The Federal Government has been urged to take urgent steps towards putting in place reforms needed to transform the education sector in Nigeria.
A coalition of civil society organisations made the call in Abuja, while urging the Federal Ministry of Education to spearhead the reforms in view of the rot in the system as could be seen in the dwindling quality of Nigerian pupils.
The civil societies: BudgIT, Basic Rights Watch, Reboot, Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre, and the Public and Private Development Centre at a press conference said the Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu, had to do more in revamping the education sector beyond putting forward the declaration of a state of emergency.
The conference was on education funding, access to funds and accountability process.
The BudgIT Lead Partner, Mr Seun Onigbinde, who spoke for the CSOs said Nigerians need to raise questions about the inconsistency of the government in the education sector, so as to awaken them to their responsibilities.
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He said: “The recent news of a school girl that was sent home due to non-payment of school fees has again called attention to the case of rising out-of-school children in Nigeria.
“The latest data from the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) pegs the figure at 13.2 million children, while the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) says 10.5 million as at 2018.
“The government in 2018 talked about an emergency situation in education. They didn’t need to declare an emergency in advance. We expected them to start addressing the emergency immediately. But it simply shows that education has yet to become a priority for the government.
“The rot in the education sector is generational, and you can see the quality of pupils from schools and graduates from universities. This was not so in the last 20 or 30 years.
“Hence we need to raise our voices and ask questions from the government. How have we funded the education? Is it adequately?”
In a joint release, the societies said “the federal and state governments should prioritise education by creating a soft landing for states to enable access to the Universal Basic Education Commission grants.
“For Nigeria to reverse the trend of education decline, we call on the Federal Government to align budgetary allocations with the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation’s standard.”
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