Minister of Education, Dr Olatunji Alausa, warned on Tuesday that the country could be consumed by the out-of-school children menace if concerted efforts were not made to tackle it urgently.
Alausa said this was the reason the Federal Government was collaborating with state governors to come up with realistic measures to address the problem.
He spoke at the National Assembly in Abuja when he appeared before the Joint Committee on Tertiary Institutions and TetFund and Education to defend the 2025 budget estimates of the ministry.
According to Alausa, the ministry had already met with the state governors and all the thirty-six commissioners for education and the FCT to find lasting solutions to the menace.
The minister stated, “So we are working together on this. So, it now has to be a collaborative effort on what we have to do.
“The number of out-of-school children is mind-boggling and disturbing. It is not in just one geopolitical region. It is everywhere.
“We need to confront it, otherwise we will be consumed by it.
“We have to engage with our governors and we have held meetings with the Nigeria Governors’ Forum on how to collaborate on this.
“We are also working with all the 36 commissioners for education, including that of the FCT.”
About 18.3 million children are said to be out of school in Nigeria, according to UNICEF.
The minister also talked about the Almajiri schools built during the administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan, expressing displeasure that these schools were abandoned.
He called for them to be revived to serve the purpose for which they were conceived and built in the first place.
Alausa said, “Of the over a hundred of the schools built for out-of-school children, only few are operational.
“The funding of the Almajiri and out-of-school commission is not enough. We need more funding in this regard.”
The minister added that the ministry would ensure human capital development to boost the education sector by providing relevant support infrastructure.
“We want them to develop. It’s the best part of any society. Without education, we can’t survive as a society.
“And if you look at the human capital index, Nigeria has one of the lowest human capital indexes in the world”, he told the lawmakers.
The Chairman of the Senate Committee on Tertiary Institutions and TETFund, Sen. Muntari Dandutse, in his remarks, harped on the importance of education in nation-building.
“As lawmakers, we have a constitutional responsibility to ensure that resources allocated to this critical sector are strategically planned and utilised,” he stated.
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