Governor Yari of Zamfara State:chairman, NGF

Lifestep Project, a Canadian Government funded project said it had enrolled no fewer than 7, 504 out-of-school children in schools in Zamfara State within the last two years.

The project is being implemented by the Save the Children International, a Non Governmental Organization (NGO).

Mr Tah Daniel, the Project’s Operation Manager in the state disclosed this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Gusau on Monday.

NAN reports that the Lifestep project is funded by the Global Affairs Canada with the aim of reducing early and forced child marriage in Nigeria.

NAN also reports that three states of Katsina, Jigawa and Zamfara had participated in the two year project.

Daniel said that in Zamfara six Communities across the three local government areas of Anka, Bungudu, and Bakura were selected for the projects.

He listed the communities as Abare, Gima, Sankalawa, Wuya, Danmanau and Damri from Anka, Bungudu and Bakura local government areas respectively.

According to him, the enrolment of 7,504 children back to school is one of the major achievements recorded by the organisation in the state.

He said the enrolled children comprised 3,917 boys and 3,587 girls, adding that all of them were from the six selected benefiting communities under the project in the state.

He said the projects had also provided the children with school uniforms, furniture, reading and writing materials.

“Other achievements recorded by this organisation were provision of medical and nutritional support to 1,908 children with various health cases.

“We have also established 734 Child Protection Committees (CPC) across the six selected communities and Technical Working Groups on ending child marriage at state level.

“We have also held a national conference on child’s rights in this state focusing on age of marriage and launched a campaign and national strategy to end child marriage in Nigeria’’, he said.

According to him, the organisation had also supported 21,256 adolescents’ people in various life skills programmes and 4,180 people with literacy and numeracy skills.

“We have also established 294 village savings and loans association groups with 7,226 members and trained 114 agents.

“In addition to these we secured 10,141 adolescents people with birth certification,” Daniel said.

He said the project which started in April 2015 in the state ended last week pointing out that they have already handed over all the records of their achievements to the state government.

He called on the state government to sustain the projects and look into the possibility of expanding the projects to other local government areas in the state.