AGILE Project in Nasarawa State held a one Day media roundtable, drawing participants from media workers, especially reporters and producers as part of efforts to seek media support in pushing the adolescent girl child empowerment programmes in the state.
Speakig at the end of the one day programme, with the theme: “Exploring The Impact Of Media Representation On The Adolescent Girl Child”, Project Coordinator in Nasarawa State, Hajiya Aishatu Isoga,disclosed that 20, 000 girls are to benefit from the Conditioner-Cash-Transfer earmarked by the Project in Nasarawa State to ensure improved school enrollment.
“All new intakes into Junior Secondary School (JSS) 1 and Senior Secondary School (SSS) 1 are potential beneficiaries of the cash transfer throughout the implementation period of this programme in addition to the 20,000 students already profiled.
“The beneficiaries, who must be between the ages of 10-20 years, would get N15,000 on the transition from primary school into JSS 1 and N25,000 during payment of fees and N10,000 in second and third terms,” she added.

She added that the AGILE project was an initiative of the Federal Government with support from the World Bank and is currently being implemented in 18 states.
Aliyu-Isoga noted that the Nasarawa office of AGILE is currently implementing in seven Local Government Areas (LGAs) of the state with high cases of out-of-school girls.
She listed the LGAs to include Awe, Doma, Lafia, Wamba, Kokona, Keana, and Nasarawa and promised to extend it to the remaining five LGAs in the state for inclusivity.
“The project development objective is to improve secondary education opportunities among adolescent girls in 18 states, including Nasarawa State.
On the essence of the one day roundtable event for the media, the State Coordinator explained that it was aimed at seekiking the support and collaboration with media workers in pushing the Adolescent girl child empowerment agenda by promoting the importance of the girl child education to encourage the enrollment of more female children in school.
She appreciated the partnership by the media since the project started in 2024 and appealed for sustained support to enable them to achieve the objective of the programme.
She also appreciated Gov. Abdullahi Sule for creating an enabling environment and through payment of counterpart, provision of office, vehicles among others and promised not to disappoint him.
Aliyu-Isoga attributed the successes recorded so far to the collaboration by traditional and religious leaders and urged them to continue to encourage the people in their areas to allow the girl-child to go to school and learn a trade or skills.

Grace Amirikpa, a Resource Person, in her paper titled, “Exploring the Impact of Media Representation on the Empowerment of Women and Girls”, highlighted the negative impact created by the media representation of the female gender and call on the media practitioners to review their content.
The resource person encouraged the media as well as the entertainment industries to project good things about women, assigned them positive roles, and promote stories of successful women.
“This would go a long to give the Girl-Child the necessary encouragement and platforms to know that they can also succeed and achieve whatever they want to become in life,” she added.

Speaking on the presentation and the issues the paper brought forth, the penalists of Alfred M.Akwe, publisher of Krestnews.com online and retired Director of Information along side Abdullahi Ogoshi, Deputy Director, Information from the Ministry of Information all agreed on the for greater collaboration between AGILE and the Media to achieve success.
They speak on the need to develop clear media messages and programmes as well carry out sustained media campaign through the various forms of media organs including the online and social media channels.

The NUJ State Chairman, Comrade Abdullahi Alkali commended the efforts of AGILE in the State for the efforts aimed at empowering the Adolescent Girl Child as well as vulnerable women with education, skills and financial incentives and urge for its sustainence.
The training, which took place at the NUJ House Hall along Makurdi Road, Lafia, had in attendance journalists from print, electronic, and online media organizations, featured questions and answers as well as discussion by the participants.(www.krestnews.com).