Taimur Samad, the World Bank’s Deputy Country Director for Nigeria, revealed that more than two-thirds of Nigerian girls abandon their education before reaching junior secondary school. Samad made this disclosure on Tuesday while representing the Country Director, Ndiame Diop, at a national conference on girls’ education and empowerment in Abuja. The event, themed “Effective Partnerships on Girls’ Education, Out-of-School Children Education for National Development,” was organized by the Adolescent Girls Initiative for Learning and Empowerment (AGILE). Samad highlighted the major barriers to girl-child education in Nigeria, including high dropout rates, early marriages, and teenage pregnancies. He stated, “Over 66% of…

Cattle traders are facing an existential threat, especially in the northeastern part of Nigeria, with stakeholders calling for urgent intervention to save the sector. Investigation by Weekend Trust revealed that as a result of the spate of insecurity ravaging parts of the country and the ban on open grazing in some states, with no serious alternatives like ranches put on ground, cattle breeders are forced to migrate to countries like Cameroon, Chad, Niger, Sudan and Central Africa. Our correspondents who went round and interacted with market officials, cattle traders and residents across the North-East region, report that stakeholders in the…