Kaduna disburses $21.5m scholarship for girls

The Kaduna State Government has started the disbursement of $21.568 million World Bank school improvement grant and scholarships for female teachers and girls’ under the Global Partnership for Education/ Nigerian Partnership for Education Project (GPE/NIPEP).

Speaking at the flag-off ceremony, the Executive Chairman of Kaduna State Universal Basic Education Board, Malam Nasiru Umar, said the World Bank intervention is aimed at improving access and quality basic education for out-of-school children particularly the girl’ and almajiri.

According to him, so far, the project has identified 8,050 primary one to three girls from poor communities across the state that will benefit from the 2017 grants and that the project would retain the girls in school till they got to junior secondary school.

He said 8,050 primary one to three girls will get N45, 000 each under the girl-child scholarship while 1,047 female teachers will also get N45,000 each under the female teacher scholarship.

Umar said that 4,500 Early Childhood Care and Development (ECCDE) and Islamiyya schools will get N400,000 each to improve school infrastructure.

He recalled that 2,563 ECCDE, primary and Islamiyya schools benefitted from the 2016 disbursement which, he said, recorded increased enrolment in public schools across the 23 local government areas of the state.

In a related development, the government has called for applications from qualified residents wishing to study MBBS, BSc. Nursing and Health Technology related overseas programmes to participate in the 2016/2017 examination/selection interviews for the award of the scholarships. Details could be found at www.kadunascholarship.com.ng.