Senate has urged the Federal Ministry of Education and its agencies and other stakeholders to jointly evolve new strategies to effectively
By Haruna Salami
Senate has urged the Federal Ministry of Education and its agencies and other stakeholders to jointly evolve new strategies to effectively deal with the issue of out of school children in Nigeria.
Debating a motion on “Compelling need to tackle the challenge of out of school children in Nigeria” sponsored by Senator Adebule Olaranti (APC Lagos West) at plenary on Wednesday, Senate resolved that new strategies are required.
Olaranti said that the issue of out of school children has become worrisome, given the 2022 report of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) that about 20 million Nigerian children were out of school.
She said this represented 10 per cent of the estimated Nigerian population of 200 million people and also represents the highest number of out of school children from any country globally.
However, she noted that though ministry of education had disputed the figure, it was a general notion that whatever the real figures on out of school children was, has become a challenge on the Nigerian state that must be dealt with as a matter of urgency.
She said the social impacts of having about 20 million out of school children on the Nigerian state would include impediment to achieving some of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
According to her, it would also result into lack of inclusiveness and equitable quality of education and promotion of lifelong learning opportunities for all.
This, she said would provide for easy recruitment into criminal gangs, banditry and terrorism which are the biggest security issues the Nigerian state has been dealing with for many years.
She also expressed worry that Nigerians may become ill-equipped to climb out of the poverty bracket and other social problems that might arise from issues of out of school children.
She said in the past successive administrations made several efforts to deal with out of school children problem, saying that the last effort was deployment of home-grown school feeding programs by the Muhammadu Buhari’s administration.
However, she said the programme had “little impact on the surging number of out of school children”.
According to her, there is need to evolve a new thinking and more aggressive strategies to deal with the menace of out of school children.
She expressed believe that when all the institutions concerned are committed to their responsibilities, the menace of out of school children would be subdued, saying that the situation was a concern to the Federal Government of Nigeria.
Senator Mohammed Monguno (APC- Borno North) said the motion was important, adding that all efforts should be made to ensure that the children are enrolled in schools to avoid challenge of recruiting them into banditry and terrorism.
Former Senate President, Ahmed Lawan (APC- Yobe North) said issue of out of school children was a social and security issue one, adding that the out of school children was more than 20 million and was “a major challenge to development of Nigeria”.
According to him , the number of out of school children could be within the region of 40 million, saying that efforts must be deliberately made to get the children back to school and prepare them for leadership, saying that global development may be eluding Nigeria with issues of out of school children.
Senator Adams Oshiomhole
(APC- Edo North) said every Nigerian child need to be enrolled in school, given the importance of education to eradication of poverty.
He urged the appropriate agencies of government to publish the actual statistics of out of school children and steps taken by state governments to address the issues.
President of Senate, Godswill Akpabio, in his remark commended the sponsor of the motion, saying that opportunities would have been given to many Nigerian children, if attention was paid by various governments both state and local governments in the past
Therefore, Senate in its further resolution mandated its Committee on Education (Basic and Secondary) to engage the Federal Ministry of Education and pay attention to the issue of out of school children with ultimate objective of drastically reducing the number.
It also called for measures to rekindle the national consciousness through sensitisation and advocacy on the importance of education to the growth and development of Nigeria and the benefits of having majority educated population
It also urged for a time limit of two years for the diligent implementation of the Universal Basic Education (UBE) Act.
