Insurance critical to meeting Nigeria's SDG on education –Old Mutual MD

For Nigeria to achieve its Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) on universal education, a groundswell adoption and uptake of insurance policies will play a critical role.

This position was made known by Olusegun Omosehin, managing director of Old Mutual Nigeria in commemoration of the 2022 Children’s Day celebrations in Nigeria.

Olusegun expressed great concern about the inaccessibility of education to millions of children across the country, and its numerous daunting implications on the affected families, communities, and the nation at large, as the unavailability of a functional educational system for Nigerian children hinders the nation’s contribution to the achievement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030.

“We must understand that our collective future as a nation depends largely on the quality of education available to our children. As the country, which UNICEF ranked the highest rate of out-of-school children in the world, coupled with a population that has rapidly increased over the last decade to an average of 10.5 million, all policymakers in the government and associated stakeholders must commit resources to strengthen our educational system.

“While there have been glimpses of improvement recently, with the increase in the allocation to education in the Nigerian budget from 5.2 percent in 2021 to 7.2 percent in 2022, there is still a long way to go to attain the global benchmark of countries spending 15-20 percent of their budgets on education. As such, if Nigeria is to meet its SDG commitments on education, we must gird our loins to ensure that we meet up with the global best standards on quality education for our children,” he said.

Speaking on how to proactively engender a sustainable and secure financial position to ensure sustainable access to education for Nigerian children, Olusegun Omosehin accentuated leveraging insurance plans as functional enablement tools.

“Lack of funding from parents and guardians accounts for the inaccessible education of millions of out-of-school children in Nigeria. In many cases, these children are either orphans or without a breadwinner capable of uninterrupted funding for their schooling. All too often, we have all heard of a child who dropped out of school following the death of a parent or guardian. But with insurance plans, the benefiting children are assured of a sustainable financial protection pipeline that ensures that they complete their educations even in the face of unforeseen events such as a breadwinner’s death.

“By leveraging the numerous benefits of insurance, parents and guardians can be certain that with or without their presence, the futures of their children, wards, and dependents are secure. The Old Mutual Target Savings Plan is one of such policies that is versatile, and dependable tool that allows policyholders to save flexibly for their children’s education. In case of the unfortunate loss of life of a policyholder, the Old Mutual Limited Target Savings Plan facilitates a premium payout of benefits to the named beneficiary of the savings account, thereby ensuring the continuity of the said beneficiary’s education,” Omosehin added.