World Bank makes child rights law precondition to access $500m Agile grant

 

Wemi Jones, Kogi State commissioner for education, science and technology, has said that the World Bank has made the child rights law a precondition for states to access the World Bank’s Adolescent Girls Initiative for Learning and Empowerment, (Agile) grants to the eleven participating states in Nigeria.

Jones disclosed this to the child rights law advocacy team during a visit to his ministry by the state child rights law cluster, in Lokoja, the state capital.

The commissioner also said that the state was among the eleven states that will access part of the $500 million earmarked by the World Bank to fund the Agile project, which aims at improving secondary education opportunities among girls in targeted areas in the participating states.

Kogi, like every other participating state, must fulfil the precondition for accessing the fund, which will assist the state achieve its policy objectives in girl child education priority, initiated for the African developing countries by the World Bank.

The commissioner also said that the state was lucky, having domesticated the child rights law since 2019, with the nine functional family courts in operation out of the 21 family courts the state was in need of, based on the provisions of the child rights law, 2023.

He said: “Our governor is committed to any project that adds value to life in Kogi State, and the child rights law scale project is of immense value to us as a government committed to serving the people to live a better life, where children are given rightful priority in the scheme of things.”