50% of public primary schools in Nigeria have no toilets —UBEC

THE Universal Basic Education Commission has revealed that over 50 per cent of public primary schools in Nigeria do not have toilet facilities.

This was contained in the 2018 National Personnel Audit report on Public and Private Basic Education Schools in Nigeria conducted by the commission.

Minister of Education, Malam Adamu Adamu, officially launched the report in Abuja, where he stressed the importance of data for effective planning and allocation of resources, especially at the foundational level of education in the country.

According to the report, in private schools, the situation is better with 85 per cent having toilets, while overall, 66 per cent of both public and private schools have toilets; this translates to 34 per cent of primary schools generally not having toilets.

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“Toilets are very important in schools. Apart from guaranteeing hygiene and good health, the presence of toilets in schools, especially for girls, is known to encourage school attendance and the reverse encourages dropout.

“It is probably for this reason that toilets are considered as one of the facilities that contribute to the creation of child-friendly schools,” the report noted.

The report also indicated that many states of the federation have very low percentage of public primary schools with toilets. For instance, Plateau State with 24 per cent had the lowest percentage of schools with toilets.

States with less than 40 per cent of schools with toilets include Akwa Ibom, Ebonyi, Kogi, Nasarawa, Niger, Sokoto, Taraba and Zamfara, while Anambra, Katsina and Lagos are the only states with over 70 per cent of schools with toilets.

The executive secretary of the Universal Basic Education Commission, Dr Hamid Bobboyi, had in his remark said the National Personnel Audit was an exercise that brought together all the key stakeholders at different levels of government and from different agencies, including the private sector, to make the project a reality.

He noted that Nigeria needed basic education data for planning and effective management of the sector.

 

Nigerian Tribune