The Bauchi State Office of the Adolescent Girls Initiative for Learning and Empowerment AGILE AF Project says the World Bank has approved the payment of 12,970 Conditional Cash Transfer CCT beneficiaries out of the over 18 thousand captured under the project’s first cohort.
The State Component Lead, Financial Incentive of the project Hajiya Hadiza Abdulkadir stated this at a 1-day Sensitisation meeting on Financial Incentives for Traditional Leaders, parents and Caregivers, Education Secretaries and Students from the four cohort 1 LGAs of Alkaleri, Bauchi, Kirfi and Toro.
Hajiya Hadiza Abdulkadir said the remaining over five thousand beneficiaries who did not scale the World bank’s screening were due to either BVN, NIN or similar problems, noting that they would soon commence issuance of ATM cards to those who scaled through the screening process.
“In the first cohort, the project targeted 100 schools, 18 thousand beneficiaries but after the cleaning of the data, the World Bank cleared 12,970 beneficiaries, and what remains is for the banks to finalise the opening of accounts before we can begin disbursement. The second cohort targets forty thousand beneficiaries across all the 20 LGAs in the state’, The Component Lead discloses.
In a remark, the State Commissioner of Education Dr Lawal Mohammed who said the Governor Bala Mohammed had already paid the 150 million naira counterpart, commended the AGILE technical team for its effort towards realising the set objectives especially in the enrolment of adolescent girls.
“We are to sensitise the beneficiaries of the CCT and the roadmap to which they can access the cash and to ensure prudence when the money is disbursed. There are also conditions to be met before the girls can qualify for the disbursement to include 75% attendance among others”, the Commissioner explains.
Earlier, the AGILE State Project Coordinator, Hajiya Ladi Hamma said the CCT component is a support system instituted under the project to ensure adolescence girls enrol, stay in school upto completion, and called on stakeholders to support the project to succeed.
“The Girls Scholarship Programme otherwise known as CCT is a support that AGILE is going to give our Adolescent Girls si that they can transit from one level to another and that would enable them not to dropout of school halfway”, Ladi Hamma says.
Speaking on behalf of the AGILE National Office, the Guidance and Counselling Officer Life Skill Component Mrs Grace Jackson who said the CCT component seeks to ensure that parents are presented with financial support package to send the girl child to school instead of hawking or farming, called for continued sensitisation and advocacy to achieve success.
In their various goodwill messages, the Deputy Chairman State Assembly Committee on Education Musa Wakili Nakwada and representatives of SUBEB, BASANE, BASAME and Education Secretaries from the four benefitting LGAs promised continued support towards the successful implementation of the component.
By Abubakar Baba Ahmad.
