Governor Nasir El-Rufai’s government has announced commencing the disbursement of N15,000 Conditional Cash Transfer money to 28,000 adolescent girls from public schools across Kaduna.

Acting Governor Hadiza Balarabe disclosed this when she flagged off the second cohort of beneficiaries under the Adolescent Girls Initiatives for Learning Empowerment (AGILE) project on Thursday in Kaduna.

The first cohort of 7,013 beneficiaries was flagged off on August 11 last year. The second cohort brings the total number of adolescent girls benefiting from the project to 33,575.

She said Mr El-Rufai would continue to prioritise education by committing 27.3 per cent of Kaduna’s budget on average from 2019 to 2022.

She reiterated the government’s unrelenting support to girls, which will enable them to become mothers, workers, entrepreneurs, political leaders, lawyers, medical doctors, and academics in various disciplines of human endeavour.

“In Kaduna state, we will continue to improve the standard and quality of our education delivery service to our people,” Ms Balarabe added.

The Kaduna acting governor explained that AGILE is a World Bank-supported programme designed by the Federal Ministry of Education to address constraints the girl child faces in accessing and completing basic education.

According to her, Kaduna is piloting the programme, which will be implemented in seven states of Nigeria.

She said of the first group of 7,013 beneficiaries of the conditional cash transfer, flagged off on August 11, 2022, 4,312 are from junior secondary school (JSS 1) and 2,701 from SS1 drawn from 24,165 households within Kaduna.

(NAN)