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By Oboh Linus, Lafia
The Society for Family Health (SFH) has called on the Nasarawa State Government to increase budgetary allocation and timely release to sustain project A360 for adolescent girls in the state.
Mr Kenneth Okoineme, SFH Health Governance and Public Policy Specialist, made the call on Saturday at a two-day A360 Transition Policy Dialogue in Keffi Local Government Area of Nasarawa State.
Okoineme said the call becomes necessary to enable the state to build on the project’s success as it comes to an end by December 2025.
He explained that the project A360 in Nasarawa state which focused on married adolescent girls has recorded tremendous success as the number of adolescent girls has adopted contraceptives, returned to school, and some have taken up entrepreneurship.
“The programme has achieved success in Nasarawa state, several girls have adopted contraceptives, are willing to go back to school, and some of the girls have taken an entrepreneurial pursuit courtesy of these projects.
“Reaching over 280, 000 adolescent girls in Nasarawa state with responsive, youth-centered services, the programme has supported 129, 285 new contraceptive adopters and ensured 68,770 continuing users.
“The project attempts to lay out the advantages of spacing their family so that they can have a healthier family. There are other determinants of healthy life beyond child spacing, which is of course helping those girls to realise their potential, building their capacities to explore economically, ” he stated.
He noted that the implementation process of the A360 project was one of co – co-creation and ownership by the state as SFH has deliberately built the structure to transition the programme sustainably.
Also speaking, Mrs Hauwa Jugbo, Commissioner for Women Affairs and Humanitarian, while commending the implementation of the project, called on stakeholders to support the SFH and the state government to ensure the sustainability of the project.
“This project, going by information before me has a time frame, so, is incumbent on us – stakeholders to ensure that it is sustained because failure to sustain it will draw us back and affect our adolescent girls and our society at large,” she said.
Mr Larry Vem-Bawa, Chairman Committee on Health, Nasarawa State House of Assembly, said
The House would work hard to ensure proper legislation for the sustainability of the project in the state.
“When we have a programme that is life-touching, that has a direct bearing on the people of the state, don’t allow it to die, and the only way to sustain it is to have an instrument of law backing,” he said.
Dr Madawa Absalom, Director of Community and Family Health Services, Nasarawa State Primary Health Department Agency, said the objective of the policy dialogue on project A360 was to reflect on what has transpired in the last five years in the state.
“This meeting is about bringing stakeholders to understand what we have done from where we started to where we are right now. And for the future, we have a plan to have a Nasarawa state where we have multi-stakeholder collaboration to plan for adolescent and young people in the state,” he stated.
Earlier in a keynote address, Dr Ibrahim Adamu, Permanent Secretary, State Ministry of Youth and Sports Development harped on the collaborative role of stakeholders; legislators, policy makers, and service providers to create an enabling policy environment to sustain the project.
The policy dialogue with the theme: “The future of adolescent and youth sexual reproductive health and development in Nasarawa state” had in attendance, the legislators, policy makers, service providers civic society organisations among others.
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