By Emma Una, CALABAR

THE Obong of Calàbar Edidem Ekpo Abasi Otu, the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, UN Women,and Ms Utibe-Abasi Bassey Duke, the Special Assistant to Governor Bassey Otu on Gender Mainstreaming have advocated for inclusion of the girl child on government programmes.

They called on the government to prioritise the girl chileducation, set up empowerment initiatives, invest in menstrual health management, and strengthen their legal protections and enforcement.

These request were made when the UN Women with support from Ford foundation organised a Community Town Hall Engagement to commemorate the 2024 International Day of the Girl Child with the theme “Girl’s Vision for the Future”.
The Obong in his speech remaked that more work needs to be done to raise awareness for girls education, especially in rural communities.

“I’m glad to host the United Nations team in my palace today. As we continue to celebrate the girl- child I am pleased with this year’s theme.

“For me the girl child is beyond the kitchen and attaining the status of a house wife ; I see our girls in board rooms running companies, contesting for political offices and occupying the corridors of power, launching innovative technologies and much more. I believe whatever a man can do, there’s a woman qualified to do the job too. So why not give our women more opportunities to serve.

“To achieve all these require hard work, dedication, care and a lot of other factors to propel them to fulfill that vision. This is where all of us come in as stakeholders from the family to the community to ensure our girls are guided and given opportunities to be educated
He said his kingdom remains committed to ensuring protection, growth and creating opportunities for the girl child

In her speech, UN Women representative Ms Beatrice Eyong who was represented by Ms Kenechukwu Asuku noted that ensuring that all girls and young women receive a quality education is their human rights, a global developmental priority, and a strategic plan.

“As we commemorate the international day of the girl child, we must remember that even while we encourage them to dream, they have to have the capacity to dream and bring those dreams to reality and that’s why we are speaking with our blessed fathers and other leaders to come together to ensure that the girl dreams are achieved.

“We appeal to leaders to help Work towards making her have the passion for education instead of being thrown out for early marriage or exposed to servitude, slavery, rape and child abuse”, she stated.

.According to her: “For us as traditional rulers we have a specific role to play in areas of representation, reorientation and guidance of the people. Issues like genital mutilation and other harmful traditional practices on the girl child must be stopped. Indeed, just as we succeeded in ending the killing of twins and other practices by our forebears, this too shall pass.

The Wife of Cross River governor , Rev Eyoanwan Bassey Otu who was represented by Senior Special Adviser on Gender Mainstreaming, Dr Inyang Asibong stated that 18.5 million out of school children in Nigeria, 60% are girls, which is very unacceptable, it means that we have 11 million girls among out of school children.

She noted that as part of government effort, Wife of the governor through her pet project Humanity Without Borders has trained over 8,000 girls in STEM, particularly girls in junior and senior secondary schools .