A new report by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation has noted that the number of out of school children is now 20 million. This makes Nigeria one of the top three countries in the world with the highest number of out of school Children.
The earlier figures in the country had been between 10 million and 15 million, but with UNICEF putting the number of children in Nigeria at 107,835,408 and the out of school population at 20 million, it means that one out of every six children in Nigeria is out of school.
Based on UNESCOs latest report, the country’s investments in programs such as the school feeding program which has been hailed as improving school enrollment as well as the billions budgeted for basic education has not had the desired effect on its out of school numbers.
The increasing numbers may also scrutinise the billions budgeted for basic education in the country.
In the last five years, between 2018 and 2022, Nigeria has budgeted the sum of N577.749 billion for its universal basic education program.
Financing is one of the challenges to education, especially basic education and the Federal Government sets aside two per cent of the Consolidated Revenue Fund (CRF) for equal distribution to all the 36 states of the country and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), to support basic education.
A Dataphyte report had however revealed that Nigerian states failed to access up to N48 billion in UBEC grants in seventeen years and the state universal basic education board budgets were low.
School to student ratio is also problematic. Analysis of the most recent education statistics released by the country shows that there are 466 students on the average at each Junior Secondary school in the country and an average 359 students at each primary school in the country.
There are also 39 students to one teacher at Junior Secondary schools and 41 students to one teacher at the primary school level.
Efforts to provide infrastructure for schools have been tainted by corruption.
Other issues like the sit-at-home in the South East, insecurity in the North East have also been blamed for the rising number of out-of-school children in the country.
Nigeria’s inability to tackle issues of access to quality education to meet rising demand for education, has broader implications including the achievement of SDG 4 and other human development indices.