 Two weeks ago, the Minister of Women Affairs, Pauline Tallinn, said the education of the girl child was a tough priority for her ministry. She's calling for support for girls to stay in school and complete their education. This is coming on the backdrop of data, which shows that the dropout rate of girls is higher than boys. And that participation in the sciences, technology, engineering and mathematics fields are lower for girls than boys. Boys in turn affect the number of women in decision-making rooms in the public and private sectors. Our school administrator and teaching fellow at Teach for Nigeria, Grace Anufaro, is joining us to talk girl child education. Good morning, Grace. Good morning. Okay, I want us to start off first with talking about the value of educating the girl child. Okay. Well, there's a very, there's a very pressing need for girls to be educated because generally let's even come down, so generally we all know that in the average home, the woman, a mother, a mother cannot be comfortable, cannot rest or to have kids out here. So just imagine when anyone doesn't have the means, doesn't have the resources to take care of their family. Every mother wants her child to be fine. Every mother wants to take care of her child, send her child to school. Every mother wants her child to be successful, you know, and all that. So just imagine when women do not have the resources to do that. They cannot take care of their family, which is why we have to, there's a very pressing need for girls to be educated. Okay, so how about the factors that are, you know, inhibiting this, this very important issue? How about the factors, the impediments to, you know, girl child education? Okay. First off, gender inequality, I'll start with that. I think gender inequality is for us everything. You know, when there's gender inequality, you think that the girl is not as useful as the boy, and so there's really no need to invest in her future. And when you think that a girl child is not as important as a boy child, you think that her life ends in the kitchen. So this is why we have the high rate of child marriage in lots of communities. I think in several parts of Africa, and also there's this societal, the society believes that the girl child or women generally are made for sexual pleasure or for men. They are made to be inferior to the new gender. So why do you have to waste your resources, waste your time, waste your investment or some of these who are important as the other person? So this is, like, gender inequality is the basic, the major impediment to girl child education. Is any of that changing in the last few years? Have we been able to make any steps to change some of all those narratives and to invest more in, you know, female girl child education in Nigeria? Well, I believe that nothing really, from my own perspective, nothing really has been done except that we have a couple of organizations, we have a couple of intimate laws that are doing, you know, awesome jobs to ensure that girls go to school. For example, I can speak on my own organization because I'm on the grass-scale initiative. Three years ago, we had to, we did a research on child marriage in the north and we linked it to girl child education. And we discovered that girls don't get to go to school as they shoot because of child marriage. So when a child has between eight years has to be, you know, has to be married or have an old marriage, she gets to draw from school and they say that to her husband's house. So we decided to have a partnership with NGOs in the north in particular organization that's the ICRA Foundation. And we were able to select a couple of girls who had to drop out of school and some of them who had never been to school, girls as old as seven, eight, you know, and we had to, you know, two partnerships, race, minority, police, girls in package one. We have been doing that for two years now. We try to see how we can reduce child marriage. And we have to, because another thing that is limiting your decision about that is parents. So we have to bring forward really much stakeholders like the religious leaders, community leaders, parents. And parents have to find a constant form to ensure that they allow those girls to enjoy our scholarship scheme and not pull them off because of marriage. So allow them to finish their basic education for you who think about marriage. So that's my organization and a couple of others that I know that are trying to see how they can put girls into school. I'm also thinking of putting Georgia beggars where I live, I live somewhere in open space, Chicago. I'm trying to see how we can pull out Georgia beggars from the streets and work on the local government to see how we can do this and see how we can have more girls in school. It's very important because women are actually like, you know, the backbone of girls and we need more women having resources, having the means to take care of their families the way they want to. So when we look at, you know, government effort in this regard, is this something we can praise or, you know, say they really are lacking, you know, in terms of promoting, you know, girl child education and roommates in schools, limiting child marriage, legislating laws to just ensure that girls are more involved in nation building. I didn't hear that question. Can you hear me now? Yes, I can hear you. I said, how would you score the efforts of government in this regard, you know, in making sure that more girl child are educated? Okay. Well, I've not really seen much, honestly, I've not seen much because even I read somewhere the Child Rights Act about how girls below the age of 18 should not be allowed to get married, something like that, you know, that they shouldn't get married until they are 18 and at home. When I see it everywhere that girls below 18 are getting married and everybody's happy about it, nobody's talking about it and we expect that the government, you know, we expect that seven people in seven positions should talk about it or should arrest people, we quote, arrest people who are cousins. But nothing is being done. So I really don't see, I don't see anything, you know, it's really, these are the things I feel really sad, I feel really bad when I see girls get married or sometimes they are used to it, I mean, they get born into the, you know, they get born into it and they already tell them that this is what you mean for their age and they are okay with it because there's nothing they can do. And the government, there's really nothing going on. What I can see is there's queer education, I know how to stay there, there's queer education for everyone, but there's really nothing, nothing for girls, you know, there's really nothing to balance education because from research, we have more male interest rates about 7 to 9.5 or there are about 50, I would have about 50% for females. So what is being done to balance that, nothing is being done and it's really sad, it's really sad. I really wish we can have, you know, government bodies, seven individuals, what are the opportunities to help us to reduce the old child marriage in Nigeria especially? Well, you know, those are things that we've, of course, have spoken about in the past, you know, and I believe that, you know, we're still working on, you know, hopefully there will be more bills here and there to change underage marriage and some of all of that in Nigeria. But there's people who would argue that the statistics concerning girl child education is not exactly the way it is being painted. There are a lot of young Nigerian girls who have been sent to school in the country. So would you say otherwise, would you stick to your point and say statistics that you have show that the girl child is less educated in Nigeria? Okay, well, I'll speak from my experience. I certainly am a passionate girl child, a girls writer activist and I've been into the girl child business and I remember I was 10, 14 years old. And so I'm going to use my experience from my experience, from my experience, even as a teaching fellow in digital Nigeria, you know, the boys are more enrolled in school than girls. So let me use that, let me use my experience. I see more boys in school than girls. I mean for public education, I'm not talking about private schools. For public education, what I have noticed is that more boys are in school and even when I was serving, during my NYC level speech, I noticed that sometimes, we have a lot of girls, they are in school, yeah? But sometimes they don't get to come to school and when they come the following day or maybe a week later you ask them, they say that they have to go to the market to their home or there's this thing going on in that place that most think they are girls, most think they are girls out to ornament women. So if you say that, if people say that statistics is lying or committing or being unrealistic, what about what we are saying around? What about our experiences? What about, I've conducted several interviews with women and girls and my experiences, sometimes when I scream, when I shout, when I make more of social media, people don't understand, they think I'm just being too dramatic. We have to based on what I have seen, people based on my experiences. It's not true, statistics are actually correct. Indeed, indeed grace. Indeed grace, the female literacy rate in Nigeria is way, way less than that of males. So thank you very much for your time and thoughts on this very important issue. We hope to continue discussing it and creating more advocacy and awareness for the importance of girl child education in Nigeria. So thanks again and have a great day. Thank you. All right, that's where we wrap it up today on the Breakfast and Plus TV Africa. It's been a full day today, talking about the allegations of land grab by Ned Orco, girl child education, talking about attacks by unknown gunmen in southeastern parts of Nigeria and how residents are resorting to self-help as well as a promising young Nigerian, a 21-year-old who's now found himself on the wrong side of the law. Oh, you keep calling him promising. He's smart, only smart people will be able to pull off fraud. Truth or false? He's a criminal. Stay with us. Of course, the news comes up next at 9 a.m. If you missed out on any of these conversations, remember to join us on our social media platforms at Plus TV Africa, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and our YouTube channel also at Plus TV Africa. I am Osao Gi, and I am Annette Felix. Bye-bye.