By Williams Anuku, Abuja
The Federal Government on Thursday claimed it has been able to reduce the number of out of school children in Nigeria to 6.946million from the initial 10.1million.
It said it achieved this feat through leveraging on the $611 million loan facility from the World Bank which was deployed to support Universal Basic Education (UBE), a development that saw a massive enrollment of OSC in 17 states.
Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu made the revelation at the annual Ministerial press briefing on the ministry’s activities in 2020, where he noted that efforts of the National Association of Proprietors and School Owners of Nigeria (NAPSON) alone led to the enrollment of 1 million OSC children.
In another instance, 900,000 Nigerians were “taken off the shelve” of adult illiterates in 2020.
According to Adamu, more Out of school children would be enrolled in school this year, including plans to use the $500 million loan secured through the World Bank credit facility to drive the Adolescent Girls Initiative for Learning and Empowerment (AGILE) programme, to ensure girls were taken off the streets, trained and empowered to live normal and quality lives.
“So far, we have launched the BESDA in ten states of Adamawa, Bauchi, Borno, Ebonyi, Kano, Kebbi, Oyo, Yobe, Niger and Zamfara.
“As today, we have recorded impressive school enrolment figures in 17 states of the federation where BESDA is being implemented. I can, however, tell you that through the BESDA initiative, we have reduced the figure of Out of School Children from 10.1 million since May last year down to 6.946, 328 million”, he stated.
Meanwhile, the Federal Government has accused the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) and other associations within the university system of not reciprocating her investment in education.
According to the Minister at the conference, in the last one year, Tertiary Education Trust Fund has committed about N400 billion to the development of infrastructure in the tertiary institutions across the country.
According to him, the said amount was different from the N1.3 trillion the present administration has spent on capital expenditure in the nation’s tertiary institutions.
“During my briefing in May last year, I told you that the Administration of President Muhammed Buhari has committed a total of N1.3 trillion of capital expenditure in our tertiary institutions. In the last one year, TETfund has committed a total of over three hundred and ninety-five billion to the development of infrastructure in tertiary institutions. This is aside from some budgetary allocations and revitalization funds to universities”, he said.
The Minister stated that in the last five years, Buhari’s administration has invested approximately N1.7 trillion in tertiary institutions with the universities taking two-third of the total sum.
He lamented that despite the huge commitment by the administration, ASUU has been on strike for almost a year over the Integrated Personnel Payroll Information System (IPPIS) but however excited that the strike has ended.
Speaking on the revitalization of the teaching profession policies as approved and its take- date, the Minister said, “Let me say that there will be no uniform take-off date for all the policies. However, without pre-empting the work of the committees, I would like to indicate the take-off for the following policies: Retirement age, January 1, 2022, and 40 years of service, January 1, 2022”
According to him, the effective dates of other policies will be announced subsequently after the submission of the report of the National Coordinating Committees.