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 made the statement while presenting evidence on investing in adolescent girls at a Malala Fund side event during the Gender & Inclusion Summit (GS-26) in Abuja.
The session, titled “Education Ends Child Marriage: From Evidence to Action in Nigeria’s Northwest and Northeast,” brought together policymakers, development partners, civil society organisations and girls to examine education as a strategy against child marriage.
Rudgard said modelling for Kano and Kaduna showed that investing $114 million (about ₦166 billion) to reach 1.1 million adolescent girls could generate about $2.5 billion in societal benefits.
He said 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.
According to him, other projected gains included fewer cases of sexual violence, child stunting and deaths, while increased educational attainment was expected to improve girls’ future earning potential.
Rudgard said 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, and adapting interventions to local conditions before scaling them up.
Earlier, Nabila Aguele, Chief Executive Officer of the Malala Fund, said Nigeria already had policies and frameworks supporting girls’ education, including pathways for married, pregnant and adolescent girls to return to school.
Aguele, however, noted that the major challenge was implementation, questioning whether girls and their families knew about existing policies and whether schools and communities had adequate resources to facilitate re-entry.
She said 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.
Aguele said 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.
Also speaking, Omawumi Gbamis, Programme Manager of the Nigeria Governors’ Spouses Forum (NGSF), representing the forum’s Chairperson, Prof. Olufunke Abdulrazaq, said education strengthened girls’ agency, economic potential and ability to make informed choices.
Gbamis said first ladies had an important role in keeping girls’ education on the policy agenda through advocacy, partnerships and practical interventions that enable girls to remain in and complete school.
On government commitments, Dr Umar Pella, Commissioner for Education in Adamawa, said the state would make implementation of its school re-entry guideline a key component of the 2027 appropriation.
He said married girls should not be excluded from education, adding that the government would work 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, said the state would publicly inaugurate its gender-in-education policy and school re-entry guideline by the end of September 2026.
He said 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, said the state had identified 104 married girls seeking to return to school.
He said the 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.
Mohammed said the state would also provide additional classrooms and construct new schools through its 2027 budget to accommodate more girls transitioning to secondary education.
In a grantee spotlight, Hassana Shuaibu, Senior Programme Officer at Assisting, Caring and Empowering (ACE) Charity, said successful development of re-entry guidelines required listening to girls, families, school heads, teachers and community leaders.
Shuaibu said 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.
She said organisations worked with ministries of education to contextualise national re-entry guidelines, including addressing the needs of married girls, while girls themselves participated in policy discussions.
Habiba Mohammed, Team Leader at the Centre for Girls’ Education, said safe spaces and life-skills programmes helped girls build confidence, understand their rights and remain in school.
She said the organisation trained community mentors and worked with religious and community leaders and “role-model mothers” to support girls’ retention in school.
Mohammed added that life-skills programmes helped girls make informed decisions about education, marriage and their future, strengthening their ability to navigate social and economic pressures.
Toyin Chukwudozie, Executive Director of Education as a Vaccine, said the Joint Action Grant model demonstrated the value of organisations pooling expertise, resources and strategies around a shared outcome.
Chukwudozie said the approach enabled organisations 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 at the Malala Fund, who moderated the session, said the commitments made by stakeholders would be recorded on the GS-26 commitment tracker and monitored over the next year.
The stakeholders said 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.
