The African Students Education Support Initiative (ASESI), an NGO, has described as alarming, 13.2 million out-of-school children reported to be in Nigeria.
ASESI’s Executive Director, Chinonso Obasi, in a statement on Saturday in Abuja, said it was disheartening that the number was increasing instead of dropping.
He said that over the years, terrorism, economic condition of the country, corruption under-funding/poor monitoring of the education sector, lack of good governance and poor infrastructure had hindered basic education in the country.
Obasi called on governments at all levels to do everything possible to ensure sincere implementation of policies that would put a check on out of school children syndrome.
“Nigeria is rated as having the highest number of out of school Children in the world.
“The Population of out of school Children in Nigeria is a Total affirmation that African leaders have not shown sincere interest in the Education sector.
“13.2million estimated size of out of school Children in Nigeria is scary; it has grown from the previous figure of 10.5 million and that calls for concern.
“It is time for Nigeria to put up a solid Foundation that will carry-on the Nigerian dream and a Nigeria that her citizens will be proud of, and that can be achieved through a sincere investment/monitoring of the education sector.
“As the theme of this year’s World Teachers day is-The Right To Education means the Right to a Qualified Teacher–this is coming at a unique time as we champion for right to educate out of school Children we must not also forget the right to get trained and qualified teachers.
” As the population of out of school Children in Nigeria and other African countries is becoming scary the shortage of qualified and trained Teachers is also a thing of concern to our dear continent,” Obasi said.
He called on governments at all levels to also invest in training teachers to enable them to catch up with realities of modern teaching.