FG rejects UNESCO report on out-of-school children

From Fred Ezeh, Abuja

Federal Government has faulted the recent report by the United Nations Agency, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), in which it claimed that the number of out-of-school children has risen to little above 20 million.

Previously, it was estimated that Nigeria has little above 10 million children who are not in school for one reason or the other, but the figure was reported to had risen significantly due to rising insecurity and destruction of communities by armed non-state actors in the northern Nigeria and some parts of the south.

Director of Press, Federal Ministry of Education, Ben Goong, who spoke to journalists on the matter asked Nigerians to disregard the report, stressing that it does not reflect the true state of affairs in Nigeria, particularly in the subject matter of out-of-school children.

He explained that the Federal Government has a reliable template which it uses to determine the number of children born in Nigeria per time, and the number of out-of-school children, maintaining that the figure is not as high as UNESCO had claimed.

He said: “We use a reliable template with National Population Commission (NPopC) to calculate this in order to arrive at a reliable and acceptable figure. What we do is that we harvest the birth rate from NPopC which has figure of numbers of children born in Nigeria every year. We also do our routine school census which tells us how many are in school.

“When we minus the figure from the birth rate and the number of children that are in school using the outcome of our school census, then we arrive at a particular figure which can assume that are not in school. We have all these information and we conduct school census, then return to the NPopC and work on this template.

“So where UNESCO got its figures and methods used to collate such data and arrived at over 20 million out-of-school children is what I don’t know and can’t explain. So, we absolutely reject the figure as relates to number out-of-school children in Nigeria that was released by UNESCO.”