… says education in a state of emergency
… says number of out of school children in Nigeria one of the highest in the world
The Executive Director of the FlexiSAF, Amina Abubakar, has called on the federal government and the National Assembly to increase the budgetary allocation to the education sector and implement it’s policy of free basic education for all.
She made the call after embarking on a walk tagged “Walk for Education 3.0” to draw attention of critical stakeholders on the need to improve education in the country.
According to her, despite the United Nations goal for education, Nigeria remains one of the country with the highest number of out of school children in the world, adding that Nigeria still have more than 10million children out there who cant afford education.
” We have more than 10million children out of school which is one of the highest in the world and UNESCO recommended at least 23% of the budget be set aside for education but right now only 8.2 percent is been set aside and even with that no proper implementation, no teachers in school, poor learning environment.
” If the government promise free and quality education let it be so because in the communities, parents are asked to bring a lot of money they can’t afford so they keep the children out of school so the objective is to raise resources to send these children back to school . We want to empower young people .
“We are pushing for the national Assembly to increase the budget for education. Right now the state of education in Nigeria is nothing to write home about, it is a state of emergency and 2030 is seven years away we have spent 8 years since the declaration by the united Nation in 2015 globally we only made 15% progress so we want the National Assembly to increase so we can achieve the set goal. The federal government must increase the budget.
“So today our target is that we want the government to implement the free education for all. The government says education is free, basic education is free. But a lot of children are not in school because it is not free,” she said.
She further stated that the target of the organisation was to ensure that at least 600 children get back to school.
“After we achieve that, part of our future plans is to make this work bigger, even more strategic. The more we get embedded into the space, build our capacity, we would make it more and more big,” she said.
She called for support from the government and other relevant stakeholders to achieve their objective.
“I want to reiterate the theme for this year, which is “2030 and the horizon. We are trying to better each and every year. Kindly come to our tables to make a commitment to help children go back to school. As you can see the children you have seen here are from our accelerated learning program. It is a non formal learning programme that helps kids in the community.
“The children don’t have to go to school everyday for long hours so we have community acceptability. Instead of learning for nine years, these over aged children they learn in three years. So you may be wondering what kind of expertise does this FlexiSAF Foundation have that they are giving education meant for nine years in three years. What kind of madness is that? I am telling you, it is not madness. It true. In fact it is a nationally approved accelerated education curriculum. It is also called accelerated basic education. Instead of learning in nine years these children learn in three years.
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