Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo, has said incidences of school-girls’ drop out and adolescent child bearing increased since the outbreak of coronavirus with the attendant economic lockdown. He made this disclosure yesterday ataneventtomark six years of the Future Assured programme, an initiative of the Aisha Buhari Foundation. Osinbajo, in his remarks noted that female children were the victims of sudden sharp dropin familyincomes brought about by the consequences of the pandemic The Vice-President said: “Since the COVID-19 pandemic and the lockdowns, it has been shown by empirical studies that the rates of dropouts, especially of girls, have increased, child marriages also increased, adolescent childbearing, and genderbased violence, all these indices increased.
“Thesharp drop in income formostfamilieshereinNigeria and in most economies of the world would mean that families will have to make choices that almost always will disfavour the girl-child and of course, female children have suffered disproportionatedisplacementand deprivation caused by the insurgency and conflict in the Northeast and Northwest.”