Nigeria’s particularly high population of illiterate adults, put at over 64 million, tells a sad story of a country that places little premium on education. It is the story of a potentially great country, hobbled by blurred vision, and leadership that can best be described as self-centred, inept and corrupt. And since education has a big role to play in today’s continually changing and competitive world, the current situation foreshadows nothing but a bleak future.
For a country with an estimated population of 170 million people, a population of 64 million uneducated adults is not only alarming, but downright embarrassing. It is even worse that nothing is being done differently to produce the desired change. If anything, the situation is getting worse, especially in parts of the country where Boko Haram, a blood-thirsty Islamist terror group, has been working tirelessly to ensure that people, whose attitude towards formal education is, at best, lukewarm, abandon it altogether.
Speaking at Awka, the Anambra State capital, last week, as part of activities to mark this year’s International Literacy Day, the Chairman, Governing Board of the National Mass Education Commission, Esther Uduehi, described the situation in the 21st Century as shameful. She said, “We all know that an illiterate is a danger not only to himself (or herself), but to the society at large.”
UNESCO describes literacy as “one of the key elements needed to promote sustainable development, as it empowers people so that they can make the right decisions in the areas of economic growth, social development and environmental integration.” Literacy, the United Nations agency continues, is “a basis for lifelong learning and plays a crucial fundament role in the creation of sustainable, prosperous and peaceful societies.”
It is however doubtful if the government – especially at the state and local levels – whose duty it is to promote basic education, shares these views. Despite the numerous programmes and extant laws geared towards promoting basic education, very little is being done to actualise it. A good example is the Universal Basic Education, launched by the Olusegun Obasanjo Administration in 1999. The programme makes access to formal education free and compulsory for the first nine years of a child’s education. Besides, the Child’s Rights Act also takes care of this, while prohibiting the obnoxious practice of forcing teenage girls out of school for early marriage.
But rather than take advantage of these programmes, many states only pay lip service to them. They even refuse to domesticate the law. In the case of the UBE, many states have not been able to avail themselves of the funding opportunities under this programme. Essentially, many of them lack the discipline needed to fulfil the requirements for accessing the funds. This makes it difficult to bridge the huge funding gap in education, while the funds that should have taken care of that keep piling up.
The problem of adult illiteracy in Nigeria is not new. The country has always been at the back of the pack of a group of nine countries that harbour over 50 per cent of the world’s illiterate population, including 70 per cent of adult illiterates. Two-thirds of that population, according to UNESCO, are women and girls. The membership of the E-9 countries, formed after the Delhi Declaration of 1993, include China, India, Bangladesh, Mexico, Brazil, Pakistan, Egypt and Indonesia. It was formed with the purpose of achieving Education For All by 2015.
While other countries are striving to reverse their educational challenges, Nigeria seems to be wallowing more in the comfort zone of illiteracy. China, for instance, with a population of over 1.3 billion people, was able to more than halve its number of illiterate population from 142 million to 67 million between 2000 and 2010. Even India, which has the global record of 287 million illiterate adults, was also able to reduce the number of adult illiterates by 15 per cent between 1991 and 2006, except that population growth has effectively wiped off whatever gains might have been made there.
But not only has Nigeria failed her citizens in this area, the country, according to UNESCO’s figures, also has the largest number of out-of-school children in the world. This number, put at 10.5 million, only portends danger ahead. With this number, the foundation has already been laid for a future of adult illiterates, who will be direct products of today’s out-of-school children.
Going by this high number of illiterates in Nigeria, it is easy to see why the country’s development has been stunted – the country has some of the most appalling human development indices. The link between education and economic prosperity cannot be missed. A former UN Secretary General, Koffi Annan, captured it very vividly when he said, “Literacy is a key lever of change and a practical tool of empowerment on each of the three main pillars of sustainable development: economic development, social development and environmental protection.”
It is however never too late to promote knowledge and change the trajectory. If China could reduce its huge population of illiterates by 75 million in 10 years, there is no reason why Nigeria cannot wipe out the 64 million within the next decade. All that is needed is a reordering of priorities. There is the need for serious mobilisation, the type that attended the free education era of the Obafemi Awolowo government in the old Western Region. This should be backed up by a revamp of educational infrastructure.
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