United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has urged state governments in northern Nigeria to invest more in children to check child poverty in the region.
UNICEF’s social policy specialist in the Kano field office, Mrs. Fatima Musa, made the call at a media dialogue in Zaria.
She said Nigeria’s Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) revealed that across the geo-political zones in the country, the North-East and North-West have higher poverty ratio with 90% compared to the South-East and South-West with lower poverty (74% and 65.1% respectively).
She said Kano has 69.2 percent of children of between 0 and17 years that are multi-dimensionally poor, Jigawa 85.6, Katsina 75.2, while in terms of monetary poverty, Kano has 59.5 per cent, Jigawa 89.4 and Katsina 61.2 percent with a national average of 67.5 percent and 47.6 percent respectively.
The specialist explained that the UN general assembly pointed out that children living in poverty are deprived of nutrition, water and sanitation facilities, access to basic health-care services, shelter, education, participation and child protection among others.
The fund’s communication specialist, Mr. Samuel Kaalu, tasked the media on the need to focus their reportage on issues that concern children and women who are the most vulnerable in the society.
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