Fred Ezeh and Charity Nwakudu, Abuja
The Federal Government has admitted that it failed to achieve its goal of pulling Nigerian children of school age off the streets.
It said the initial plan was to reduce the figure of out-of-school children in Nigeria from over 10 million to at least, half but they couldn’t succeed because of some undisclosed reasons.
Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu, admitted the failure on behalf of government during his valedictory press conference in Abuja yesterday.
However, he confirmed that strong and realistic measures have been put in place by the outgoing administration for the incoming minister of education in next administration to achieve that target.
Notwithstanding the failure, he said his administration recorded tremendous and verifiable achievement in the past four years.
“It was a sad commentary that Nigeria occupies unenviable position of a country with high number of out-of-school children in the world. In fact, Nigeria ranked second to Pakistan.
“As at 2015, there was no precise figure of the out-of-school children in Nigeria. Some people were using 10.5 million while others used 13.5 million. We conducted National Personnel Audit and Verification Exercise in 2018 to ascertain the true figure, and we discovered that the figure has dropped to 10,193,918.”
He was optimistic that the figure will further drop in few years time, if the next administration continues the implementation of the measures that was started by the outgoing administration.
Adamu, however shared the “cheering” news that approval has been given for the establishment of National Secondary Education Commission (NSEC), to properly oversee the secondary education system in Nigeria.
The minister also disclosed that, in last four years, over N727 billion was invested in infrastructural development in tertiary institutions through the platform of the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund)
While disclosing thast N110 billion was spent on capacity building, staff development and research in tertiary institutions, he also announced that over 134 illegal tertiary institutions, including universities, polytechnics, colleges of education and specialised institutions have been closed down.