By Ruth Oketunde
The UK group, IA-Foundation says the Nigerian government should enact a law to punish parents and guardians, using their children to engage in economic ventures during school hours.
The Chief Executive Officer of IA-Foundation, Mrs Ibironke Adeagbo, gave the advice in a telephone interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja on Monday.
Adeagbo was speaking against the backdrop of a report released recently by UNESCO, which put the number of out-of-school children in the West African country at 20.2 million.
The report, released on Aug. 18, alarmed Nigerians, who have been expressing their disgust on the development as well as the continued closure of public universities in the country.
Public universities in the country have been shut for more than 200 days, due to a face-off between the Academic Staff Union of Universities and the federal government.
“The Nigerian government needs to enact a law to punish parents and guardians using their children and wards for economic ends, rather than sending them to school,’’ said Adeagbo, who has sustained a campaign to tackle Nigeria’s out-of-school crisis.
British-born Adeagbo said that Nigeria was having about eight per cent of the estimated 244 million out-of-school children in the world
.
She suggested that the issue of out-of-school children should be made a standing agenda in the weekly federal executive council meeting of the federal government.
“Nigeria should demonstrate the political will to tackle the out-of-school crisis because the problem is indeed, a time bomb.’’
She said that 17 states in the country were having high numbers of out-of-school children with 14 of the states in Nigeria’s north.
Adeagbo pointed out, however, that government’s intervention might do little to resolve the problem, unless the pervading insecurity in the country was tackled decisively.
She expressed her regrets that people in tertiary institutions in the country were also dropping out of school because of “endless strikes by university teachers’’.
The education rights campaigner advised Nigeria to invest in information technology to bring education closer to the masses, especially in rural communities.
“Education is under siege in Nigeria and government must do the needful to save he future of Africa’s most populous nation,’’ said Adeagbo.
She re-stated her advice to the federal government to seek foreign assistance to address challenges in the country, especially in tackling insecurity and the education sector.
Education in Nigeria, which is Africa’s top crude oil exporter and one of the largest economies in the continent has been in turmoil in recent years.
The development has made millions of kids to stay out of school with university students in public institutions also forced out of classrooms, due to persistent strikes by teachers.
But the federal government has been making strident efforts to resolve contentious issues with the university teachers, to get the institutions to re-open. (NAN)
