Governor Godwin Obaseki of Edo State has expressed worry over the rising number of out-of-school children in Nigeria, calling on President Muhammadu Buhari to disband the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) if it fails to return 50 percent of the children back to school.
Obaseki made the appeal when Adamu Adamu, minister of education, the management of UBEC, and the chairmen of State Universal Basic Education Boards (SUBEB), paid a courtesy call on him on Tuesday in Benin City.
The governor urged the Federal Government to take deliberate and urgent steps towards reducing the large number of out-of-school children in the country.
“We have 50 million or so children under our care and over 10 million of them are not in school. What is our reason for existing if we have this kind of problem? So, for me, Mr. President, if UBEC and SUBEB cannot get 50 percent of these school children back to school in the next two to three years, disband them as there is no basis for it,” Obaseki said.
He pointed out that if the government does not focus on basic education and restore quality into the basic educational system, “what we are having today as banditry will be a joke in another 10 to 20 years’ time.
“What was the Edo miracle? The first was to tell ourselves the truth that the structure of SUBEB we met was not working. So, I had to post out everybody we met and recruited fresh ones into the system. We focused on training our teachers as part of our reforms in transforming our education.
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“For us in Edo, we had no choice, because you find children leaving secondary schools, either working as barbers or something else. Some even sell whatever they have because someone has promised them a job in Europe or travel to Libya.
“At one point in time, we had about 30,000 young men and women from Edo in Libya, waiting to cross to Europe. If they had education and could think, read and write, they would ask more questions before deciding to embark on such a risk.
“You can imagine; if we had over 30,000 of them in Libya, how many would have died in trying to cross? The problem is that they were not properly educated,” he said.
“For us, that was a wake-up call. For my brothers in the North East and North West, with the rising wave of banditry, I think the wakeup call is to bring these children back to school and get them to learn,” he advised.
Folake Olatunji-David, a director of basic and secondary education, who represented the minister, said that Edo was chosen as the destination for their quarterly meeting due to its stride in using technology.
She said: “It’s not by any coincidence that Edo is hosting this quarterly meeting, bearing in mind strides and commendable steps your state has been taking in the field of education.
“So, we are here to enjoy the hospitality of the good people of Edo State. And to deliberate, we are looking at enhancing accessibility and standards of basic education through technology-driven initiatives.”
