NIGERIA’S UNSCHOOLED CHILDREN
Every child deserves access to quality education, writes Ike Willie-Nwobu
The glass appears to have overflowed for Nigeria’s out-of-school children, with all 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory all featuring prominently on an index of states with out-of-school children.
Kebbi State tops the index released by the Cable, an online media organization. It is closely followed by Sokoto and Yobe States, their percentages pointing to a truly perilous situation.
Anambra State expectedly brings up the rear with decades of massive investment in education in the ‘Light of the Nation’ state, showing the rest of the country the way to go.
The list indicts Nigeria, insistently lamenting the failure of a country that continues to fail children. The numbers should numb every rational Nigerian, but when terrorists who swamp Nigeria’s rural communities, sowing fear and deploying scorched earth tactics, crunch their data, they will appreciate the progress they have made. Where one force has ground to a shuddering halt, another has seen its venomous campaign vindicated.
In 2009, Boko Haram, finally tired of the intermittent excitement of episodic attacks, decided to go toe to toe with the Nigerian state. The group, using Maiduguri, Borno State, as its launchpad and main laboratory, it immediately recorded heavy casualties but was not deterred as it had just enough to put Africa’s most populous democracy on the backfoot. While many communities in Borno State wilted at a force that was almost primal, the group also succeeded in casting Nigeria as a country at war. Terrorist attack after attack soon became common place.
There was also a method to the madness of the attack. The plan of the terrorist group which was frightening in its clarity was to end western education in the country. Schools became soft targets.
When the group successfully snatched over a hundred girls from the Government Girls Secondary School in Chibok, Borno State to put Nigeria high on the list of countries where girls were unsafe, it sounded the death knell for the Goodluck Jonathan Presidency. Since then, there have been countless attacks on schools in the country. The unsafe and unstable atmosphere has made it really difficult for children who want to go to school and get an education to enrol and remain in school.
The standard of education has continued to fall in Nigeria for many years now. Inadequate investment in the sector has yielded a toxic cocktail of decrepit infrastructure and disgruntled teachers. The combination has left education on life support in the country.
However, insecurity which shares a symbiotic relationship with Nigeria’s out-of-school-children crisis is the greatest threat to education in the North where the problem is especially pronounced. While insecurity pushes more children out of school, the children continue to swell the pool from which the non-state actors fueling insecurity draw their conscripts.
Nigeria is a signatory to the United Nations Safe Schools Declaration, by which countries commit to protect schools from the devastation of armed conflict. But this has done little to stem the tide of attacks on schools.
On 7th March 2024, well over two hundred pupils and staff were abducted from the LEA PRIMARY school Kuriga in Chikun Local Government Area of Kaduna State. Their abductors had slammed a 20-day ultimatum on the government to cough out one billion Naira before their unexpected release of the children.
The danger is clear and present for every Nigerian child, but especially for the over 20 million children who are out of school. Roaming free and wild, they are vulnerable to the many crimes that currently infest Nigeria as a country, especially terrorism. Their youth and poverty combine to whip up a vicious kind of vulnerability that various non-state actors feast on.
It is doubtful that Kebbi (67.6%), Sokoto (66.4 %) and Yobe (62.9) are keen to continue contributing such huge figures to a pool that maintains Nigeria’s position as figure of fun.
But it will take more than investment in education to reverse the malaise. A closer look at the list would show that while the trio of Kebbi, Sokoto and Yobe States lead the pack, Zamfara, Bauchi, Borno, Jigawa, Gombe, Katsina and Niger States make up the top 10. Kano, Taraba, Nasarawa, Plateau, Kwara, Kaduna, and Adamawa make up the top 17 states on the shameful list. That these states are all in Northern Nigeria shows the corrosive concentration of a problem that is ruining Nigeria’s development efforts.
To reverse the trend, beyond funding education by empowering teachers and building infrastructure, mindsets need to change as much as economic conditions to tackle the twin evils of poor mentality and poverty. It is a known fact that amidst Nigeria’s searing insecurity and surging poverty, education has become a luxury that many cannot afford.
Education remains a great equalizer, a truly invaluable gift. Today, in the maelstrom of Nigeria’s competing malaise, there is hardly a better gift to a child. Every child deserves access to quality education, especially the poorest children for whom it has become imperative to break cycles of generational poverty and illiteracy.
