Of UNESCO and Nigeria’s out-of-school children

Sometimes, as it is now, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) can embarrass a nation it is serving with educational information when it goes out to do or permute funny numbers to make a case. Recently, an astonishing revelation was seemingly made by Kate Redman, the Communications Specialist, Education for All Global Monitoring Report, EAGMR, of the UNESCO. This officer stated that Nigeria has the highest number of out of school children in the world. And this may have remained unchallenged in a way it is necessary to adjust the statistics of the country’s children’s school-going population, minus the non-going. It is important to make known that UNESCO and its informants claimed that 10 million Nigerian children are out of school. This writer is, however, wondering how the organisation came to this number on its records. By saying that Nigeria is having 10 million children who are out of school programmes, the organisation is suggesting that the children recorded do not attend school.

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It further asserts that Nigeria leads 12 other countries in the rungs of lowering the future of its children along the axis of Pakistan, Yemen and Niger.
To many local and international observers, the finding as reported, was ‘a true expose of the rot in the governance in Nigeria.’ Many had believed UNESCO in its entirety regarding the cited number.
But I contend that this declaration by UNESCO had barely gone unchallenged before to the extent citizens can make sense of.
There are a lot of education professionals throwing their weight behind the body that allows this type of phony figures to stand. With some exceptions, Nigeria has the likes of the National Coordinator, Education Rights Campaign (ERC), Mr. Hassan Soweto, who had earlier described the statistics as an understatement, adding that the number was much more than the data presented by UNESCO.
This writer’s cross-checking of the culture of Nigerian facts significantly shows that the description offered by UNESCO is untrue. This is owing to the fact that UNESCO didn’t tell us the method it used to arrive at the number. Not until a clear explanation of how the number quoted is arrived at, it leaves many in doubt as regards the accuracy and authenticity of the number of Nigerian children who are out of school currently.
Again, because Nigeria doesn’t know her population figure, so how the UNESCO arrived at its report is doubtful. According to media reports, Mr. Luke Onyeanula, who runs a flourishing private school in Lagos, had queried the statistics. He emphasised that the dawn of private schools has been an enhancement to the education sector this trend must be factored into.
Onyeanula, therefore, disagreed with the statistics, saying that there are schools whose tuition are very cheap, which parents and guardians can afford.
He then asked: “So, how does the UNESCO’s report reflect the reality in the education sector, when the private sector is establishing schools in every nook and cranny of the country?”

It is instructive that the government had not given proper attention to basic education in the country. As such, room is given to such UNESCO’s ruinous report. Another educationist and a retired Principal, Dr. Sylvanus Okoto, frowned at the Federal Government for accepting the UNESCO’s report with what he had said was, “with an unrealistic pledge to tackle the issue.”
Something refreshing has been emerging since UNESCO made that claim. It was the opinion of connoisseurs that UNESCO imposed the figure on Nigeria, perhaps, owing to the fact that the country still operates an incorrect census.
Mr. G.E Oti, a public affairs analyst, who gave his opinion during the collation of data for this report, said that Nigeria was at the base of its own confusion and manipulation in the course for others to define her. Thus, institutional strangers like the UNESCO had a cause to fill up the gap.
To many educational observers, the figure was not correct, and unless there is deployment of a trusted socio-metric process, only a theoretical figure would suffice.
Oti believed that the census figures of Nigeria are politicised, which have made the stranger’s data thrown at Nigeria to become a suitable point of reference. It is evident that ‘UNESCO gets Nigerian education wrong’  just as one James Stanfield, a data analyst, highlighted that there are many unregistered “low- cost private schools that exist across Nigeria.”
In such schools, millions of Nigerian children who attend also matter and they must be accounted for in any sense of reaching a meaningful population of school going and non-going population categories.
It was superficial on the part of UNESCO to feel it was seeing Nigeria more than Nigeria sees herself. The UNESCO’s claim, however, has been alleged as a method with which certain persons or groups have found out an optimum to govern the affairs of Nigeria from afar.
source: http://www.tribune.com.ng/quicklinkss/opinion/item/11268-of-unesco-and-nigeria-s-out-of-school-children

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