Illiteracy rate worsens in Nigeria, UNICEF decries 18.5m children out of school

Illiteracy level is still on the high side in Nigeria. The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in its latest report decried that over 18.5 million children in Nigeria are out of school, noting that they have no access to education, with girls accounting for more than half the number. Northern Nigeria is worse hit by the education crisis. The intractable insecurity in the north has been identified as a critical factor that forces many children out of school.

Rahama Farah, Head of UNICEF’s office in Kano, declared in a media interaction that “In Nigeria there are 18.5 million out-of-school children, 60 percent of these… are girls.”

Rahama Farah pointed out that the activities of jihadists – Boko Haram and ISWAP terrorists, bandits and other criminal gangs who attack schools, communities in the north, kill or kidnap residents for ransom, contributed immensely to the rise in the number of out of school pupils in the north.

UNICEF had in 2021 reported 10.5 million out-of-school cases in Nigeria.

The UNICEF official recalled that Boko Haram jihadists kidnapped over 200 schoolgirls from Chibok, Borno State, northeast Nigeria in 2014, targeted several schools. UNICEF also noted terrorists kidnapped about 1,500 schoolchildren in 2021, killing 16 students. The Fund noted that while some of the kidnapped school children were released from terrorists’ custody after negotiations, many others are still in captivity in forest hideouts, including Leah Sharibu.

Farah noted further those parents were also afraid to send their children to school when in session.

According to Farah, “These attacks have created an insecure learning environment, discouraged parents and caregivers from sending their children to schools.”

UNICEF, therefore, cautioned against rise in reported cases of child marriages and early pregnancies while schools are shutdown in northern Nigeria because of the perennial insecurity.

Farah revealed findings that only one in four girls from “poor, rural families” completed junior high school even before the mass abductions in the predominantly Muslim north. He lamented that the insecurity in the north further “heightens gender inequity”.