The Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) in Nigeria has disclosed that 20,000 schools will be needed to absorb Nigeria’s growing number of out-of-school children.
This was revealed in a statement by the Director of Press of the Federal Ministry of Education, Ben Goong, on Tuesday.
According to the statement, the figure was given by the Executive Secretary of UBEC, Hamid Boboyi, while briefing the Minister of Education, Prof. Tahir Mamman, on the activities of his agency.
There have been disagreements on the factual situation of out-of-school children in Nigeria, reports say.
Due to a delay in the national census, the official number of out-of-school children in Nigeria as of September 2023 had not been confirmed at the time this report was filed, but a 2022 UNESCO report estimates that there are currently about 20 million out-of-school children in Nigeria.
However, the President Muhammadu Buhari-led administration claimed that the proportion of out-of-school children in all of Sub-Saharan Africa that dwell in Nigeria is only 12.4%.
Experts pointed out that the Federal government primarily focused on children between the ages of 6 and 11, whereas UNESCO’s data were based on out-of-school children aged 6 to 18, which led to the discrepancy in statistics between the figures reported by UNESCO and the government.
According to the statement by the Minister of Education, Tahir Mamman, the current administration “will prioritise basic education in the country, emphasising that the foundation level is the most critical segment in the sector, which must be properly developed to impact positively on other tiers of the sector and overall national development.”
“The President Bola Ahmed Tinubu administration will stop at nothing to ensure that every Nigerian child is brought aboard the ship of education,” Tahir said.
He called 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 also stated that the disputes surrounding the real numbers of out-of-school children will be resolved by the upcoming national census.
Earlier in his briefing, UBEC executive secretary, Boboye told the minister that the country needs an additional 20,000 schools and 907,769 classrooms to absorb the growing number of out-of-school children.
He identified infrastructural gaps and inadequate manpower as some of the challenges facing the commission in its efforts towards ensuring equitable access to quality basic education.