---Seeks collaborative efforts to promote gender equality
By James Nwakpa
As efforts are been intensified to achieve gender equality and girl child education across the globe, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has carried out inclusive advocacy on the need to shun all forms of gender-based violence against female folk in Ebonyi state.
During a joint advocacy campaign on the UNESCO-Peking University of China Project on promoting school health education of girls in Africa in the COVID-19 era, at Iziogo in Izzi Local Government Area of Ebonyi State, emphasis was placed on the need to encourage adolescent girls and teenagers to be at par with their male counterparts as the leaders of tomorrow.
The advocacy campaign was a spillover of the inception meeting on the project which was kicked off at Abakaliki Local Government Council Nkaliki and was extended to Osborn La-palm hotels Abakaliki, with the involvement of parents, traditional rulers, community leaders and major actors in the state educational sector, including the Honourable Commissioner for Education, Chairman and members of Ebonyi State Universal Basic Education Board (UBEB), heads of ministries, parastatals and agencies.
Some of the resource persons including the National Programme Officer UNESCO, Mrs Ngozi Amanze, the representative of the Honourable Minister for Education, Dr Uche Udeorji, the representative of the Honourable Minister for Health, and Mr Abraham Sunday and the SA to the Governor on Adult Education, Barr. Mrs Stella Nwagu, in their separate but interrelated remarks, explained that most adolescent girls had faced a lot of educational and health challenges, especially in this Covid-19 era and that most of them had suffered sexual abuse, rape and other violent acts from the opposite sex.
The resource persons who advised the participants of the advocacy programme to take the campaign exercise to their respective localities also emphasized the need to take the out-of-school children back to school, as a panacea for securing a brighter future for the present and future generations.
In their remarks, the State Commissioner for Education, Dr Sunday Nwangele, the UBEB Chairman, Chief Hyacinth Ikpor and the former Commissioner for Education and presently UBEB member, Hon. Sabinus Nwankwegu noted that the state government has done a lot in the area of education and that females including teenagers and adolescent girls would continue to be at the front burner in all the plans and programmes of the educational sector in the state.
Some of the attendees of the inception meetings, including the traditional rulers, the parents/guardians and the representatives of local education authorities from Abakaliki, Ebonyi and Izzi L.G.As, thanked the organizers of the programme and promised to map out all the necessary plans and actions needed for the total implementation of the project.
