ABUJA: Nobel peace laureate Malala Yousafzai on Monday called for a ‘state of emergency for education’ in Nigeria, as she visited the country and met some of the Chibok schoolgirls.
The 20-year-old global education campaigner made the suggestion at a meeting with Acting President Yemi Osinbajo at the presidential villa in Abuja.
Nigeria has some 10.5 million out of school children – the most in any country across the world. As many as 60 percent of these are girls, according to statistics compiled by the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef).
Many of these children belong to the country’s northeast, where the Boko Haram insurgency has destroyed education institutions in the last nine years.
Yousafzai had been shot and nearly killed by the Taliban in Swat region of Pakistan in 2012 for insisting on girls’ education.
Speaking to the media during her visit to Nigeria, she said, “I have highlighted a few issues. The first of these is for the government to declare a state of emergency for education. The federal government and state and local governments should all be united for this.
“Secondly, education spending should be made public, and thirdly, the Child Rights Act should be implemented in all states.”
Yousafzai said that the acting president responded positively to her suggestion.
Her visit to the restive African country has come as her contribution in a global campaign against abduction of girl students from Chibok area by Boko Haram Islamist militants. The online #BringBackOurGirls Movement has been underway since April 2014 when the more than 200 girl students were kidnapped by Boko Haram Islamists opposed to girls’ education.
On a previous visit to Nigeria in July 2014, Malala had urged the then-president Goodluck Jonathan to meet the girls’ parents.
In a statement issued on the first anniversary of the incident, she referred to the missing girls as her ‘brave sisters’ and wrote an open letter saying that she could not wait to meet and hug them. “You are my heroes,” she had said. Around 106 of the kidnapped girls have since been released, rescued or have escaped, while 113 are still being held.
During her current, Yousafzai said, she was ‘very happy’ to see some of the girls, who were staying at a government-run facility in Abuja. “I’m really excited to know that they will soon be going back to their homes and continuing their education,” she added.
“I hope other kidnapped girls will also be released soon.”
Published in Daily Times, July 19th , 2017.
