Nigeria: ‘Out-of-school children down to 8.6m from 10.5m’

The Minister of Education, Mallam Adamu Adamu, on Friday, disclosed that the number of out-of-school children in the country dropped from 10.5 million to 8.6 million in the last three years.

“When President Buhari came into power in 2015, UNICEF said out-of-school children in Nigeria was about 10.5 million. But I want to tell Nigerians that with the effort of this president, especially with the school feeding programme, it dropped from 10.5 million to 8.6 million as at last year.

The government has put so many programmes in place to encourage our children to have access to schools,” said
Adamu, who was represented by the Registrar, Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria (TRCN), Prof. Ajiboye Josiah.

At the flag-off of the 2017/2018 National Enrolment Drive, at Tudun Salmanu Primary School in Bauchi, Adamu said the ministry made it a policy to construct and furnish 7,875 classrooms yearly for the next four years. This is besides recruiting additional teachers to carter for increase in pupils’ enrolment.

Flagging-off the campaign, Bauchi State governor, Mohammed Abubakar, noted that the educational infrastructure in the state had been overstretched, following the influx of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs).

Abubakar, represented by his Special Adviser on Education, Alhaji Sabo Mohammed, called on the Federal Government to help the state to cope with the challenge.Earlier, the Executive Chairman, Bauchi State Universal Primary Education Board (SUBEB), Prof. Yahya Yero, said the campaign was in conformity with the National Enrolment Drive Frame Work (NEDF) for 2018.

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