There is a ticking time-bomb in Nigeria that needs to be defused, before it explodes in all our faces. The bomb is the five percent of Nigeria’s population that are out of school children – a whopping 10.5 million
\nSenate President, Dr. Abubakar Bukola Saraki, wants the National Assembly to join hands with stakeholders like the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) to drastically reduce the numbers.
\nOther experts hope that the partnership will go beyond rhetorics to save a huge chunk of the country’s replacement generation.
\nAddressing a UNICEF delegation, led by its Country Representative, Mohammed Malick Fall, during a courtesy visit to him in Abuja, Saraki, said the legislature is “committed to do all it can to address the issue of out of school children through funding and material resources.\u201d
\nHe lamented that Nigeria has the highest number of out of school children in the world. “This represents approximately 20 per cent of the world’s population of children that are not in school,” Saraki said. \u201cHaving 10 million children out of school is literally a ticking time bomb for our nation.”
\n“An uneducated population will be locked in a cycle of poverty for their entire lives. Additionally, these children could constitute the next generation of suicide bombers and militant terrorists. In this regard, education is a national security priority,\u201d Saraki added.
\nHe said that the 8th National Assembly is determined to make laws and appropriate resources needed to drastically reduce the menace.
\nSaraki said: “The Senate is already working with few State governments who are yet to domesticate the Child’s Rights Act. We are determined to also improve on this and to work together to see how best to reduce drastically the level of illiteracy among our people especially from the preliminary stage.
\n“The quality of our education must be in line with the best global practices. We will continue to work closely together with you. To support your programmes, we plan to organize an inclusive roundtable discussion where the impediments in our education system will be identified and a plan of action designed to eliminate them. I am confident that your contributions at that stage will be highly welcome,” he said.
\nThe Senate President endorsed the school enrollment campaign of UNICEF in the country and thanked its Country Representative for their years of exemplary work in education and other areas.
\n\u201cUNICEF is one of the leading organizations working to aid children in the Northeast.\u201d said Saraki. \u201cTheir work in the region is routinely celebrated by government officials and camp leaders.\u201d
\nEarlier, Mr. Fall encouraged the Senate President to endorse UNICEF Nigeria\u2019s 2017 school enrollment programme. This year\u2019s theme is: “Education Matters\u2026Every Nigerian Child Deserves to be in School.”
\nHe stated that UNICEF\u2019s school enrollment campaign seeks to partner with the education stakeholders at the state level to ensure the impact reaches grassroots communities.
\nHe said the campaign also seeks to underscore the country\u2019s commitment to free and compulsory education and to encourage states to prioritize education.
\nHe thanked the Senate President and the Senate for the outstanding partnership offered over the years in the areas of child health and education. Fall lamented that with the statistics of about 10.5million children out of school in Nigeria, “such number pose a lot of danger to the growth and development of the country.”
\nHe said that urgent attention, by governments at all level, is needed to address the trend, “we need additional resources and this support requires stronger partnership with legislation.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There is a ticking time-bomb in Nigeria that needs to be defused, before it explodes in all our faces. The bomb is the five percent of Nigeria’s population that are out of school children – a whopping 10.5 million Senate President, Dr. Abubakar Bukola Saraki, wants the National Assembly to join hands with stakeholders like […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":3077,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3075","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3075","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3075"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3075\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3075"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3075"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3075"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}