all my Nigerian brothers and sisters can also go to school and learn,’’ she added.

Also, her father and Co-founder of Malala Fund, Ziauddin Yousafzai, noted that the vision of the Malala Fund was to ensure that “every girl in all corners of the world gets quality, free education’’.

Malala was, on Oct. 9, 2012, shot in the head by a Taliban gunman as she rode home on a bus after taking an exam in Pakistan’s Swat Valley because she had spoken up for the right of girls to be educated.

She, however, survived the ordeal after weeks in intensive care in a London hospital.

The incident drew the condemnation of the world which reacted in horror.

Malala visited Nigeria in July 2014 to ask for  more government action to ensure the release of the abducted Chibok schoolgirls.

On that occasion she asked President Goodluck Jonathan to meet with the parents of the girls who were abducted from their dormitory on April 14, 2014.

(NAN)