THE Universal Basic Education Commission has pledged to sustain its ongoing campaign on enrolment of children in schools by their parents in order to drastically reduce the number of out-of-school children in the country.
The report of 2018 National Personnel Audit conducted by UBEC indicated that more than 10.2 million children in Nigeria are out of school, with boys accounting for about 68 per cent of this figure.
Director of Social Mobilization, UBEC, Mr Bello Kagara, however, told journalists in Abuja that the advocacy and campaign for enrolment of school age children by the Commission, especially the hitherto neglected girls, was yielding positive results.
He said UBEC had been in the forefront of the campaign given the effect of the high burden of out-of-school children on the national development agenda.
An official of the commission, Mr Akpanossom Udoh, who took journalists through the voluminous NPA report conducted on public and private basic education schools in Nigeria, noted that boys accounted for about 68 per cent of the estimated 10.2 million out-of-school children in the country.
The report was officially launched late last year by the Minister of Education, Malam Adamu Adamu.
“The boys’ figure of 6,340,621 constituted 62 per cent of primary age children without access to primary education. The girls’ contribution of out-of-school-children was 3,853,297 and about 38 per cent of the total.
“It could also indicate that the campaigns for parents, especially in the northern states, to allow their daughters to attend and complete primary school have started yielding results,” the report said.
Udoh, who gave further breakdown of the number of out-of-school children as contained in the personnel audit report, said Kano State with 989,234 has the highest number of children not in school while Yobe State has (43 per cent) has the highest proportion of children out of school.
“In three of the least performing states (Yobe, Taraba and Zamfara states), four out of 10 children were out of school. In six other states (Sokoto, Borno, Rivers, Plateau, Benue and Nasarawa), one out of three children was not in school for primary education.
“In nine states (Adamawa, Bauchi, Kogi, Niger, Jigawa, Ebony, Bayelsa, Edo, Osun and Ogun states), one in four children was out of school. Only four states and FCT had less than 20 per cent of their primary school age children out of school. The four states are Anambra,15 per cent; Imo,17 per cent; Ekiti, 17 per cent and Lagos, 19 per cent.”
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