The Federal Government on Thursday claimed it has been able to reduce the number of ‘Out of School Children’ in Nigeria to 6.946 million from the initial 10.1million.
It said it achieved this feat through leveraging on the $611 million loan facility from the World Bank which was deployed to support Universal Basic Education (UBE), a development that saw a massive enrollment of OSC in 17 states.
Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu made the revelation at the annual Ministerial press briefing on the ministry’s activities in 2020, where he noted that efforts of the National Association of Proprietors and School Owners of Nigeria (NAPSON) alone led to the enrollment of 1 million OSC children.
In another instance, 900,000 Nigerians were “taken off the shelve” of adult illiterates in 2020.
According to Adamu, more Out of school children would be enrolled in school this year, including plans to use the $500 million loan secured through the World Bank credit facility to drive the Adolescent Girls Initiative for Learning and Empowerment (AGILE) programme, to ensure girls were taken off the streets, trained and empowered to live normal and quality lives.
“So far, we have launched the BESDA in ten states of Adamawa, Bauchi, Borno, Ebonyi, Kano, Kebbi, Oyo, Yobe, Niger, and Zamfara.
“As today, we have recorded impressive school enrolment figures in 17 states of the federation where BESDA is being implemented. I can however tell you that through the BESDA initiative, we have reduced the figure of Out of School Children from 10.1 million since May last year down to 6.946, 328 million”, he stated.
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