“The families and parents need to understand that education is important for the children and their well-being”
The County Office of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in Nigeria has lamented that the number of out-of-school children in the country is becoming an alarming and disturbing trend which must be stopped through urgent measures by the government.
The UNICEF Country Representative in Nigeria, Ms Cristian Munduate who made the lamentation expressed regret that Nigeria now has over 10 million out-of-school children.
Cristian Munduate said that UNICEF is worried and concerned about the present situation which according to her accounts for 5% of the total estimated population of the country.
Though she expressed happiness with the successes recorded through the GEP III project which increased the number of enrollment of children, especially the girl children.
According to her, if the trend is not checked, the country will have more out-of-school children in the next 5 to 10 years a development she said will spell doom for the country’s manpower development.
She however said that Nigeria must invest in building the capacity of its teachers to enhance access to quality education for all.
The UNICEF Representative in Nigeria, Christian Munduate was on a working tour and decided to have an interactive session with Journalists.
She emphasized that as it is now, 75 per cent of Nigerian children aged between 7 and 14 years lack foundational learning skills in literacy and numeracy a development she said is dangerous for the future of the country.
According to her, “How teachers perform while they are delivering education for children needs to be frequently assessed. There is a need to know how to distinguish between a lack of teaching better and a lack of performance.”
Cristian Munduate added, “There are many reasons why at the end of the day, we have 75 per cent of children not reading, writing or making basic arithmetic operations. The problems come from different reasons and these reasons need to be addressed.”
According to Cristian Munduate, UNICEF is committed to a national assessment of capacities to determine what are the training needs of teachers in the country.
She further said that the UN agency will also conduct a similar exercise to assess the performance of children, adding that there is a plan to make the assessment exercise an annual event aimed at keeping tap of progress made.
The UNICEF Boss in Nigeria also said that such an exercise was imperative to enable authorities at different levels to appraise their performances in terms of quality education in the country.
She said, “The families and parents need to understand that education is important for the children and their well-being. The more the child is educated, the more chances this child will have to get a job and to support his parents.”
“But if a child doesn’t get this opportunity of education, the chances are very little and this increases the circle of poverty,” she said.
On immunisation, Cristian Munduate said that UNICEF will work with the Nigerian government to enhance immunisation coverage in the next five years saying that the organisation has been supporting Nigeria to vaccinate its children under the ”Zero dose or Zero children with zero vaccines”.
“We are working with the health sector on what we call the strengthening of primary healthcare attention and this is already happening in Bauchi state. “So, it is important for you as representatives of the media to find out how this is being done in different primary healthcare centres,” she said.
Cristian Munduate also urged State Governments across the country to as a matter of necessity, domesticate and sign into law, the Child Rights Act (CRA) to promote and protect the well-being of the child.
