NIGERIA’S 20 MILLION OUT-OF-SCHOOL CHILDREN

If there is anything those who are into the development of countries are convinced about, it is that no society can truly develop without putting children, often its youngest demographic, at the center of any development. This has so often proven an irreducible requirement in the building of strong and sustainable countries.

  For Nigeria, development has been a real struggle. The country`s independence came in 1960 and it did not come too soon as it was at about the same time that many other African countries who were under the iron fists of colonialists found independence too.

  For Nigeria, the road has been a rough one. A slew of brutally disruptive military coups had long put to paid any hopes the Giant of Africa would have an easy ride. Democracy did return in 1999, but every other day, Nigeria`s painful struggles as a country begs the question whether the country was not irreparably damaged during those heady days.

 Nigeria is far from an easy place to be a child. Those tender, innocent and vulnerable years are better lived elsewhere than in the country where shocking conditions often make for a notoriously difficult environment for children.

In Nigeria, it is a common refrain that ‘children are the leaders of tomorrow’. Whatever that means has never conduced to clarity. The emptiness of what has become a mantra for the mendacious is highlighted by the fact that many of those who as children were told ad nauseam that they are leaders of tomorrow have long come of age and grown old without ever seeing it come to fruition.

 The poverty which grinds through Nigeria disproportionately affects children. Conflicts and insecurity strip children of many forms of security, with every day bringing with it even more challenges for children in Nigeria. 

  To compound the present predicament of Nigerian children is the fact that the future is looking bleak for the millions of children who are currently out of school.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) recently revealed that according to the latest global data on out-of-school children, Nigeria has about 20 million of them.

According to the organization, the new and improved methodology used to arrive at the figures revealed that worldwide, 244 million children and youth between the ages of six and 18 worldwide were out of school.

 For decades, figures between 10.5 million and 15 million were bandied about as the number of out-of-school children in Nigeria.  The sharp spike in the number of has been put down to the Nigeria`s degenerating security situation.

The report by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) and Global  Education Monitoring (GEM0 also showed that sub-Saharan Africa remains the region which has the highest number of children and youth that are out of school. Some 98 million children and young people are excluded from education in the region.

These new figures are without doubt beyond alarming.  There is an inexorable link between education and poverty. They are joined together in a vicious cycle, consequently feeding off each other.

With the terrorists stalking Nigeria finding ample time and opportunities to haunt Nigerian schools and students, there is no doubt that if the situation is not checked, these numbers will continue to rise with the passage of time.

 To get children enrolled in school and stay in school requires painfully deliberate efforts. There is no other way.

• Kene Obiezu,

keneobiezu@gmail.com

• Kene Obiezu, keneobiezu@gmail.com