It has been seven years since Nigeria committed to ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education for all. However, the future of at least ten million children in the country still hangs in the balance.
Our reporter visited the Jahi area of the nation’s capital, Abuja, where he saw school-age children, sometimes in groups, wandering the streets with wheelbarrows as they did the job of dustmen.
‘Carry dustbin’, the children, most of whom are between the ages of seven and 12, chorus during school hours as they move from the entrance of one house to another, hoping to empty bins and get paid for the service.
SDG Four: Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all
The worrying numbers
The United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) reported this year that about 18.5 million children, the majority of whom are girls, do not have access to education in Nigeria.
Figures from the UN agency also show that over 60 percent of these children are in the country’s northern region.
Another UN agency, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), recently announced that the country now has about 20 million out-of-school children, the highest number in the world.
As for the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), an intervening agency of the Nigerian government, the number of out-of-school children between the ages of six and 11 in the country is 10.1 million based on its 2018 National Personnel Audit (NPA) report.
State of basic education in Nigeria
Basic education in the country has continued to experience a steady decline, especially with regard to access and quality.
The commission’s latest NPA report showed that Nigeria currently has a deficit of about 43,456 classrooms, indicating a limited capacity for access across states.
Education stakeholders, including indigenous and international development partners, have also observed that these limited classroom spaces have not only contributed to the high number of out-of-school children in Nigeria but accounted for why some still learn under trees and dilapidated buildings.
The NPA report also revealed that the total number of classrooms required for public schools is 195,484, but the number of available classrooms was 152,028.
School facilities are in a state of extreme disrepair, requiring major rehabilitation, while teaching and learning resources are generally not available.
Also, available data shows that children in urban areas are nearly 30 percent more likely to attend school than their rural peers, suggesting major gaps according to location.
As regards quality, many schoolchildren that complete grade four cannot read one word from a flashcard or perform a single-digit addition problem, according to a recent performance evaluation report by Nigeria’s Ministry of Education. The point here is that pupils in urban areas outperform pupils in rural areas, while girls generally trail behind.
It is, therefore, not surprising that Nigeria’s national literacy rate of 62.02 percent is poor compared to its peers in Africa. South Africa has 87.05 percent, Egypt 71.2 percent, and Ghana 79.04 percent.
Meanwhile, some state governors claim that they find it difficult to shoulder the cost of borrowing from banks to access the UBEC funds.
UBEC had also raised the alarm over the fact that 50 percent of schools in Africa’s most populous country lack basic furniture and other critical infrastructure for improved learning outcomes.
In spite of these concerns, many state governments in the country are failing to prioritise addressing the gaps in providing basic education for several millions of children in line with Goal-4, Target-1, of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), to which Nigeria is a signatory.
Also, the country’s annual monetary allocations to education have been less than the 15 percent minimum recommended by UNESCO.
Education and human rights
Adopted as a human right by the United Nations, basic education is the bedrock of formal learning that ‘transforms lives, eradicates poverty, and drives sustainable development’.
According to sections two and 11 of the Compulsory, Free Universal Basic Education Act in Nigeria, education is both a human right in itself and an indispensable means of realising other human rights.
‘As an empowerment right, education is the primary vehicle by which economically and socially marginalised adults and children can lift themselves out of poverty and obtain the means to fully participate in their communities’, the Act reads.
‘States are required to progressively implement socio-economic rights including the right to quality education commensurate with the level of resources available.
‘Gross misallocation of resources to the detriment of the enjoyment of the right to quality education can constitute a human rights violation’.
However, based on recent data from UBEC, 32 states have not accessed over N48 billion in UBEC funds available for improving basic education across all states.
Federal government efforts
The federal government, through UBEC, has committed to providing equal access to free, universal, and quality basic education to all Nigerian children of primary and junior secondary school age.
Documents obtained from UBEC show that between 2000 and 2018, the number of pupils in primary education increased by 45 percent, ‘and in junior secondary education, student enrolment tripled’.
In 2014, the Nigerian government, in collaboration with the UN Special Envoy for Global Education and a coalition of Nigerian business leaders, initiated the Safe Schools Initiative (SSI) in Abuja.
The government also launched the Safe Schools Fund as an initial response, with capitalisation from the federal government and the private sector, and indicative grants from the African Development Bank (AfDB).
Also, the federal government, in March 2019, signed the Instrument Ratifying the Safe Schools Declaration, signalling Nigeria’s commitment to endorse and uphold the principles of the Safe Schools Declaration (SSD).
Furthermore, the National Council on Education in August 2021 approved the National Policy of Safety and Violence-Free Schools in Nigeria and its implementation guidelines as reference documents for all education stakeholders.
Despite the efforts of the federal and some state governments, millions of Nigerian children are still out of school and Nigeria is unlikely to achieve SDG-4.
States owing counterpart funds
Chairman of the UBEC governing board, Professor Adamu Usman, has accused state governments of abdicating their responsibility of funding basic education.
Among states owing 2021 counterpart funds are Kwara, Lagos, Niger, Ogun, Ondo, Osun, Rivers, Yobe, Abia, Adamawa, Anambra, Borno, Delta, Ebonyi, Enugu, Imo and Kaduna. UBEC put the funds not accessed at N18, 746,470,860.16.
Further analysis revealed that 11 states – Abia, Adamawa, Anambra, Delta, Ebonyi, Enugu, Kaduna, Kwara, Niger, Ogun and Osun – owed N715,074,135.14 each, making the total owed by the states to be N17,865,815,486.54 in 2020.
‘Unfortunately, a good number of the states do not appear enthusiastic about funding basic education. As such, they do not always access their matching grants from UBEC’, he said.
‘At the end of the day, you start wondering how much of the money and resources going to states and agencies implementing basic education goes down to the level of the classroom and making a difference in teaching and learning’.
Speaking to Development Diaries, the Head of Social Development Programme at Plan International Nigeria, Laban Onisimus, called on state governments in Nigeria to rise up to their responsibilities.
‘Education is a right; it is not a privilege. And since education is a right, it is the duty of any reasonable, progressive government to cater for the education of its citizens, especially at the basic education level, because that is the foundation’, Onisimus said.
‘So let them [states] rise up to their responsibilities. If you go to states that are deemed to be progressive in terms of their support to basic education, you will see to some extent that the governor there is somebody who understands rights issues.
‘I don’t want to mention states but there are states that are doing good when it comes to responding to some of those issues. So they need to really sit up, work with UBEC and ensure that whatever plans, either quarterly or annually, that they have, they will submit to SUBEB’.
Failed promises
President Muhammadu Buhari, in his 2022 Children’s Day message, promised that his government would ensure wider access to quality education that would further reduce the number of out-of-school children in Nigeria. However, the aforementioned figures from UNESCO and UNICEF show a worsening situation.
The president also promised at the 2021 Global Education Summit in London that his administration would raise the budget for education by 50 percent in the next two years, adding that Nigeria will attain 100 percent budgetary increase by 2025.
His words, ‘I would also like to reiterate the commitment of the government of Nigeria to ensure that total education spending increase by 50 percent over the next two years and up to 100 percent within the next five years [2021–2025]’.
‘We also undertake to work with, and ensure that every state in our federation progress towards or maintain spending levels above 20 percent of their total budget to achieve national minimum standards for education outcomes’.
However, his administration recently allocated just ten percent of the total budget for 2023 to education.
How can Nigeria get it right?
‘We need to increase the funding for education. We need to also enlighten citizens in order to do like a scorecard for each of those governments that they are working with in terms of financing education’, Onisimus added.
‘We need to also empower them to do like a budget literacy kind of engagement with the legislators at the state levels and the national level so that they can continue to engage with the state Houses of Assembly in terms of funding for education’.
Beyond low funding, lack of proper monitoring of how the available funding is being utilised by states has also been identified by some education stakeholders as a contributing factor to the poor state of basic education in the country.
Presenting a paper on ‘The Changing Policy Environment – New Learnings for Education Advocacies’, the Executive Director of YouthHubAfrica, Rotimi Olawale, urged UBEC to strengthen its monitoring and evaluation systems in order to provide relevant data to guide investments in the sector.
‘The board of UBEC should reduce the five-year grace period for matching grant disbursements to two years’, he also recommended, just as he reiterated the call on the federal government to extend the current compulsory, free and quality UBE to cover for 12 years.
The role of citizens
In Nigeria, the School-Based Management Committee (SBMC) is set up to increase citizens’ participation in school management as part of the efforts of school reform in Nigeria.
SBMCs are established by government to act as an essential link between schools and the communities they serve. They are intended to contribute to school development planning and decision-making at the school level for improved learning outcomes.
However, there are insufficient community systems to support schools and help bridge the gaps in primary education.
‘You know in Nigeria when you see a budget it does not necessarily translate to the spending. So it is not just that you budgeted for this amount’, Onisimus added.
‘What about the releases? Have those figures been released? Do we have citizens in place to monitor or track the implementation’?
Calls to action
For Nigeria to attain SDG-4.1 by 2030, a number of key issues need urgent attention from policymakers and decision-takers.
The federal government must drastically increase the level of public education financing to ensure that its policy to support free and compulsory basic education is effective.
UBEC should effectively monitor the use of funds and immediately alert relevant law enforcement agencies when a case of financial misconduct is discovered.
As for state governments, each of them should pass a new UBE law that defines UBE in the state as compulsory, free, and for 12 years.
Also, all governors should accord topmost priority to basic and secondary education by financing 12 years of compulsory and free UBE with at least 25 percent of total state government spending every year.
Finally, no child should be found loitering during school hours. Any child found outside the school, selling or hawking, should be arrested and their parents held accountable.
This report is produced as part of the YouthHubAfrica Basic Education Media Fellowship, with support from Malala Fund and Rise Up.
