Kaduna’s Adolescent Girls Initiative for Learning and Empowerment (AGILE), a World Bank-supported project, on Thursday began disbursement of N102.4 million Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) to 8,475 schoolgirls.

At the disbursement ceremony in Kaduna, the project coordinator, Maryam Dangaji, said that the CCT intervention was an incentive to promote girl child school enrollment, retention, and completion.

Ms Dangaji explained that the “initiative is to support girls that were prevented from attending schools due to hawking and other commercial activities at home.”

She added, “This is because available research shows that most girls stop their education at primary six while others manage to reach junior secondary school (JSS). The essence of the CCT was to ensure that the girls transit from primary six to JSS I and from JSS I to senior secondary school (SSS) classes. The target classes for the cash transfer are primary six, JSS I and SSS I.”

Ms Dangaji also noted that the girls would receive N5,000 at the point of registration and every term the girls would receive N10,000 for JSS classes and N15,000 for SSS classes.

She explained that schools in 15 out of the 23 local government areas would benefit and were selected based on poverty ranking and low transition.

According to her, no fewer than 30,000 girls were expected to benefit from CCT in four cohorts within the life span of the project.

The project coordinator also mentioned that the four cohorts cover girls transitioning from primary six to secondary and girls transitioning from JSS 3 to SSS I.

She further stated that the 8,475 girls comprising 4,944 JSS1 girls and 3,404 SSS1 girls would benefit from the first cohort CCT amounting to N102.4 million.

Ms Dangaji added that each of the 4,944 JSS 1 girls would receive N10,000, amounting to N49.4 million, and each of the 3,404 SSS I girls would receive N15,000 amounting to N52.9 million.

However, the CCT official said the subsequent payment would be done on the condition that the girls achieve 70 to 80 per cent attendance in classes and do well in their studies.

“I am urging the parents and caregivers to use the money for what it was meant for and ensure their girls are enrolled in school, remain in school, learn and transit to the next class,” said Ms Dangaji.

The Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Education, Haliru Soba, explained that the CCT was part of efforts to promote girl child education in the quest for human capital development.

Ms Soba alsp stressed that the CCT would ensure that children of the poor attend school regularly, learn, and transit to the next class up to senior secondary school.

(NAN)