Nigeria’s Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu, has admitted his failure to reduce the number of out-of-school children in the country despite the issue being one of his key priorities in over seven years.
The minister, who was speaking during the 66th National Council on Education, called on all states to rise up to their responsibilities, and provide a safe and secure learning environment for both students and teachers.
‘My worry was that I came to office as Minister of Education seven years ago to tackle the myriad of issues confronting the education system, particularly the issue of out-of-school children.
‘But unfortunately, I failed to achieve all these expectations. For seven years, I was unable to tackle the issue of out-of-school children and several other challenges in the education sector.
‘However, there are so many factors that contributed to that failure, but the key one, probably, has to do with education commissioners in the states’.
State governments in Nigeria have the lion’s share of responsibility with respect to primary and secondary school education.
Worrying situation
The United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) Institute of Statistics (UIS) recently announced that Nigeria now has 20 million out-of-school children, although the federal government has disputed this figure.
Nigeria, in 2015, signed a commitment to achieve Goal-4, Target-1, of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to ‘ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all’ by 2030.
However, current realities, as they relate to low funding for basic education in the country, suggest that Nigeria is unlikely to achieve that goal.
The Universal Basic Education (UBE) programme was introduced in 1999 by the federal government as a way to provide free primary and junior secondary education for all.
Unfortunately, even though government has recorded an improvement in enrolment, basic education standards in the country are far from the minimum desired level.
What have states been doing?
In 2019, the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) ranked Kwara State the lowest among states on the chart of UBEC Matching Grant Disbursement Performance because the state assessed only 53 percent of its fund.
Part of what UBEC was set up to do is to provide funds to assist states in the implementation of UBEC’s programme.
But a review of the UBEC portal shows that between 2005 and 2021, 32 states did not access over N48 billion in UBEC funds available for improving basic education across all states.
It is evident that states are failing in the area of assessing the funding that are crucial to basic education outcomes in their various states, but the federal government has also failed to dedicate at least 15 percent of its total annual budget to education, based on UNESCO’s recommendation.
Beyond lack of funding, lack of proper monitoring of how the available funding is being managed, and lack of interest in the sector by the political elite all contribute to why the Nigerian education sector is in a poor state.
It is not enough for the minister to admit his failure to tackle the issue of out-of-school children and several other challenges in the education sector in more than seven years; he should resign immediately.
Photo source: Oxfam International
