No fewer than seven distinguished personalities including First Lady of Gombe State, Asma’u Yahaya, were recently decorated as child spacing Champions by The Challenge Initiative.
Others include Chairman of Advocacy Working Group; Alhassan Yahya, Chairperson Media Working Group; Rebecca Caleb Maina, Dr Maryam Abubakar, Director of Gombe State Primary Health Care Development Agency; Hauwa Saraki, State Mobilisation Officer; Sallau Malami, Deputy Director Ministry of Health; Ronas Saleh Tula, and Alhaji Saleh Danburam, Gombe State Secretary of the Jama’atu Naril Islam and Chairman Inter-Faith Forum on child spacing.
Our correspondent reports that TCI is rounding off its intervention in Gombe as it gears for April graduation.
Recall that TCI started working in Gombe as partner, since 2020 when the expression of interest was approved by its board, while full implementation commenced in 2021.
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The Champions are expected to canvass the cause of child spacing in the state, maintain the already established tempo.
Speaking during a courtesy visit to the wife of the Gombe State Governor, Yahaya, Gombe State Coordinator, The Challenge Initiative, Yakubu Usman, lauded the support his Organisation received while its project existed.
Usman disclosed that TCI operates business unusual model which allows for partnership between her and governments in creating acceptance of family planning services.
According to him, TCI would not leave Gombe alone after graduation, adding “there’s a period of two years TCI will be coming every six months to do assessment, to administer some checklist to see the level of self reliance and continuity and expansion and scale as well. So we’re not parting, we’re just leaving and another thing about the process is that the state will now take more responsibilities in funding and supervision and the state when during the process of graduation.”
He urged Yahaya to combine her role as Reproductive, Maternal, Newborn, Child and Adolescent Health + Nutrition championconferred on her by Legislative Initiative for Sustainable Development, to champion the cause of child spacing champion.
“Beyond being RMNCAH+N, we want you to become child spacing champion,” Usman added.
Also speaking, Chairman of AWG, Yahya commended TCI for its far-reaching efforts, adding that following the Organisation’s activities and other partners Gombe Contraceptive Prevalence Rate has moved from four to 17 per cent.
“I want to inform you that likewise from our own end, journalists as well as religious leaders we have learnt a lot from this project. Of course, every project has a life circle and I believe that by April as you said this project is coming to an end but for us we want to see that this project is sustained and maintained for the rest of our lives,” he said.
On her part, Wife of the Governor, Yahaya who accepted the honour to serve as Champion said, “As mentioned Inshallah we shall continue to do more.”
While commending TCI for its instructional materials and sourvenirs, she noted that the involvement of both religious leaders and journalists would bolster the needed results,” because it’s for their (women, society) own good; no one said we shouldn’t give birth but we should take care of the ones we have. May Allah make it easy and put Baraka in whatever we are going to do and Inshallah we are looking forward to the graduation ceremony,” Asma’u Yahaya added.
