Contributions of Community Stakeholders in the Co-production of Female Child Education in Nigeria

Abstract

This paper investigates the contributions of community stakeholders in the co-production of female child education in Zamfara State, Nigeria. Female child education in Nigeria is associated with some complex issues, like cultural barriers, religious misinterpretations and poverty among rural dwellers, which pose serious challenge for policy makers and public managers. The idea of engaging citizens to make contributions in the design, management and implementation of public polices is called co-production. Studies have revealed that the co-production of public services helped in addressing complex policy problems that cannot be addressed through top-down approach. This paper therefore, adopts co-production as an approach for addressing complexities associated with female child education in Zamfara State, Nigeria. It examines the contributions of community stakeholders in the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of universal basic education geared towards improving female child education. The paper purposively selected 100 respondents from some selected local communities. The study similarly adopts a mixed research methods to address research questions. The findings of the study reveal that through social networks, time, will power and personal agency community stakeholders can create awareness, provide learning materials, develop and manage infrastructures to improve female child education. The study concludes that community engagement in the co-production of female child education can improve enrolment, retention of female children in the formal schools. Thus, to enhance female child education, government at all levels should actively engage community stakeholders in all cycles of public policy and public services provision.