THE Federal Government has reaffirmed its commitment towards ensuring that every school age child in Nigeria is given opportunity and access to basic education.
Minister of Education, Malam Adamu Adamu, who said this, noted that the Federal Government and other critical stakeholders are working assiduously to further reduce the number to a more manageable level.
Adamu said: “At my 2020 Annual Ministerial Press Briefing, I informed the press that we had reduced the number of out-of-school children from an estimated 13 to 6.9 million.
“May I inform you that we have further recorded impressive enrollment in the last one year, especially in some of the frontline states of Kano, Kaduna, Katsina, Sokoto, Gombe, Bauchi, Adamawa, Taraba, Rivers and Ebonyi.
This has been largely due to the activities of the Better Education Service Delivery For All (BESDA) programme and the cooperation of state governors.
“The setback from the momentum is occasioned by the COVID-19 pandemic, insecurity and increased birth rate among other factors. However, we are working assiduously to further reduce the number to more manageable level,” he said.
A report by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), however, noted that one in every five of the world’s out-of-school children is in Nigeria.
It noted that though primary education is officially free and compulsory, about 10.5 million of the country’s children aged 5-14 years are not in school.
According to the report “only 61 percent of 6-11 year-olds regularly attend primary school and only 35.6 percent of children aged 36-59 months receive early childhood education.
“In the northern part of the country, the picture is even bleaker, with a net attendance rate of 53 percent. Getting out-of-school children back into education poses a massive challenge.”
In the same vein, the 2021 Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) 6 report placed Kebbi, Zamfara and Bauchi as the states with the highest number of out-of-school children in Nigeria, while Kebbi led the pack with 65 percent, then Zamfara and Bauchi with 61 respectively.
The report, however, showed that Imo State has the lowest number of out-of-school children with one percent, followed by Ekiti with two percent.
The 2021 Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS)6 with indices covering children and adolescents between the ages of 7-14 years was recently launched in Nigeria.
The survey was conducted by the National Bureau of Statistics with support from the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).
According to the report of the 2018 National Personnel Audit (NPA), which was conducted by the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), out-of-school children are 10.1 million in Nigeria with the majority of them coming from the North.
An update of the report is being carried by the commission in the ongoing 2022 NPA exercise.
UNICEF’s chief of Data Mr Claes Johanson, speaking during a presentation of key findings of the MICS, noted that the survey was the first major household survey conducted in Nigeria after the COVID-19 pandemic in Nigeria.
According to him, 3,500 households were interviewed (over 1000 per state) making it one of the largest surveys worldwide, stressing that the MICS was expanded from 28 indicators in the first round to 200 in the current sixth round.
The MICS report also indicated only 27 percent of the children and adolescents aged 7-14years have foundational reading skills while 25 percent have foundational numeracy skills.
While noting that Nigeria and other stakeholders including development partners to address the challenge of out-of-school children, Johanson noted that the increasing population growth is a major factor threatening positive impact on the menace of school age not being in school.
He added that 1 out four Nigerian children between the ages of 7 and 14 years are out-of-school while only one out of four actually learn in schools, an indication of the learning crisis in Nigeria.
Speaking earlier during the media dialogue, the Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Muhammed, commended UNICEF for financial and technical support to the ministry the Child Rights Information Bureau (CRIB) for implementation of critical programmes geared towards betterment of lives of Nigerian children.
Mohammed, who was represented by Mr Temitoye Falayi of the Child Rights Bureau unit, expressed hope that the collaboration would be sustained.
On his part, the UNICEF Communication Specialist, Geoffrey Njoku, noted that MICS 6 is an improvement on a previous survey conducted 5 years ago.
He explained that the media dialogue was organised to look into factors responsible for poor indices, specifically as to why some lingering challenges still remain in some parts of the country.
”We have some good figures and we also have some that are not so good so we want to know why some of these indices are not very good,” he said.
Meanwhile, to effectively address the challenge of out-of-school children in the country, Minister of State for Education, Rt. Honourable Goodluck Nana Opiah, last week flagged off a national campaign on out-of-school children in Yenagoa, the Bayelsa state capital, where it was revealed that Bayelsa alone has more than 250,000 children out of school particularly in the rural areas.
