The Minister of State for Education, Mr Chukwuemeka Nwajiuba, has called on civil society organisations to be accurate when giving out data on out of school children in the country.
Nwajiuba made the call while declaring open the 2020 National Education Conference, organised by the Civil Society Action Coalition on Education For All (CSACEFA), on Monday in Abuja.
The two-day conference is organised in collaboration with the Nigeria Partnership for Education Project (NIPEP) and the World Bank.
The conference has as theme ‘Strengthening Advocacy For Partnership, Engagements, Reforms and Monitoring : A Panacea for Sustainable, Inclusive and Quality Education For All.”
Nwajiuba said that it was important for the civil society organisations to support the federal government efforts at providing education for all.
“This conference is an amalgamation of over 600 civil society organisations and what i want from you at the end of this conference is to confirm to me the accurate number of out of school children.
“I know that we can not have 13.2 million out of school children in the 774 local government areas if each of those local governments does not have a minimum of 10,000 children roaming around.
“So there would be a crisis, if that number of children is roaming about, so where is that figure coming from.
“I expect you to confirm the number of public and private primary and secondary schools we have in every local government, so we can start from there.
“I know you can do this for us as we need partnership to get these children back to school,” he said.
Earlier in his welcome address, Mallam Kabiru Aliyu, National Moderator, CSACEFA, said the conference was aimed at advocating and partnering for quality and inclusive education for all.
Aliyu, who was represented by Mr Godwin Arua, Zonal Coordinator, South East, added that lack of partnership leading to unhealthy competition among others was one of the challenges hampering education in the country.
“It is a common axiom amongst us that education is the key to national development and economic empowerment.
“And we all cannot agree less that education in Nigeria needs urgent attention, in all spheres and at every level, whether formal or non formal sector.
“For us at CSACEFA, we have continually asked ourselves what could be the cause of these and we have discovered that lack of partnership leading to unhealthy competition.
“Weak or even the lack of social accountability mechanism for knowledge sharing and even when such exited, CSOs and even government hold back information.
“All these makes monitoring of policies, programs and projects difficult if not impossible,” he said.
NAN reports that the conference had participants drawn from the 36 states and the FCT, representatives from the Ministry of Budget and National Planning, World Bank, Diplomatic corps, development partners among others. (NAN)
