Niger State government in North Central Nigeria, is to adopt “At-Risk Children Programme, ARC-P, in addressing the condition of vulnerable children in the State.
Wife of the State governor, Dr Amina Abubakar Sani Bello, stated this during a stakeholders workshop on the implementation of the At-Risk Children Programme in Minna, Niger State Capital.
Dr Amina who further stated that Niger state and states in the Northern part of the country, accounted for almost 69 percent of the At-Risk Children in the country, commended the ARC-P initiative for adressing the conditions of the vulnerable children in some states of the region.
“My relief here is that even though diverse individuals and groups are working to address the issues of the vulnerable children, there is hardly any coordination for minimum standard, learning and sharing” Dr Amina said.
“The ARC-P approach to leverage on central coordination of resources, strategies and monitoring to drive a targeted, efficient and cost-effective solution to the distressing phenomenon is a very welcome one”.
The Niger State First Lady who is also a medical practitioner, mentioned that the workshop was conceptualised among other things as a cardinal milestone in the journey to implementing the ARC-P in the state.
The Special Adviser to the President on Social Investment and ARC-P National Coordinator, Hajia Maryam Uwais commended Niger State for the commitment of implementing the At-Risk Children Programme for empowerment of the girl child and other under represented groups across the State.
“Niger State is among 7 states in Nigeria to implement the ARC-P programme, the other states are Borno and Gombe in the North west, Niger and Nasarawa in the North Central, Kaduna in the North West and Ekiti State in the South west” Uwais said.
“I personally addressed the forum of Northern Nigeria Governor’s wives on the importance of the ARC-P programme, and the need to implement it in their respective states”.
Solution based programme
The Secretary to the Niger State government, Ahmed Ibrahim Matane, during his address of welcome at the ACR-P implementation workshop, applauded the Nigerian government for pioneering the solution based programme aimed at finding lasting solutions to the documented vulnerabilities of children lacking basic social protection.
Matane who further said Niger State government will leverage existing state initiatives and programmes to provide support and strengthen efforts for the effective implementation of the programme, mentioned that the state has already completed making Almajiri clusters around 20 out of the 25 Local governments, as an indication of keying into the At-Risk Children program in the state.
The At -Risk Children Programme is an intervention that offers a multi dimentional broad-spectrum approach to the crises at hand, which includes Nigeria’s search for lasting solutions to its nearly 13.2 million out of school children as estimated by UNICEF.
Emmanuel Ukoh
