Girl-Child: Inclusive Quality Education, Agents of Socialisation and Sustainable Development in Nigeria

Abstract

Inclusive quality education for a girl child is a cornerstone for sustainable development across the world. Education is a fundamental right of every individual with no gender discrimination whatsoever. Such right to education has been seen as catalyst for development since education empowers individual to increase their wellbeing and contribute to the society at large. According to well documented facts, improved education accounts for about 50 per cent of economic and social growth of developed countries. Hence, for education to deliver, it must be inclusive and high in quality. This inclusion which counteract gender discrimination advocate for girl-child education. In Nigeria, gender disparity has limited the enrolment of girl child to quality education and also to number of females who can contribute meaningfully to national development. To tackle this problem, inclusive quality education backup by policy to ameliorate challenges faced by the girl child is thus, imperative. This paper adopted descriptive methods in analyzing documented facts that are available via secondary sources of data, like extant textbook, journal, internet sources, relevant to this study with the aid of Liberal feminism Theory. The study therefore found out that various obstacles that stymie a girl-child from the fundamental right to education include; traditional attitudes, religion, poverty, geographical isolation, early marriage, pregnancy among many others. Conclusively, the paper acknowledges inclusive quality education as an indispensable means to annex every individual capabilities to attain economic development. Therefore, it is recommended that sustainable development can only be truly possible when gender discrimination is jettisoned by agents of socialisation for inclusive quality education of the girl-child in Nigeria.