The Nigerian Government is seeking stronger collaborations with the United Nations Children’s Fund, Unicef to address the challenge of out-of-school children in the country.
This was the message when Unicef Nigeria Chief of Education met with the Executive Secretary of the National Commission for Nomadic Education and that of the newly established National Commission for Almajiri and Out-of-School Children Education.
The 2021 UNESCO report of 24. 4 million number of out-of-school children and youth, remains a disturbing development for the Nigerian Government. To this end, Nigeria established the National Commission for Almajiri and Out-of-School Children, in January 2024 as an interventionist agency.
One month on, Unicef, a major player in children’s education, is meeting with officials of the newly established Commission and their counterparts in the National Commission for Nomadic Education to deepen the collaboration on how to end the menace of out-of-school children.
Over the years, Unicef has initiated programmes to bring children, especially girls back to school to complete their education. It is therefore the desire of the UN agency that with such collaboration, more result oriented initiatives might just be on the way.
The consensus from stakeholders is also that with more funding and timely delivery of initiatives, the children will be off the streets and back to school in no time, to complete their education.
(Editor: Terverr Tyav)
