Omoyele Sowore, the African Action Congress presidential candidate, has lamented the number of children in Nigeria who are out of school.
The editor of Sahara Reporters also stated that it would be a crime not to educate our children in Nigeria.
The latest report by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, released on Thursday, revealed that “worldwide there are 244 million children and young people aged between six and 18 who are not yet in school”.
In the statistics, India, Nigeria and Pakistan recorded the highest numbers of out-of-school children, with African data including Nigeria “which has an estimated 20 million out-of-school children and youth, Ethiopia (10.5 million), the Democratic Republic of the Congo (5.9 million) and Kenya (1.8 million).”
Sowore responded via a post on Facebook on Sunday, saying it was a disgrace to the country.
Sowore said: “UNESCO has reported that over 20 million children are out of school in Nigeria! 20 million!
“This is both a national disgrace and a state of emergency.
But Nigerians will be made to focus in the upcoming 2023 elections on the children’s enemies who kept them out of school in the first place.”
He bemoaned the fact that this was in the midst of the crisis that was rocking the universities with the strike by the University Academic Strike Union, resulting in many students not attending school either.
“Besides these children, our young college students have been locked out of their classrooms by a dishonest and irresponsible government of Nigeria for more than six months,” Sowore said, adding, “our #TakeitBack #SoworeMagashi2023 government will declare a state of emergency in the education sector.” and use a multi-stakeholder/multi-level approach to solving massive problems.
“In line with global best practices, we will engage families and communities and provide social and economic incentives to get children back to school.
We will create and strengthen safe school initiatives so that every child is safe at school.”
“Where the environment for school instruction is unsafe, as an emergency measure we will create community school clusters using virtual learning where possible.
We will create accelerated schools to bring children back and get them up to their grade level in a four year period.
“By 2027, we would have reduced the number of school leavers by 80 percent through targeted investments in education, social and economic support for families.
As I have said many times, not raising our children in Nigeria will be a crime,” added the human rights activist and founder of Sahara Reporters.
Within Nigeria
