What is OOSC is not a quiz for which there is a prize. If there is a prize attached to it because it is a quiz not many people, including those addicted to acronyms, would cart home the prize. It is not a popular or well-known acronym or even one that is delectable. It is just a bland assemblage of letters but it means a lot to the world and to Nigeria in particular.
OOSC stands for Out of School Children. That is the new scourge in our education sector, children who should be in school but aren’t. They are everywhere, at home idling away. They are in the streets kicking orange balls hoping that somehow they will become the next Ronaldo or Messi or Neymar in a few years’ time or later. Some of them are on the streets of major cities carrying items for sale in their hands, on their heads or in their handbags.
As they harass each motorist pleading for patronage they hope that those who tackle street traders will leave them in peace and not seize their goods and take them into custody. Some of them carry small bottles of water and what looks like a rake or a cudgel, trying to clean people’s cars even during the rain. And they have a high degree of brashness and tenacity to go with it. When this effort fails they simply put their fingers to their lips in supplication for a few coins that can put food in their mouths.
Some others carry basins of bread on their heads arranged like a pyramid, lips painted blood red and tramp from street to street hoping they might be the next Olajumoke, the pretty bread seller who found fortune on the road some time ago. Now she is a model whose life has turned full circle from poverty to a peep into prosperity. These are all young Nigerians who tramp the streets of Nigeria, who should be in school but are not because they are not interested or their parents who probably have several of them cannot send all of them to school at once. So they engage in demeaning child labour, wasting their youth, missing their future and travelling on the road they don’t need to travel. They are jointly called out of school children, a term that brings shame to Nigeria and its leaders and builds a bomb that will explode in future.
In 2015, UNICEF said that there were 10.5 million out of school children in Nigeria. Now the figure has climbed to 13.2 million. That is something to worry about.
There are many reasons why these kids are not in school. In some places there are no schools that are close by and there is no easy means of transport for the kids. In other cases the schools are congested and some of the pupils are sitting, some are standing while some are squatting. Such situations are a disincentive to learning and the pupils easily come to the conclusion that there must be an easier way of managing one’s life. That easier way is to stay at home and let Satan find work for their idle hands.
Some of the pupils go to school without learning materials because their parents cannot afford them and they cannot get them any other way because the politicians in their states pay only lip service to education. Other children are physically disabled and live in places where there are no schools that accommodate their disabilities. So their choice is to stay home and nurse their misery. Yet many other children are in internally displaced persons camp either by themselves or with their parents or guardians. At IDP camps the first priority is purely survival, how to keep the body going, the stomach filled and the health taken care of. Education is not in their priority list. The children are afraid to go out, far from their parents.
The parents do not want their children out of their sight so that they will not get into harm’s way. They will rather have children who are alive and uneducated than those who die in the process of searching for education. This is the kind of problem that parents face especially in the North East where the Boko Haram terrorists operate without observing any humanitarian boundary. In any case, Boko Haram says that western education is evil so it actually makes educational institutions its favourite target for attack. That is how it captured young girls from Chibok Girls Secondary School in Chibok as well as pupils of Dapchi Technical and Science Secondary School in Dapchi. Some of them still in captivity today, their education halted while their lives remain at the mercy of the terrorists and in the laps of the gods.
When the Dapchi School girls were freed one of the girls was asked whether she would go back to school. Her response was that she would only go back to school if General Buratai, the Chief of Army Staff was the one guarding her school. That is the high level of fear that the Boko Haram terrorists have brought into people’s lives and how much uncertainty they have injected into the lives of young Nigerians who would otherwise want to drink deep from the adorable fountain of western education.
In Delta State, the government under Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan decided to sink its teeth into the problem by establishing what it called the Delta Education Marshal (DEM). These marshals were charged with the responsibility of preventing truancy, by arresting kids on the streets during school hours and returning them to school. These marshals were to arrest young people hawking or hanging around during school hours. Part of their duty was to gather information for the Police and the State Ministry of Education so that they can use the information to fine tune their policies.
Another state that has established a monitoring group called Education Monitoring Marshal is Osun State. This is a task force empowered to curb truancy by arresting and disciplining children who are not in school during school hours. This has reduced considerably incidents of juvenile delinquency and reduced the number of out-of-school children in the State. Other States may benefit from copying the examples set by Delta and Osun States.
Nigeria is said to be number one in the ranking of extremely poor people. The news is that we have dethroned India which has been the king in the kingdom of the extremely poor. We have to worry about that because our high level of poverty will lead to an increase in the number of extremely poor families whose children will be out of school. That is already manifesting itself in the phenomenon of people selling their own children.
One of the women who was asked why she wants to sell her children, her prized possessions, said there were two reasons. One was that her children will be well fed and taken care of by the buyer, something she could not do. The second reason was that she herself needed money to take care of herself. Perhaps the woman’s decision, painful as it is, will keep her children off the streets even though she may not see them ever again. They may be sent to school or may be sold into slavery at a higher fee.
It is believed, however, that the school feeding programme initiated by the President Muhammadu Buhari government has helped in some way to keep many children off the streets and into schools. Many kids look forward to the idea of being given food in school, something that used to occur in Nigeria during the colonial days. If the feeding programme becomes more widespread and reaches all the public primary schools in the country a severe blow would have been struck for improved attendance in the country’s public primary schools. That can bring a serious reduction in the number of out-of-school children in the country and pull us away from the keg of gunpowder on which we currently sit.
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