Abuja: Investing in adolescent girls’ education can generate more than 21 times the initial investment through improved education, health, and economic outcomes, Prof. William Rudgard, an Oxford University researcher, has said. Rudgard presented this evidence on investing in adolescent girls at a Malala Fund side event during the Gender and Inclusion Summit (GS-26) in Abuja.
According to News Agency of Nigeria, the session, titled ‘Education Ends Child Marriage: From Evidence to Action in Nigeria’s Northwest and Northeast,’ brought together policymakers, development partners, civil society organizations, and girls to examine education as a strategy against child marriage. Rudgard noted that modeling for Kano and Kaduna showed that investing $114 million (about 166 billion naira) to reach 1.1 million adolescent girls could generate about $2.5 billion in societal benefits.
Rudgard explained that the intervention could produce 3.9 million additional years of schooling, 327,170 fewer child marriages, 383,035 fewer adolescent pregnancies, and 3,651 fewer maternal deaths across the two states. He highlighted other projected gains, including fewer cases of sexual violence, child stunting, and deaths, while increased educational attainment was expected to improve girls’ future earning potential.
Furthermore, Rudgard emphasized that returns on education increased substantially with additional years of schooling, making the transition from primary to secondary education particularly critical for adolescent girls. He recommended targeting girls most at risk of dropping out, combining community engagement, safe spaces, and school support, while adapting interventions to local conditions before scaling them up.
Earlier, Nabila Aguele, Chief Executive Officer of the Malala Fund, stated that Nigeria already had policies and frameworks supporting girls’ education, including pathways for married, pregnant, and adolescent girls to return to school. Aguele, however, identified implementation as a major challenge, questioning whether girls and their families were aware of existing policies and whether schools and communities had adequate resources to facilitate re-entry.
Aguele pointed out that local solutions were already working and could be scaled up, adding that ending child marriage should be treated as a development and human-capital priority. She noted that child marriage costs Nigeria nearly $10 billion annually through its effects on health, education, and women’s earnings and called for gender-responsive education planning and budgeting.
Omawumi Gbamis, Programme Manager of the Nigeria Governors’ Spouses Forum (NGSF), representing the forum’s Chairperson, Prof. Olufunke Abdulrazaq, asserted that education strengthened girls’ agency, economic potential, and ability to make informed choices. Gbamis highlighted the important role first ladies could play in keeping girls’ education on the policy agenda through advocacy, partnerships, and practical interventions enabling girls to remain in and complete school.
On government commitments, Dr Umar Pella, Commissioner for Education in Adamawa, said the state would make the implementation of its school re-entry guideline a key component of the 2027 appropriation. He emphasized that married girls should not be excluded from education and that the government would collaborate with religious and traditional leaders, as well as communities, to support their return.
Mr Ibrahim Ahmed, Permanent Secretary of the Bauchi Ministry of Education, representing the commissioner, stated that the state would publicly inaugurate its gender-in-education policy and school re-entry guideline by the end of September 2026. He mentioned that Bauchi would strengthen community-level tracking by engaging village heads and schools to identify adolescent girls who were out of school and improve enrolment data.
Representing Kano’s Commissioner for Education, Dr Ali Makoda, Mr Halidu Mohammed, Technical Adviser to the Governor on Education, revealed that the state had identified 104 married girls seeking to return to school. He explained that this identification followed an intervention after the state launched its school re-entry guideline, adding that Kano would conduct a survey to identify gaps in the transition from primary to secondary education.
In a grantee spotlight, Hassana Shuaibu, Senior Programme Officer at Assisting, Caring and Empowering (ACE) Charity, emphasized that successful development of re-entry guidelines required listening to girls, families, school heads, teachers, and community leaders. She noted that this was necessary to understand the barriers affecting girls’ education, adding that a one-size-fits-all approach was inadequate because girls faced different challenges across states.
Habiba Mohammed, Team Leader at the Centre for Girls’ Education, mentioned that safe spaces and life-skills programs helped girls build confidence, understand their rights, and remain in school. She highlighted that the organization trained community mentors and worked with religious and community leaders and ‘role-model mothers’ to support girls’ retention in school.
Toyin Chukwudozie, Executive Director of Education as a Vaccine, described how the Joint Action Grant model demonstrated the value of organizations pooling expertise, resources, and strategies around a shared outcome. Chukwudozie explained that the approach enabled organizations working on policy, campaigns, and state- and federal-level interventions to complement one another in addressing challenges surrounding girls’ education and child marriage.
Rachael Emmanuel, a 16-year-old adolescent mother and advocate with the Participatory Communication for Gender Development (PAGED) Initiative, shared how stigma and school restrictions disrupted her education. Emmanuel, who became pregnant while in Senior Secondary School One (SS1), said she eventually returned to school and urged governments to provide supportive facilities for adolescent mothers.
She appealed for schools equipped with facilities that would enable adolescent mothers to care for their babies while attending classes, without being forced to abandon their education. Stanley Achonu, Senior Director of the Malala Fund, who moderated the session, stated that the commitments made by stakeholders would be recorded on the GS-26 commitment tracker and monitored over the next year.
The stakeholders concluded that sustained investment, effective implementation of re-entry policies, coordinated interventions, and stronger community support were essential to keeping girls in school and reducing child marriage in Nigeria.