It was a sorry sigh that followed the announcement by the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) in 2020, that the country’s out-of-school children had increased from 10.2 million to 13.5 million and thus, Nigeria was adjudged as having the highest number of such children in the world.
The Education for All (EFA) world initiative launched in 1990 and ratified in 2000, and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs; especially those on education) underscore the critical role education plays in developing the knowledge and skills of people for a socially progressive, and a vibrant knowledge-based society.
According to education researcher, Matthew Pagoe, no country can improve the quality of life of its people without investment in human capital, which has been found to “foster growth through technological creation, invention, and innovation, as well as facilitating the uptake and imitation of new technologies.”
Globally, children are entitled to free and qualitative basic education, yet the number of out-of-school children in the world is alarming and on the rise.
According to the World Bank, Nigeria, in 2020, had more than 11 million out-of-school children between the ages of 6 and 15. This figure represents 1 in 12 of all out-of-school children globally and 22 per cent of all children in the age group in Nigeria.
Data compiled by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), in partnership with the Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report, showed that Nigeria has about 20 million out-of-school children, placing it second after India, a nation with over one billion population. Pakistan comes third. The three countries have the highest figures for out-of-school children globally.
The out-of-school children, according to UBEC, include the girl-child in northern Nigeria, boy-child dropouts in the south-south and south-east regions, internally displaced children and the almajiri Qur’anic and itinerant children who are predominantly found in the northern part of the country.
What the law says
UBE Act provides free and compulsory universal basic education for every Nigerian child of school age, and it is an offence for a parent not to enrol his or her ward in school as a such parent is liable under the Act to a jail term.
According to the Act, “A parent who contravenes Section 2 (2) of this Act commits an offence and is liable- (a) on a first conviction, to be reprimanded; (b) on a second conviction, to a fine of N 2, 000 or imprisonment for a term of one month or both; and (c) on subsequent conviction, to a fine of N5, 000 or imprisonment for a term of two months or both.”
The persistent challenge
As part of efforts to tackle the menace of out-of-school children, the Federal Government, in 2020 launched the Better Education Service Delivery for All (BEDSA) to increase equitable access, improve literacy and strengthen accountability at the basic education level.
Besides, UBEC also introduced the Open Schooling Programme (OSP), a flexible education system that allows children to learn where they are and when they want, away from conventional schools and teachers.
But almost four years after unveiling the programmes and strategies to tackle the menace, the number has continued to increase.
According to UNESCO, as of October 2022, about 20 million children are out of school in Nigeria, a far-reaching increase from the 10.5 million recorded in 2020. In fact, the World Bank noted that Nigeria is experiencing learning poverty where 70 per cent of 10-year-olds cannot understand a simple sentence or perform basic numeracy tasks.
In Nigeria, 60 per cent of the out-of-school children are girls. Only a fraction of 3.1 million nomadic children of school age have access to basic education despite decades of intervention.
Similarly, only a small proportion of an estimated 9.5 million almajiri children have access to any basic education and an increasing number of displaced children are being forced out of school in the insurgency-stricken states.
In the past, the Federal Government had proposed strategies for engaging with state governments in addressing the problems of out-of-school children. It also planned to raise the national Net Enrollment Rate (NET) by enrolling 2,875,000 pupils yearly as well as renovating schools destroyed by Boko Haram insurgents and constructing an additional 71,874 classrooms every year.
In addition, the government is expected to provide an additional 71,875 qualified teachers through the deployment of 14 per cent of the new teachers to be recruited yearly (by 2050, Nigeria will need to recruit 400,000 teachers and raise the enrollment of girls in basic education schools by 1.5 million yearly for the next four years.
The alternative school programme
In 2021, former President Muhammadu Buhari inaugurated an 18-member presidential steering committee on the Alternate School Programme (ASP) to deliver a limited scope of subjects — Mathematics, English Language, Basic Sciences and Social Studies — to children with limited access.
He identified target beneficiaries as internally displaced persons (IDP), those in vulnerable conditions, victims of insurgency, social and environmental dislocation, and children on the streets. A technical working group, with members drawn across government ministries, as well as international and civil society organisations, were expected to go into the field to document and organise these children for systematic intervention.
However, stakeholders identified rising insecurity across the country, mass displacement; poor funding, rising poverty that forces parents to put children in the labour market and street hawking, and the breakdown in social and family life, as factors hindering the success of the various interventions programmes of the Federal Government.
An Educationist, Dr Omojola Adesokan, said though the Federal Government has responded to the urgent crisis of out-of-school children by initiating multiple programmes and initiatives to ensure that every child has access to basic education, much still needs to be done to adequately address this problem.
According to him, measures must be taken to overcome financial and social barriers to education, ensure access to quality education, and address the underlying causes that are driving children out of school.
“We must create a conducive, supportive and enabling environment to ensure that all our children get the chance to access education and reach their full potential,” Adesokan said.
A non-governmental organisation, Human Development Initiative (HDI), through its project coordinator, Ibidapo Johnson, said the government must be creative on re-enrollment timing and open its gates to public-private partnerships for more infrastructural development as the current infrastructure cannot accommodate all out-of-school children.
On her part, Mariam Zakari, an educationist, said some states have failed to domesticate the Child Rights Act 2003.
She noted that over the years, successive governments have adopted programmes to foster free, compulsory child education, culminating in the National Policy on Education (2004) and passage of the Child Rights Act, which mandates nine years of compulsory schooling for children.
The director of programmes, Education for All Foundation, Akin Olopade, said Nigeria is where it is because of poor investment in the education sector.
He lamented that the nation’s funding for education remains less than 10 per cent of the yearly budget, far from the 15 to 20 per cent recommended by UNESCO.
Olopade, however, pointed out that with many children kept out of school, Nigeria cannot adequately compete in a knowledge-based economy globally.
A World Bank document titled: “Nigeria development update: The continuing urgency of business unusual,” indicated that with many children out-of-school in Nigeria, in years to come, there will be a lack of adequate and appropriate manpower in the future.
Also, a study showed that children who are out of school are often used to perpetrate crime and other ills in society.
Corroborating this view, a public analyst, James Umoh, noted that the 20 million out-of-school children represent a grim future, one characterised by grave socio-economic and security consequences for Nigeria.
He pointed out that with the country’s slow economic, but high population growth, particularly in the north, it is in the interest of the government to educate its youth on different skills that create jobs as a formidable way of curbing crime and reducing insecurity.
According to him, with Nigeria’s population of over 200 million, almost 10 per cent of its people are headed for a lifetime of illiteracy.
“For a country with a literacy rate of just 62.02 per cent, all efforts should be geared towards achieving mass literacy, not nurturing another generation of illiterates,” Umoh stated.
On her part, a retired principal, Mrs Jumoke Adepeju, said the spate of attacks on schools and abductions of students in the country have also contributed to the increase in the scourge of children not going to school.
She said, “Currently, in Nigeria, there are over 20 million out-of-school children, 60 per cent of whom are girls. This situation will create a serious effect in all the activities of the country, from the economy to literacy, hence the need for all hands to be on deck to fight this.”
A parent who resides in Abuja, Mrs Amina Aliyu, said the Nigerian girl-child is seriously endangered and under threat given the rate of girls who are out of school.
According to her, “When girls are denied education, you are denying roughly half of the nation’s population from being emancipated and preventing progress.”
She subsequently appealed to the Federal and state Governments to speed up measures of addressing the menace to save the country from future disasters.
