What is the number of Nigeria’s out-of-school children?

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There are conflicting figures on the number of school age children who are out of school in Nigeria. According to the Head of United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) office in Kano, Rahama Farah, who addressed journalists on the issue in May this year, there are 18.5million out-of-school children in Nigeria. The World Bank, in a document titled “Nigeria Development Update (June 2022): The Continuing Urgency of Business Unusual”, puts the figure at 11million. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), in its latest Global Education Monitoring (GEM) report, puts the number at 20million, while the Federal Ministry of Education said in 2021 that the number of out-of-school children in the country dropped from 10.1million in 2019 to 6.95 million in 2020.

So, how many children are out of school in Nigeria? Answering this question is critical because unless we have accurate figures, our planning will be flawed. If there are conflicting figures about the number of children that the government needs to take out of the streets to the classroom, tackling the problem would remain a mirage. One other concern is that the figures being bandied are so diverse that settling for the mean would be of mean help.

But why is it so difficult for us as a people to have accurate figures about our people? Why do we need to rely on international agencies to get facts and figures that can help us plan our lives properly and live better? It is this failure to have correct figures that makes it possible for some unscrupulous members of our society to game the system. It is also the same reason problems seem to be having an edge over us as a people.

But be that as it may, whatever figure we choose to adopt, it is still a sad tale about us as a people that we have so many millions of our children out of school. This is especially so when we realize that children under 15 years of age constitute about 45 per cent of the country’s population and the out-of-school kids are not being engaged in any valuable venture. They are street kids, allowed to waste away their lives and make a mess of the potentialities of the nation. The millions of Nigerian children out of school will, in a few years, translate to millions of Nigerians who will grow up with no form of marketable skills. It means millions of youths without any prospect of any worthwhile employment. It means millions of potential bomb throwers, bandits, armed robbers, kidnappers, pipeline vandals, drug traffickers, human traffickers and prostitutes. It means millions of Nigerians who will be a pain in the neck of their compatriots and a bulwark to their country’s development.

According to the UNICEF, 40 per cent of Nigerian children in the North aged between six and 11, especially girls, do not attend any primary school. In the South-East, the number of boys shunning school is also alarmingly on the increase. Dropout rate in primary schools across the country is put at 30 per cent, while only 54 per cent transit to Junior Secondary Schools.

I think the question that should agitate the minds of policy makers and all well-meaning nationals of the country is that despite the obvious advantages education confers on the educated, why is the idea of enrolling their children in schools still repugnant to some parents? Why is it that in spite of the Universal Basic Education programme of the government, school enrolment appears to be on a downward slide? If education is free up to the Junior Secondary Class Three, as we have been told repeatedly by federal and state governments, why are parents withdrawing their children from schools?

Why is it that while the enrolment figure in primary and secondary schools is nose diving, the number of children engaged in child labour is on the rise? A survey of any Nigerian street will reveal a daily increase in the number of young children taking to street trading, hawking ‘pure water’, kola nuts, sweets and biscuits or serving as motor boys and food sellers’ maids. Why are parents more comfortable giving out their teenage daughters in marriage than giving them education? Are the schools meeting the expectations of the parents and pupils? Are the facilities good enough? Are the schools factoring in tribal and religious elements into the learning system?

Experts have come up with many factors; social, religious, tribal and economic, as being responsible for the preference of some parents to keep their children out of school but the Nigerian constitution has made the responsibility of educating every Nigerian child that of the government.

Section 18 (1) of the 1999 Constitution states, “Government shall direct its policy towards ensuring that there are equal and adequate educational opportunities at all levels.”

Section 18 (3) states that “Government shall strive to eradicate illiteracy; and to this end government shall as and when practicable provide (a) free, compulsory and universal primary education; (b) free secondary education; (c) free university education.”

So, the government is liable for every child that is out of school because it has the constitutional responsibility to ensure the education of all Nigerian children. The rising number of the nations out of school children is a failure on the part of the government at all levels. The government should do all in its power to ensure that all Nigerian children are enrolled in schools. This is not just because it is a constitutional matter but especially because the continued existence of the country may well depend on it.

It has been argued that unemployment and poverty gave rise to the insurgency and banditry in the North, the rising armed robbery cases in the South-West and the kidnapping in the South-East but unless the syndrome of out-of-school children is fought with resolve and reversed, the current security challenges confronting the country would be a child’s play compared with what may happen in the future.

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