“This is very important because the number of out-of-school children is very enormous and it is very dangerous for Oyo State and for Nigeria as a whole. We at the state House of Assembly will support Oyo State Government in the operation of their free education. I know that in Oyo State, free education is on ground in the public primary and secondary schools.”
Director, Social Mobilisation, Lagos SBEB, Teslim Omolaja Hamsat, also told Saturday Sun at a media dialogue organised by UNICEF about factors responsible for an upsurge in the number of out-of-school children in the state despite pragmatic efforts of the government.
According to him, “For SUBEB in Lagos, we have a slogan that we called ‘Leave-No-Child Behind’. We want to ensure that every child of school age is in school. This is why, from 2020, we have been working on Project Zero, which means zero tolerance for out-of-school children.
“We started this based on what happened during COVID-19. When school resumed, we discovered that over 30,000 children did not return to school.
“So, we asked why, and what we discovered was that the socio-economic activities of families have been negatively affected. So, a lot of children could not access school. Therefore, we had to work with some private partners to ensure that we bring these children back to school.
“We arranged with some partners who supported us, and at that time, we were able to bring about 22,000 back to school.
“We realised again that there were so many out-of-school children outside who were supposed to be in school but not in school. They are not necessarily of Lagos State origin because in Lagos, we have all different kinds of tribes coming to Lagos daily. So, we started to work on Project Zero.”
Hamsat commended Lagos State governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, for having interest in the matter.
“In fact, during one of his tours, he saw some children hawking. He stopped and took the children to school, registered them, and sent the list to us to make provision for them.” Hamsat noted that since 2021, the government has been supporting Project Zero financially to ensure enrolment of school-age children in school.
“As I speak, the governor has supported us to bring back more than 30,000 children to school between 2021 and July 2024.”
Talking about impediments to the realisation of the goal, Hamsat said: “We have various challenges. We have political and religious ones, as well as cultural issues.
“For example, in some parts of Lagos, where we have a lot of people from the North that migrated to Lagos, and they are of school age; if you take them to school today, give them uniform, bag, and books, the next one week, they are back to the street, because they believe that they must go to the street to beg.
“With all the advocacies that we have been doing, it is only a few of them that we have been able to take back to school.
“Apart from that, if you go to Ladipo in Oshodi, you will discover that a lot of school-age boys are in the market, learning trades here and there.
“This is why it is difficult to bring them back to school because they believe that learning a trade would make them better than going to school. They would even tell you that when they finished school, what would they get? No employment, no this, and no that.” Hamsat drew attention to the influx of school-age children to Lagos. He noted that “If you live at the end of Berger, every morning you stay there, you won’t have less than 1,500 to 2,000 people coming into Lagos every day.
“This is why when you track the problem today, tomorrow you would see a surge again. Most of those children having problems with insurgency are now back in the South West. So, we have a lot of them, who are of school-age that we are catering for.”
“Also, the Federal Government and state government worked together to mop up the out-of-school students that have been absorbed into various public schools under the 2017 to 2022 Better Education Service Delivery for All (BESDA).
UNICEF’s path towards recovery
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has been playing a pivotal role in addressing the educational crisis in Nigeria through several key interventions.
The interventions include advocacy campaigns, which has to do with strengthening policies for educational funding and public awareness about the significance of education. Another area of support by UNICEF is the programmatic intervention, which borders on developing tailored programmes that focus on the unique needs of out-of-school children. This targets vulnerable populations such as girls. The UNICEF has also been providing support to the critical stakeholders via community partnerships:. This has been through collaborating with local non-governmental organisations to facilitate access, improve enrolment, and bolster retention rates in educational institutions, especially primary and secondary schools.
Mrs. Azuka Menkiti, UNICEF Education Specialist, working in Abuja Office, told Saturday Sun that the current social-economic factors in the country could hamper school enrolments and retention rates.
She emphasised the urgency of increased government funding to education. She noted that the limited resources in the education sector could most likely create a situation, whereby children in school would have limited access to learning materials, especially textbooks.
Her words: “So, the current situation will likely impact very negatively on enrolments, retention, and completion, and also on learning outcomes. So, for us at UNCEF, what we are advocating is that while all of these are going on, the government should increase funding to education.
“By allocating more resources to education at this critical time when it is obvious that parents are struggling for survival because of the high cost of fuel, high cost of living, and high cost of transportation. So, it is critical at this point that the Nigerian government increase funding to education.
“In addition to that, we advocate that the Nigerian government begin to look at how to implement cost-saving measures, that beyond just allocating more funding to education, they will also have to optimise resource utilisation within the education sector.
“When you allocate more funds to education, and make sure that there are available resources in school that when students come to school, then the students would be able to learn. “The government should also prioritise inclusive education programmes, including those living with disabilities. “This is the funding that we are asking that the government should increase for the sector. They should be intentional about making education highly inclusive.”
Menkiti also said it was important that the government should begin to think of how to support poor families with cash assistance programmes, scholarships, social welfare programmes, and programmes that would allow families to cover education-related expenses. “The government can actually begin to look at how to provide transportation for students so that they can cover the cost of transportation that parents bear. They can help parents cover the direct and indirect cost of education so that parents will be able to keep their children in school. We are also advocating the provision of flexible learning pathways to offer alternative education programmes for students.
“UNICEF is supporting the government to implement what is called Multiple Flexible Learning Pathways that give students opportunities to learn wherever they are. It must not be that they must bring themselves to the four walls of classrooms.
“Those out-of-school children who are over-aged to get back to sitting down in classrooms to begin to learn ABC from year one to three, government can support by providing them with abridged basic education programmes to accelerate learning for them so that parents would not have to pay for transportation.
“So, these learning curves can be within the communities where students can easily work into without having to get involved in transportation.
“We are also advocating that the government should engage communities to provide a collective support system, especially for those parents, who obviously are indigent and poor, and cannot afford to pay for the direct and indirect cost of education.
Check for part 2 of this story
Experts, stakeholders worry, as out-of-school children number swells (3)
