Parents, guardians and leaders have been advised to take deliberate and collective approaches toward assisting girls achieve significant life goals.
The Obong of Calabar, treaty king and grand patriarch of the Efik kingdom, Edidem Ekpo Okon Abasi Otu the Fifth gave the advice at a community town hall organised in collaboration with UN (United Nations) Women and office of the Special Assistant on Gender Mainstreaming.
Edidem Otu commended the UN Women for the theme of this year’s International Day of the Girl Child celebration, “Girls’ Vision for the Future”, noting that “girls have the potentials to attain financial, political and academic freedom alongside their peers in the world.”
The traditional leader stated, “I believe that whatever a man is qualified to do there is a woman, who is qualified to do the same job too. However to achieve these requires hardwork, dedication, guidance, care and a lot of other factors to propel them (girls) to achieve this vision.
“This is where all of us come in as stakeholders right from the family to the community level to ensure our girls are guided, protected, given opportunities and access to what they need most importantly education,” the natural ruler said.
End harmful practices
The Obong of Calabar condemned the harmful practices such as Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) including all forms of violence and abuse against children especially girls, saying girls needed to be protected at all cost both in the home and community in general.
”For us as traditional rulers, we have more specific roles to play in the areas of representation, reorientation and guidance of our people. Issues like FGM and other harmful practices on the girl child must be stopped. Indeed, just like we succeeded in ending the killing of twins and other practices by our forebears, these too shall pass,” the Monarch assured.
In a remark, the wife of the Cross River State Governor, Reverend Eyoanwan Otu, who was represented by the Special Adviser to the Cross River State Governor on Gender Mainstreaming, Dr. Inyang Asibong, described girl child education as important due to the high number of out-of-school children.
Otu said, “there are 18.9 million out-of-school children in Nigeria. Of this, a whopping 60 percent are girls and that is unacceptable. It means that there are 11 million out-of-school girls. This is a collective call to action.
“Let us create a world where every girl is valued, educated and we are doing a lot to promote girl child education. More than 8,000 girls in Cross River State have achieved the S.T.E.M. The programme is ongoing and targeted at girls in secondary schools. We are doing this because we know that once you educate the girl child, we have educated the nation.”
In her message, the UN Women Country representative to Nigeria, Mrs. Beatrice Eyong highlighted the benefit of assisting girls achieve their dreams and urged traditional and other leaders to be actively involved in enabling girls attain great heights.
The Special Assistant Gender Mainstreaming, Utibe-Abasi Bassey-Duke noted that the celebration served as reminder of the potentials inherent in girls, which could be nurtured with care to blossom in the future and pledged commitment to continue to protect, equip and educate girls across the state to reach for higher opportunities.
The celebration featured cultural display by school children and a panel discussion of the 2024 theme.
Mercy Chukwudiebere
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