Over ₦54bn Unaccessed UBEC Grants, 18.3 Million Children Remain Out-of-School
“Nearly 200,000 trained teachers are needed to address extremely low teacher-student ratios. Northern states have the fewest number of teachers per classroom and the lowest school completion rates.
Despite the documented goal of President Bola Tinubu to return 15 million out-of-school children to the classroom by 2027, a report from the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) reveals 18.3 million children still out of school.
The report published on Thursday, was found by PIJAlance in a document tagged “2024 Situation Analysis of Children and Adolescents in Nigeria (SitAn).” The document highlights insufficient budgetary allocations and sharp disparities as key contending challenges waning Nigeria’s strength to pull children back to school.
Of the 18.3 million out-of-school children are 10.2 million children of primary school age and 8.1 million children of secondary school age.
Worthy of note, the out-of-school children challenge, facing Nigeria’s basic education is living on borrowed time. Different past administrations have launched distinctive initiatives, targeting the willingness to reduce Nigeria’s disheartening statistics of out-of-school children.
One of the notable initiatives is the launch of the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) in 1999, which introduced the Universal Basic Education (UBE) Programme to improve access to quality primary and secondary education.
UBEC is funded through a combination of federal, state, and local government contributions, as well as international donor grants. The federal government contributes at least 2% of its Consolidated Revenue Fund (CRF) to the UBE program.
State governments are responsible for implementing the UBE program, and are required to contribute a counterpart fund to access matching grants from the federal government. To qualify for the grant, states must contribute at least 50% of the total project cost.
In 2023, when Nigeria’s out-of-school children were roughly 20.2 million, UBEC reported a total sum of N68bn unaccessed funds by states. This simply means, the 36 States received UBEC funds for education and did not use it for the purpose it is expected.
Currently, with the 18.2 million out-of-school children recently reported by UNICEF, the 36 States in Nigeria still have roughly ₦54,927,070,134 unaccessed UBEC grants.
PIJAlance earlier reported that Ogun State, one of the Southwest’s six States, has over ₦4.26bn UBEC funds unaccessed and Oyo, has ₦2.6bn. Moving forward, a total of 34 states out of 36 have not accessed their grants.
The SitAn document of UNICEF partly quoted that “only 38 per cent of three- and four-year-
olds benefit from preschool education, with stark disparities between geographic
location and wealth quintile. Children in the north are the least likely to participate.
“Only 27 per cent of children aged 7–14 years have reading comprehension skills and 25 per cent can solve simple
mathematical problems.
“Only 56 per cent of children aged
7–14 years in the South East zone can read with meaning, with outliers like Lagos state at 87 per cent, while the North West zone has rates around 9.5 per cent only.
“Nearly 200,000 trained teachers are needed to address extremely low teacher-student ratios. Northern states have the fewest number of teachers per classroom and the lowest school completion rates.
“Nationwide, the education completion rate has improved, but 4 million children still fail to complete their education; with completion rates for rural and poor children below the national average at all
educational levels. 97 per cent of primary school children from
the highest wealth quintile finish school, compared with only 34 per cent from the
poorest quintile.
“90 per cent of children from wealthy households graduate from senior secondary school, compared with fewer than 16 per cent of children from low-income households.”
Read Also: UBEC Confirms PIJAlance Report on ₦4.26bn Ogun State Unaccessed Matching Grants Pocketed
Nigeria’s 2024 budget for education, additionally too, posed a more significant threat to the educational sector. The recent budget allocation passed has ₦1.54 trillion, which is 7.9% of the total budget of ₦27.5 trillion, budgeted for education. This is even a bit higher than the previous year’s budget.
UNICEF data has said Nigeria has over 110 million vulnerable children between the ages of 0-17. 18.3 million out of them are out of school, while many others are subjected to preventable and treatable diseases.
UNICEF believes that “widely available, quality, inclusive education is vital for delivering on the promises of the Renewed Hope Agenda and achieving the global Sustainable Development Goals.”
Enoch Oyedibu
Brazen Investigative Journalist with a knack for tracking the grassroots impacts of government procurement, amplifying marginalised stories and contributing to community development. Data | Multimedia | Stories.