- The minister stated that authorities are identifying and tracking affected children through a geotagging process
- the government expects the final figure to fall below eight million after all 36 states have been fully assessed
Minister of Education, Tunji Alausa says the Federal Government has returned more than one million children to school within the last 30 months as part of efforts to reduce the number of out-of-school children across Nigeria.
Eko Hot Blog gathered that the minister made the disclosure on Tuesday during an appearance on Politics Today while addressing concerns over reports by UNESCO and UNICEF, which estimate that about 18.3 million Nigerian children are currently out of school.
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According to Alausa, the figure being circulated by international organisations has remained unchanged for years and does not fully capture the Federal Government’s ongoing interventions and data verification efforts.
He explained that the government is currently conducting a nationwide mapping exercise to generate more accurate statistics on out-of-school children across all states.
The minister stated that authorities are identifying and tracking affected children through a geotagging process that records their specific locations and addresses.
He noted that the exercise had already been carried out in several states, including Kaduna, where government findings reportedly differed significantly from previously published international estimates.
Alausa said while UNICEF data suggested Kaduna State had about 1.8 million out-of-school children, the government’s verification exercise found the figure to be closer to 700,000.
Although he acknowledged that the number remained high, he maintained that the ongoing mapping process would provide a more realistic picture of the crisis nationwide.
The education minister expressed confidence that the total number of out-of-school children in Nigeria would eventually be far lower than current estimates once the nationwide verification exercise is completed.
According to him, the government expects the final figure to fall below eight million after all 36 states have been fully assessed.
A 2024 UNICEF report identified Nigeria as the country with the highest number of out-of-school children globally, estimating that 10.2 million children of primary school age and 8.1 million of junior secondary school age are not attending school.
The report also stated that about 66 per cent of the affected children are located in the North-West and North-East regions of the country.
Last year, Bola Tinubu described the out-of-school children crisis as unacceptable and pledged to prioritise education, school reintegration and skills acquisition under his administration.
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