Dolapo Osinbajo, the wife of Vice President Prof Yemi Osibanjo, has emphasized the importance of increased investment in girl child education.
On Sunday night in Abuja, Osinbajo provided the advice in her speech at the Mallpai Foundation 2021 Literacy Day, which had the topic “Promoting Literacy for Better Education in Nigeria.”
She lamented the fact that girls appear to be falling behind their male counterparts in terms of education, adding that more needed to be done to close the gap between female and male schooling.
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She said, “When a girl is educated she can read and she can write, when she is educated she is aware of the law.
“She knows love when her signs say danger, when a girl is educated she is aware of her potential. She can read about Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala of the World Trade Organisation.
“An educated girl sitting on a chair in Kebbi or Kano, in Osogbo or Oshodi, in Awka or Uyo, understands norms and expands her mind.
“She is not a doctor but knows a bit about medicine because she can read. She is not an engineer but she knows a bit about buildings and how machines work.
An educated girl achieves her potential and relives all of us, when we limit her in any little way, imagine if Dr Stella Adedunmi, a doctor was never educated, and imagine if Nana Asamoah, a poet, was never educated.”
According to her, not only in Africa but around the world, there is an emphasis on the importance of women’s and girl child education.
“Historically, the place for a woman was in the kitchen, it was not really a place for a girl to be in school excels in academics, therefore, girls have lagged behind.
“We are here because we want to correct that disparity; we are not looking down on our males.
“We even need them as champions of the girls, if we leave this to women alone, we are not going to achieve targets,” Kambauwa said.
Responding to this, the minister of education, Mr Chukwuemeka Nwajiuba emphasize that Education is not just a classroom thing, the entire gamut of the educational system consists of so many life skills that are inherently endowed in any society.
“However, the formal mode of teaching people to become literate in a communicable language, because literacy is not only as it pertains to English language.
“You can also have literacy in other languages; literacy refers to the ability to communicate in education in one language and to do so in written and oral forms.”
