House Targets Enrollment of 14m Out-of-school Children 

Adedayo Akinwale in Abuja

The House of Representatives has said it was working on a framework that would ensure that over 14 million out-of-school Nigerian children are enrolled in schools.
The intervention by the Green Chamber, under the leadership of the Speaker, Hon. Abbas Tajudeen, targets addressing public education by tackling poverty and value gaps.

In partnership with relevant government agencies, the intervention aims at improving access to education for all Nigerian children in line with the aspirations of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs-4) on qualitative and inclusive education for all.
The framework, which is in the form of an intervention through the House Committee on Alternative Education, chaired by Hon. Almustapha Aliyu (APC, Sokoto), would also see the out-of-school children trained with relevant skills to become productive members of the society.

The project tagged ‘Nigeria Mass Reduction of Out-of-School Children and Youth Project’ (NiMPROP), was proposed to last for a period of four years.
The project would also significantly reduce the number of out-of-school children through non-formal accelerated education system and other alternative schooling programmes, according to Rep Almustapha Aliyu.

The government agencies that the committee was working with include the National Commission of Almajiri and out-of-school children, the National Commission for Mass Literacy, Adult and Non-Formal Education and the National Commission for Nomadic Education.

The committee is also working to ensure that 16.5 million Nigerians are lifted out of poverty, which would ensure the return of out-of-school children to schools.
The committee assured that necessary machinery has been put in place for the actualisation of the intervention as the House gets set to reconvene from its annual recess on Tuesday.

Part of the initiative is to ensure the significant reduction of poverty in the six geopolitical zones of the country.
Statistics from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) indicated that the Northeast leads in the poverty index with 71.86 per cent of its population in poverty, followed by the Northwest with 64.84 per cent, while the North Central has 42.70 per cent. Others are: South East, 42.44 per cent; South South, 21.28 per cent and South West, 12.12 per cent.

However, the intervention targets the reduction of poverty as follows: North-east, 4 million people; North-West, 3.4 million people; North-Central, 2.5 million; South-east, 3 million; South South, 2.1 million, and South-West, 1.6 million.