 Just as I walked in here, I asked one of the members of my team to count how many men and women are here, and I'm happy to announce that there are 69 men and 34 women in the space. So it is, I think it's very heartwarming to see that we have a he-for-she audience here, many men who are committed and interested, at least interested enough in matters concerning the girl child in Nigeria. The African Child Policy Forum, Ethiopia, and the Women Arise for Change initiative, as well as the Africa-wide movement for children, deserve every commendation for providing us with this very important platform for a national dialogue on creating an enabling environment for the girl child in Nigeria. I think the choice of the theme towards a girl-friendly Nigeria is an inspired one because it underscores the point that because of the multi-faceted dimensions of the challenges that girls face in all aspects of life, we must adopt an all-of-society approach to preferring solutions. Our thinking on these issues must be dynamic and versatile because the challenges continue to evolve and even mutate with the social pressures and conditions of every passing day. For example, the COVID-19 pandemic and the lockdowns have been empirically shown to have increased school dropouts and also low-income families have increasingly experienced child marriages, adolescent childbearing, and gender-based violence. The sharp drop in income for many families here in Nigeria and of course in many low-income countries and perhaps even all over the world have resulted in families making choices that almost always disfavor the girl child. Of course, female children have suffered disproportionately from the displacement and deprivation from insurgency and conflicts in the Northeast and in other parts of the country. The problems are many and I'm not going to preempt the dialogue by delving too widely, so I'll just for the next few minutes focus on what our government has endeavored to do towards creating a more girl-friendly Nigeria. Over the years, government has acknowledged that the best interest of a child shall be of paramount consideration in all its actions and this was demonstrated with the enactment of the Child Rights Act in 2003 and more recently the Violence Against Persons Prohibition Act which has been referred to cofiously by the Honourable Minister. But today we have of course noticed that states of the Federation have been very slow in domesticating these laws for the Child Rights Act 26 states, for the VAPP 29 states. So at the National Economic Council, which is the monthly meeting of Governors that I have the privilege of chairing, we've made a point of working with the states to ensure that they adopt these acts in their states and we've also put in place a monitoring mechanism to push and harass the states as much as we can to get them to adopt these legislation. So this led to the creation of the Human Capital Development Unit with a special NEC project, a special National Economic Council project headed by a special advisor to track the implementation of relevant policies and laws and to track domestication of legislation. We've also committed in word and deed to education so that we can ensure that no child is denied access to free basic education. We believe that free and compulsory education of girls is game changing in many respects and it has been empirically shown to positively impact the age of marriage and even maternal and infant mortality. In 2020, the Federal Executive Council approved a world bank credit facility in the sum of $500 million to finance adolescent girls' initiatives for learning and empowerment. Now this is to improve secondary education opportunities among girls in targeted areas of participating states and these states includes Bono, Ekiti, Kaduna, Kano states, Katzena and Kebi and also Plateau State. Now the project itself is aimed at creating safe and accessible learning spaces and advancing an enabling environment for girls and strengthening the institutional capacity of federal and state governments to support girls' education and empowerment. So the project targeted girls between the ages of 10 to 20 with a strong focus on disadvantaged adolescent girls from poor local government areas with low secondary transition rates and also from girls in the poorest or from the poorest households. This intervention is projected to benefit at least 6.2 million girls and boys. Since 2016, the rule of law advisory team in the presidency and that is located in my office has been taking a range of steps towards achieving a strong justice response in supporting women and girls. We've formed strategic partnerships with relevant stakeholders, local and international including the European Union, rule of law and anti-corruption programs, the Open Society Initiatives for West Africa, the Cannes Foundation and the Ford Foundation. All of whose commitments have proven very valuable in supporting our efforts to succeed. To ensure effective coordination of responses to cases of sexual and gender-based violence, the rule of law team supported the establishment of sexual and gender-based violence response teams across the country. In November 2019, in an effort to enhance access to justice, we secured a toll-free emergency number and a short code for the federal capital territory SGBV response team with the general support of Airtel, Airtel is a telecom company. We also developed referral guidelines for gender-based violence response in Nigeria and a national guide for the establishment of sexual assault referral centers in Nigeria to further enhance coordination. Also in 2019, the president directed the National Human Rights Commission to set up a special panel to investigate cases of unlawful arrests, assault and sexual and gender-based violence in the federal capital territory following complaints of raids of nightclubs and arrests of women by the police. The panel comments sitting in the FCT and in the six geopolitical zones, but hearings were truncated due to the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. The panel resumed sitting in April 2021 and I'm told that all hearings have now been concluded and so we look forward to receiving the reports from the National Human Rights Commission. First responders, like the police and response teams, are central to all the efforts that we make, especially to address sexual and gender-based violence. As a result, we are currently supporting the implementation of projects that are aimed at strengthening the capacity of the Nigeria Police Force and the FCT response teams to effectively receive, record and respond to violence against women and girls in Nigeria. The presidency continues to work closely with key line ministries, especially the Ministry of Women Affairs, the police, the donor partners, civil society organizations, to implement practical solutions and models of excellence and standardized operations that support survivors and punish perpetrators. From 2015, we have ensured that all government social and entrepreneurial programs have an affirmative component for women. And the reason why we've done this is because we very strongly believe that girls, young girls need strong role models. They need to see role models of successful women at all levels of society. And this is the reason why we insist that all of our social and entrepreneurial programs must have an affirmative component for women. And so of the 2.4 million beneficiaries of our government enterprises and empowerment program, 1.2 million were women. That is 56.4 of the beneficiaries, 6.4 percent of beneficiaries. A total of 38 billion Naira in loans have been dispersed over the last four years. Of the 1.1 million beneficiaries of our conditional cash transfer programs, 1.078 million of them are women. That is over 98 percent of beneficiaries of our conditional cash transfer. In addition, our youth employment program, the NPA, where we've engaged 526,000 young people. And just recently the president has asked that that be increased to a million young people. Of the 526,000 that we've employed, 40.4 percent of them are female. And of the 106,074 cooks in our homegrown school feeding program, 97 percent of them are females. We also implemented a payroll support program, which was designed to mitigate income losses in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. And this is part of our economic sustainability plan. And of the 307,113 employees that have benefited so far from that payroll support program, 130,000 of them, or 43 percent of beneficiaries, are female-owned businesses. Female-owned businesses constitute over 40 percent of the beneficiaries. And of the 94,318 artisan beneficiaries of the program, 40,336 of them are women. So far, what we've tried to do is to ensure that affirmatively, whatever the program may be, we take a certain percentage and dedicate a certain percentage to women. And also, all our grants to MSMEs, and we've had so far several grants to MSMEs, you've ensured that a minimum of 35 percent of those grants go to female-owned businesses. But despite these efforts, we still have a very long way to go, not just because the numbers are huge, and we have to deal with huge numbers, and that the resources are limited. But also because the discriminatory, social, cultural, and in many cases organizational practices and attitudes are deep, and which brings me to the point that the federal government, that while the federal government strives to remain focused and committed to advancing effective approaches to keeping girls safe and to ensuring that girls are given a fair chance. It is important to emphasize that the states and local governments have an even more important responsibility. The federal government of Nigeria, as you know, we run a federal system. And questions of education, questions of medical care are essentially state matters. Primary education is state and local government. The federal government has only about 100 schools, of the hundreds of thousands of schools there. So sometimes when we talk of out-of-school children and when we talk of problems associated with education, we tend to focus on the federal government, whereas the federal government does not run primary schools. That's not the business of federal government. It is the business of state governments and this business of local governments. And that has to be made clear. Even when comparisons are drawn between Nigeria and other countries, the tendency is to assume that the federal government of Nigeria can legislate as it were, that states should do particular things, but that's not possible. That's not possible. Our country is a federal system. States have their own responsibilities. They have governments. They have budgets, and their budgets are supposed to reflect the true realities of their concerns in every one of those states. And all that the federal government does is to show a direction and give all the support that it can. So it's very important that the states and local governments ensure that there are gender-responsive measures, ensure that they implement gender-responsive measures that will transform the education systems and address the barriers that inhibit girl child education. And all of this must be done very actively by the states. And we are committed to ensuring that these initiatives happen to all young girls, and I want to say to all young girls across the country, and let me convey this message, especially through Victoria Solomon, who spoke so passionately a few minutes ago, that I would like to let you know that we understand the difficulties that many of you are going through and the difficulties that you're experiencing. And even now, we know that there are so many challenges, and I want to commend, especially the strength and courage of many of you who have had to confront and surmount these problems. But I also want to say that the mere fact that one is a victim does not mean that all hopes are lost or that all hope is lost. As a matter of fact, it's very important to emphasize that despite being victims, you have every opportunity to do better in life and to make a great success of yourselves. I want to mention in particular a person who works with me, a lady who works with me. She is a senior special advisor to the president on legal compliance and research matters. In other words, she's my own legal advisor. Her name is Dr. Balkis Usaidu. Dr. Balkis Usaidu, incidentally, is here. I mean, she's just seated right over there. Now, Balkisu was married at the age of 13 and had her first child at the age of 14. This was ever before she then went to school and all that. But today, she is a PhD and an associate professor of law. So all things are possible. Everything is possible. And I want all the young girls to see the sorts of models and the sorts of very strong role models that there are. Many young women who are doing great things in entrepreneurship, in academics, and all and despite the challenges. So I'd like to commend all of you, all of the young girls, and to say that we are solidly behind you. And we want to make sure that you are at the forefront of laws, of policies and practices geared towards keeping you safe and educated and healthy. As our deliberations continue over the days, it's my hope that all the critical issues will be exhaustively considered. And we must continue to focus on the deep systemic dysfunctions of cultures and social norms that not only enable these discriminatory actions against a girl child, but also allow them to fester. I must not fail to commend Dr. Joe Okeodumaki for her leadership and commitment on these issues through the years. And the entire team at Women Arise for Change Initiative and all the very active collaborators today who have been at the forefront of ending all forms of discrimination and violence against women and girls, not just in Nigeria, but across Africa. So it's now my very special pleasure and privilege to formally declare open the national dialogue on the girl child in Nigeria. Thank you very much.