Aminat Isah, Abuja
The federal government has spent the sum of N1.338 trillion on education under the President Muhammadu Buhari-led government in the last four years.
Also, about 2,295 teachers have been killed while 19, 000 were displaced in the ongoing insurgent attacks in the northeastern parts of the country in the last nine years.
The Minister of Education, Professor Adamu Adamu, who spoke on Tuesday also highlighted some unprecedented achievements of the Federal Ministry of Education under the current administration.
He stated this at a valedictory ministerial briefing held in his honour in Abuja. He disclosed that the Federal Ministry of Education has recorded successes under his watch across all boards in the education sector.
Adamu stated that the UBEC interventions in States have recorded a total of N350 billion, TETFUND and NEEDS Assessment interventions have recorded N857billion with the main Ministry and other Agencies recording N86billion, totalling N1.338trillion of money invested so far.
Speaking on out of school children, the minister acknowledged that the issue of genuine data has constituted a challenge in terms of planning for the out-of-school children nationwide said Nigeria has an estimated out of school population of 10,193,918.
According to him, “ The Universal Basic Education Commission, (UBEC), and other stakeholders including the National Population Commission, (NPC), and the National Bureau of Statistics, (NBS) have been working towards this common goal of determine the number of children of school age who are not in school.
The present administration’s school feeding programme has led to unprecedented increase in school enrolment and I belief that the number of out of school children would have dropped significantly by the time this year’s school census exercise is completed.”
The greatest challenge of out of school phenomenon, according to the minister is that, “Over 2, 295 teachers have been killed and 19, 000 of them were displaced in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa States in the last nine years, with a total number of 1,500 schools been destroyed since 2014, along with over 1,280 casualties among who were teachers and students.
“The crisis has further devastated the education system as children ,teachers and schools are in the front line of the conflict.”
