By Bashir Hassan Abubakar
UNICEF Nigeria has commemorated this year’s International Day of Education with a call on Nigerian Government to “invest in people, prioritize education”, and also urge Nigeria to deliver on the commitments made by President Muhammadu Buhari at the UN Secretary General’s Transforming Education Summit in September 2022 to end the global learning crisis.
The call was made by Ms. Cristian Munduate, UNICEF Nigeria Representative in a statement made available to our correspondent in Bauchi.
The statement said, in Nigeria, 75 per cent of children aged 7 to 14 years cannot read a simple sentence or solve a basic math problem and that for children to be able to read to learn, they must be able to learn to read in the first three years of schooling.
Ms. Munduate also expressed UNICEF’s commitment to support the government of Nigeria to transform education and to prevent the loss of hard-fought gains in getting children into school, particularly poor, rural children and girls and ensuring that they remain in school, complete their education and achieve to their full potential.
According to the statement UNICEF, together with partners, will continue to support federal and state governments to:
• Reduce the number of out-of-school children by providing safe, secure and violence free learning environments both in formal and non-formal settings, engaging communities on the importance of education and providing cash transfers to households and to schools.
• Improve learning outcomes by expanding access to quality early childhood education, scaling foundational literacy and numeracy programmes, and offering digital skills and (https://nigeria.learningpassport.org/), life and employability skills to adolescents to enable the school to work transition and also;
• Increase domestic spending on education to meet the 20% global benchmark by 2030 and to address the infrastructure and teaching backlog that are affecting all children’s access to inclusive and quality education.
“As Nigeria’s presidential elections draw near, on behalf of UNICEF and the children in Nigeria, I call on all presidential candidates to include investments in education as a top priority in their manifestos”, said Munduate.