Education policy leads to increased girls enrollment, reduced child marriage in north-west Nigeria

Despite security challenges, the education sector plans in six north-west Nigerian states led to a significant increase in girls’ enrollment in secondary schools and a reduction in the percentage of girls married before the age of 18, a new report has shown.

The report said before the introduction of state education plans, the average girls’ secondary school enrollment declined and rates of early marriage increased.

The study – Gender Review and Advocacy For Gender Responsive Education Sector Planning (GRESP) – was authored by the development Research and Projects Centre (dRPC) with the support of the Malala Fund.

The report covers a gender review of 11 years (2011 to 2023) of State Education Sector Plans (SESPs) in Jigawa, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Sokoto, and Zamfara States.

SESPs is the only official education policy in Nigeria that mainstreams girls’ education goals within the education system and establishes performance indicators for government outcomes within the basic education system.

There was a five per cent increase in secondary school enrollment rates across the six states during the period of the education sector plans and the rate of child marriage fell by an average of 6.9 per cent across the states during the period of the plan, the report said.

It further pointed to an intersectionality between the two outcome indicators – enrollment and early marriage. Jigawa State, with the highest increase in enrollment for girls at the basic education level, was also the state with the second most significant reduction in the age of marriage.

Conversely, Kaduna State, which experienced the lowest change in enrollment rates for girls within the same period, also experienced the least change in the age of marriage for girls among the six states.

In terms of positive change in girls’ education outcomes, Jigawa State also takes the lead, followed by Kano, Zamfara, Sokoto, Katsina and Kaduna.
 

Methodology

The dRPC researchers aimed to generate empirical evidence to show how the components of education sector plans and operational plans deliver a gender-responsive education system that keeps girls in school and supports their learning outcomes.

Applying a mixed method research methodology, the gender review first conducted a trend analysis of two girls’ education outcomes to establish patterns in the period before sector plans were introduced in Nigeria and the period during education sector planning in Nigeria.

At the launch of the report last Tuesday, experts said the review is timely and significant, coming against the background of the exogenous shocks to the school system in Nigeria. The shocks include COVID-19 and its impacts and the incessant attacks on schools and abductions of schoolchildren in the region

The researchers also conducted a Focus Group Discussion with a total of 180 school-age children.
 

Factors threatening school enrollment

The insecurity in north-west Nigeria has led to the compulsory closure of many schools. This is a major factor that would likely stop students, especially girls, from achieving their education plans for the future, the report states.

“Compulsory school closures had a significant impact on students’ psychological, social, and mental well-being, causing a large number of students to forget nearly everything they had learned at school prior to the start of the lockdown and school closure,” it added.

The attacks on some schools may have also deterred some students from going to school. About 14 per cent of female and male participants from educational schools and 7 per cent of girls in all-girls schools mentioned that insecurity and school attacks were factors that could stop them from achieving their educational plans.

The researchers also found that while insecurity was a factor, poverty and lack of financial support are also a threat to future education while COVID-19 also played an impact.

When asked about the impact of COVID-19 on their education, 13 per cent of students from girls’ schools responded indicating a loss of interest in continuing education as a result of COVID-19.

No boys gave such a response, the report said.

Other factors mentioned by participants included drug abuse and peer pressure, bribery and corruption, fear of not succeeding in school, fear of not getting employment after graduation, and discouragement by the community members.

The report noted that gender responsiveness in education sector planning calls for flexibility to adjust to these unpredictable challenges emerging from the environment impacting negatively on the education of all children, especially girls.
 

Second stage of analysis

The second stage of the gender review sought to explore relationships between the trend in girls’ education outcomes established in the first step in the analysis and the structures and functions of bureaucracy prescribed by the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) model of gender-responsive education.

The GPE model of Gender Responsive Education Sector Strategic Planning (GRESP) argues that during the formation phase of planning, the application of three specific process factors can contribute towards positive girls’ education outcomes.

The factors include: gender equality and girls’ education policies and strategies integrated into education sector plans; Stakeholders, including CSOs and local communities as well as government departments that are consulted during the design; and the GRESP has adequate financial resources allocated to gender equality and girls education strategies.

Here, the analysis found clear and consistent correlations, thus confirming the prescriptive powers of the GPE model of gender-responsive education planning.

Findings show that Jigawa, Kano, and Katsina states budgeted for activities derived from State Education Sector Plans (SESP). While in Kaduna, Sokoto, and Zamfara states, there was less alignment between the activities of the state education sector plans and annual budgets.

In terms of SESP activities in the annual budget, Jigawa State emerged as the state that allocated the most funds to SESP activities. On the contrary, Zamfara, Katsina, and Sokoto performed poorly in terms of allocating funds for SESP activities.
 

Call for Action

The report noted that with new administrations at the federal and state levels, this is the time for a definitive understanding of what works for girls’ education and what has not worked for girls in the education system of states implementing education sector plans over the 11 years of 2011 to 2023 in Nigeria.

Experts said the findings of the report provide an opportunity to strengthen the gender transformative plans through the advocacy of civil society stakeholders. They said evidence-informed advocacy is critical in Nigeria in 2023 given the recent findings of the 2022 UNESCO Global Education Monitoring (GEM) report, which showed that the out-of-school population of Nigeria virtually doubled between 2016 and 2022 to 20 million.

Trailing behind India and Pakistan, Nigeria now stands as the third country with the largest out-of-school population. The majority of these children are recognised by the Nigerian government to be girls, many of whom are in the northwestern states with education plans.

In its 2018 data on out-of-school children, the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) reported the estimated number in Nigeria as 10.1 million out of which there were approximately 3.2 million out-of-school children cumulatively in the six northwestern states covered in the dRPC report.

The 3.2 million is about 31.84 per cent of the total estimated number of out-of-school children in Nigeria. Out of this number, 1.9 million were boys and 1.2 million were girls.
 

Why the six north-west states?

In terms of criteria for selecting the states studied, the researchers said the review of the gender responsiveness of education sector plans of Jigawa, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Sokoto, and Zamfara was “strategic and important for generating evidence of what works for girls’ education.”

The six states are accessing the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) funding.

The GPE is an independently governed partnership that includes national governments, multilateral organisations, civil society, the private sector, and foundations.

Established in 2002 as the Education for All Fast Track Initiative, the GPE has evolved and now designs evidence-informed and gender-responsive education sector plans.

GPE contends that gender responsiveness in education sector plans offers the most comprehensive and systematic approach to delivering change in girls’ education.

For a country such as Nigeria, GPE serves as a mobilisation point for donor coordination of multiple development impact investors, including the World Bank and the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) to fund the country-led basic education interventions very often with a specific focus on girls’ education.

Between 2012 and 2020 when Nigeria became a GPE partner, a total of $101 million has been awarded in grants to the West African country, of which $81 million has been disbursed as of January 2020.
 

States’ performance

In 2020, dRPC organised a gender workshop for the recipients of the grants to assess their education sector plans in terms of gender transformative, gender-responsive, integrated, or gender-blind characterisation.

The result shows that delegates from Kano and Jigawa states assessed their respective education sector plans as gender blind. Delegates from Sokoto and Katsina assessed their education sector plans as gender-responsive.

Meanwhile, delegates from Kaduna State assessed their plan as ranging between gender responsive and gender transformative. This was highlighted by the fact that the state has done much to mainstream gender into the education sector plan.

“We have rated Kaduna to be between transformative and responsive (high on the responsive and just going into the transformative scale),” the researchers said.

By Kabir Yusuf, Premium Times

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Businesses in Nigeria turn to Moniepoint instead of traditional banks

Chidi Ebule keeps at least 10 payment machines on the check-out counter of his grocery store in Lagos, so his customers can use cards from any bank or fintech company they prefer. But in recent months, he has needed to use only one machine for most transactions: the one provided by local fintech major Moniepoint.

“I try to use another POS [point of sales] machine, [but customers] will say, ‘Please don’t put my card in that. Use Moniepoint,’” Ebule told Rest of World. “The customer knows there could be an issue when you use the other [terminals], and he does not have power over the bank.”

Moniepoint’s light-blue payment machines have become ubiquitous across Nigeria — from megastores in Lagos to roadside shops in Kano. Shoppers prefer it to other options because Moniepoint offers a lower-than-average transaction decline rate and instantly reverses transactions in case of failed payments. The Lagos-headquartered company, founded in 2015, has expanded its footprint across the length and breadth of Nigeria, and is now available across all 774 local governments in the country, according to its website.

“Merchants don’t care about lofty claims about financial inclusion. All they want is to see their transactions have gone through and get the instant payment alert,” Nchedolisa Akuma, senior fintech analyst at market intelligence firm Stears, told Rest of World. “Moniepoint appears to be quite intentional about market intelligence and gathering real-time market intel, which made them quite nimble.”

In 2023, Moniepoint reportedly recorded 5.2 billion transactions, worth over $150 billion. The same year, it ranked second in the Financial Times’ list of Africa’s fastest-growing companies. By January 2024, around 2.3 million businesses were using Moniepoint’s payment machines, a company representative told Rest of World. The bulk of Moniepoint’s earnings come from the transaction charges on its point-of-sales machines and its online payment gateway. It also has a microfinance bank license and offers business loans.

When it first launched, Moniepoint was named TeamApt, and built software for traditional banks. In 2019, it obtained a government license for agency banking — a model that allows companies to act as intermediaries between banks and their customers.

“We just felt that banks are not executing these things the right way, and can we get into this space and execute it right?” Tunde Olofin, managing director of Moniepoint’s banking arm, told Rest of World.

So far, Moniepoint has raised over $57 million from investors such as QED Investors, Quantum Capital Partners, and Global Ventures. The company’s growth is aided by its network of more than 600,000 on-the-ground “business managers,” who earn commissions for onboarding business owners to the platform and distributing the POS terminals, Olofin said.

In early 2023, when Nigeria experienced an acute cash crisis after the government changed the currency’s design, Moniepoint came to the rescue of many small businesses.

Oberry Agamah, who owns a phone accessories shop in Lagos, told Rest of World she started using Moniepoint’s payment machines during that time. The ones provided by other banks could not process transactions smoothly, she said, due to the pressure on the country’s banking infrastructure.

Before she began using the Moniepoint machines, Agamah’s business suffered: She struggled to process customers’ transactions, and had to deal with shoppers who bought goods and disappeared after making unsuccessful digital transfers.

“Before, receiving transfers in our normal accounts was hell — they wouldn’t go in time, and customers were going away with our money,” Agamah said. “The experience with Moniepoint is very nice, and it has made my business very easy in the aspect of receiving transfers, and I receive [them] very fast.”

Moniepoint’s systems are designed to expand based on the volume of transactions, Solomon Amadi, the company’s vice president of payment infrastructure, told Rest of World. “Many of the other players in the industry don’t have a lot of control over their core banking, [but] we do … and we have optimized that process well enough that the customer is priority,” he said.

In June 2023, Moniepoint’s closest rival in Nigeria was Chinese-owned fintech OPay — backed by SoftBank Vision Fund and Sequoia Capital China. OPay had a 37% share of the Nigerian point-of-sales agents network, according to the Nigerian Financial Services Report. Moniepoint came in second with a 20% share.

But Moniepoint is better placed than its rivals because of the bouquet of financial services it offers, Olaoluwa Oyedele, vice president of growth and product at Lagos-based fintech startup Earnipay, told Rest of World.

“Moniepoint has a couple of license categories that allow them to do different things,” Oyedele said. “They have a microfinance bank license which allows them to collect deposits, and a payment terminal service provider license which allows them to issue POS terminals. With these two license categories working hand-in-hand, they can target offline payment businesses or industries. That is where they have built a very impressive distribution network. The offline payment, for context, is the biggest payment opportunity in Nigeria.”

Moniepoint’s business managers — well-known members of local communities who serve as liaisons between the company and its users — are central to its growth, Edidiong Uwemakpan, vice president of communications, told Rest of World.

To build this network, “we studied a number of informal networks in the country … [including] the National Union of Road Transport Workers, churches, and people with branches everywhere,” Uwemakpan said. “How are these people able to collect money from everyone and balance their books? Because at the end of the day, what we were building were human branches across the country.”

The business managers don’t get a salary but receive a sign-up fee of 8,500 naira ($5.44), and monthly commissions on the transactions made through each POS terminal they manage.

“If you work hard and make enough people sign up for POS, you are in business, you are in money,” Fabusoye Tolu, a Moniepoint business manager, told Rest of World. “You earn commissions, and that is even far better than earning a salary because if you earn a salary, it will be capped at a particular figure. With commissions, your earnings do not have a limit.”

Tolu declined to disclose how much he earns from commissions, but said he often targets big businesses that generate high cash flow so that he can earn more at the end of the month.

By Ope Adetayo, rest of world

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Nollywood actor John Okafor has passed

Nigerians are mourning popular Nollywood actor John Okafor, better known as Mr Ibu, who has died at the age of 62.

"I announce with [a] deep sense of grief that Mr Ibu didn't make it," said Actors Guild of Nigeria President Emeka Rollas on Saturday.

He said the actor had a cardiac arrest.

Okafor rose to fame two decades ago in the film Mr Ibu - which became his career-long nickname.

It is still regarded as one of the best Nigerian performances in a comic role.

He went on to star in more than 200 Nollywood films - including Keziah, 9 Wives and several Mr Ibu sequels.

"Rest well, sir," said actress Mercy Johnson-Okojie in her tribute. Law professor and former UN rapporteur Joy Ezeilo said the actor was a "beloved" figure who "brought laughter to many".

Nigeria's Culture Minister Hannatu Musawa described him as a household name who had made families smile throughout his career.

According to local reports, Okafor died at an undisclosed hospital in Lagos state.

The actor's health issues first came to public attention last year. One of his legs was amputated in November after fans donated to a crowd-funding scheme for his medical bills.

Since then, his son Daniel Okafor and adopted daughter Jasmine Chioma have been arrested on suspicion of hacking into his phone and taking $60,700 (£47,800) for themselves.

The pair have not commented since their arrest in January and are expected to appear in court on 11 March for the next hearing.

Okafor's last years were "tumultuous", Nigeria's Punch newspaper said, with the actor claiming to have survived several attempts to poison him.

Local media say he is survived by his 13 children.

By Natasha Booty & Mansur Abubakar, BBC

Nigeria Tracks Down Bunker Vessel and Holds it on Oil Theft Charges

The Nigerian Navy reports it tracked and subsequently arrested a Panama-registered bunker vessel which it is accusing of oil theft. They tracked the vessel offshore before apprehending it with 13 crewmembers aboard and brought it back to Lagos over the weekend as part of a wider operation to crackdown on oil thieves.

The vessel the Sweet Miri (1,800 dwt) is reported to be owned by a Ghanaian according to the Nigerians but according to databases is managed out of the UAE. The vessel is 34 years old and operates in the Gulf of Guinea region.

Flag Officer Commanding the Western Naval Command, rear Admiral MB Hassan, told reporters on Saturday that the navy had been observing the bunker vessel and its activity for some time. He said the vessel had turned off its AIS signal on February 25 which raised suspicions. The Navy dispatched a gunboat to investigate and they had suspicion the vessel was smuggling oil.

The Navy dispatched a second vessel in the search for the Sweet Miri before they finally located the vessel approximately 174 nautical miles from Nigeria. It was traveling to Benin when it was apprehended. The command reported a search turned up nearly two million liters of oil and the vessel was ordered to return to Nigeria.

The vessel and its crew of 13 have now been placed under arrest while the commander said other departments of the government were also free to search the ship. The crew consists of one Ghanaian and 12 Nigerians.

The seizure was part of a wider crackdown across the region on alleged oil thefts. Over the past few months, there have been several reports of smaller vessels being held on allegations of oil theft.

The Nigerians in August 2022 chased a large tanker, the Heroic Idum, which they also charged with loading stolen crude. The vessel took refuge in Equatorial Guinea but was later handed back to Nigeria which used antipiracy laws to charge the crew. A settlement was finally reached in April 2023 when the vessel’s operators agreed to a public apology and a fine but it took till June 2023 for the crew to be released.

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