NIGERIA’S primary education outlook is grim, casting a dim shadow on the country’s future. It has the second-highest number of out-of-school children in the world. Yet, state governors fail to access the available funds and institute necessary strategies to turn the situation around and project future leaders to compete globally. This cruel negligence and paradox must not stand.
The Executive Secretary of the Universal Basic Education Commission, Hamid Bobboyi, said more than N135 billion in matching grants for the implementation of Universal Basic Education went unused from 2020 to 2024.
According to Bobboyi, only two of the 36 states – Katsina and Kaduna – have accessed the Q1 and Q2 matching grants in 2024. The remaining 34 states and the FCT bother less. According to him, 27 states failed to access UBE funds from 2020-2023.
Bobboyi noted that states shunned N1.4 billion in 2020; N2.8 billion in 2021; N14.4 billion in 2022 and N36.1 billion in 2023.
He said the funds accumulated because defaulting states failed to meet the necessary conditions to access these funds for education development. Their failure stemmed from their inability to account for the money they accessed previously, among other requirements.
Failure to access UBE funds is just a leg of the myriad problems besetting primary schools in the country. Budgetary allocation to primary education and budget performance is abysmally low and dispiriting nationwide.
To give a façade, some states reel out budgets on paper, which they do not implement.
Pupils learn under the most horrible situations. The Kano State Governor, Abba Yusuf, lamented in June 2024 that more than 4.7 million pupils were forced to sit on the bare floor to learn.
More than this number learn in dilapidated and windowless buildings, as well as under the trees across the country. Most of the primary school buildings were erected by faith-based organisations and international partners, including the European Union.
Primary school teachers’ morale is low due to poor and unpaid salaries. The Secretary-General of the Nigerian Union of Teachers, Mike Ene, said some states have yet to implement the 2011 N18,000 minimum wage while some states did not implement the previous N30,000 minimum wage for LG teachers.
There is a huge dearth of teachers in primary schools as most states have not recruited teachers in the past 15 years, thus pushing the burden of hiring teachers to PTA and old students.
Insecurity contributes to the high rate of out-of-school children in the country. UNICEF reports that violence accounted for the shutting down of 11,536 schools in the North between December 2020 and April 2023.
The aftermath of the massive challenges of primary education is manifold and disturbing.
UNICEF estimates that Nigeria has 18.3 million out-of-school children and that one in every three children in the country is out of school. The agency says 10.1 million at the primary level, 8.2 million at the junior secondary school level and over 3.3 million drop out of school at junior secondary school.
While the states are content with the young minds roaming the streets, governments of other climes are meeting theirs on the highway of technology. This conspiracy against Nigeria’s collective future must stop.
State governors must muster the political will to grant education its deserved attention. They should urgently ensure the fulfilment of the UBE requirements as a step to accessing the funds to kick-start the development of education.
With the allocations accruing to states and local councils, adequate attention should be given to teachers’ salaries, and other welfare packages to boost the morale of teachers while also instituting free education and free feeding to get the students back to class.
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