Out-of-School Children: UBEC to Partner UNICEF in Conducting Regional Engagements

Kuni Tyessi in Abuja

As part of efforts to address the challenge of out-of-school children (OOSC) in the country, the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) has disclosed its plans to partner with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in conducting regional engagements.
The Executive Secretary, Dr. Hamid Bobboyi, who disclosed this in Abuja, said the partnership has become expedient as states would have the opportunity to share the key features of their out-of-school interventions in order to make room for better consultations with a broad range of stakeholders.

He said the Commission’s insistence on addressing the challenge through broad based partnership prompted the partnership and participation of State Ministries of Education (SMoE), State Agency for Mass Education (SAME) and other critical stakeholders apart from SUBEBs in making implementable inputs and also being physically present at this regional engagement.

He noted that the meeting organised by UBEC in collaboration with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) was part of the collective effort towards ensuring timely commencement of the implementation of OOSC intervention activities across the states and also ensuring that states take full ownership of the implementation processes.

“We are all aware that the high number of OOSC in Nigeria has continued to hinder our educational growth and has also given a negative reference on our nation’s educational development strides and aspirations in the global scene.
“Despite our conviction that government at all levels are making reasonable provision for basic education sector annually, there are still unacceptable number of children in this category.

“In this regard, UBEC is collaborating with relevant partners particularly, the UNICEF to achieve its mandate by doubling its efforts to create public awareness on the danger of having large number of children out of school and also providing platform, structure and interventions through which the stakeholders at the state and grassroots levels will leverage on in tackling the challenge in their respective domain,” he said.
He charged stakeholders to go back to the drawing boards and proffer solution that would ensure drastic reduction of the number of children that are out of school, or eradicate the phenomenon completely.

The stakeholders’ sensitisation meeting was earlier held in some other regional centres as follows: Kano centre was held from 12th 15 July, 2023; Lagos centre 26th to 29 July and Port Harcourt centre, 3rd to 5th August.