Nigeria needs an additional 20,000 schools and 907,769 classrooms, according to the Universal Basic Education Commission, in order to accommodate the rising number of out-of-school children there.
This was revealed on Tuesday in a statement from the Federal Ministry of Education’s Director of Press, Ben Goong.
According to the statement, UBEC’s Executive Secretary, Hammed Boboyi, provided the numbers to the Minister of Education, Prof. Tahir Mamman, during a briefing on the operations of his organisation.
Credible News Nigeria reports that the genuine situation of out-of-school children in Nigeria has generated controversy.
Due to a delay in the national census, our correspondent could not independently confirm the official number of out-of-school children in Nigeria as of September 2023, when this report was filed.
But a UNESCO report from 2022 estimated that there are currently about 20 million out-of-school children in Nigeria.
However, the Nigerian administration, led by the late President Muhammadu Buhari, claimed that the proportion of out-of-school children in all of Sub-Saharan Africa that dwell in Nigeria is only 12.4%.
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Nevertheless, experts pointed out that the Federal Government mainly focused on children between the ages of 6 and 11, whereas UNESCO’s numbers were based on out-of-school youngsters aged 6 to 18, producing confusion.
The Minister of Education, Professor Tahir Mamman, however, “strong indications that his administration will prioritise basic education in the Country, stressing that the foundation level is the most critical segment in the sector, which must be properly developed to impact favourably on other tiers of the sector and overall National Development,” according to the statement by the FME.
In a continuation of his briefing meetings with parastatals and organisations under the direction of the Federal Ministry of Education, the Minister made this statement today (Tuesday) in his office in Abuja.
The Bola Ahmed Tinubu administration will stop at nothing to ensure that every Nigerian child is brought aboard the ship of education, Prof. Tahir said, calling on all the States of the Federation to demonstrate greater commitment to providing counterpart funding to speed up the development of basic education in the nation.
The Minister stated that the debates about the precise numbers of youngsters not in school will be resolved by the upcoming National Census.
Dr. Hamid Bobo, the executive secretary of UBEC, had earlier informed the Ministers during his briefing that the country needed an extra 20, 000 schools and 907,769 classrooms to accommodate the expanding student population.
The Commission’s efforts to ensure universal access to high-quality basic education are hampered, according to the Executive Secretary, by infrastructure deficiencies and a lack of manpower.
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