..as 70% of 10 year old Children cannot read or write
By Joyce Remi-Babayeju
The United Nations Children Fund, UNICEF has said that Nigeria is presently Learning Crisis as over 10.5 million children and an additional 70 per of children who are in school do not know how to read and write.
UNICEF Officer- in – Charge OIC, UNICEF Field Office in Kano, Elhadji Issakha Diop said this today at the Media Dialogue on Foundational Literacy and Numeracy , FLN, held in Kano today.
Diop who was represented by Rahana Mohammed Farah, Chief of Field Office, at the UNICEF Kano Office during his welcome address said that 10.5 million children of school is worrying because of denial of Literacy and Numeracy of children in Nigeria.
He said, “For instance, as is the case with some countries globally, and in sub-Saharan Africa, Nigeria faces a learning crisis in which learning is not taking place, even for children that are in school. He emphasized that part of the rights of children is education of the child.”
He said, “Talking about children’s rights, Education is one of such rights. Education is a fundamental human right, and that right is well-articulated in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the (CRC) which guides the work of UNICEF, and of course, in other legal instruments, including the Nigerian Constitution.”
“In executing its mandate of promoting, protecting, advocating, and collaborating with partners for the realisation of the rights of children, UNICEF has been collaborating with the Government of Nigeria to improve outcomes in the education sector.”
According to the World Bank, Nigeria is experiencing a learning poverty in which 70 per cent of 10-year-olds cannot understand a simple sentence or perform basic numeracy task.
According to UNICEF , to address the challenge, achieving basic learning outcomes at the foundational level of education is key, adding that to improve learning outcomes in Nigeria, achieving basic foundational skills at that level of learning cannot be overemphasized.
UNICEF is already supporting the Government of Nigeria to improve Foundational Literacy and Numeracy through tailor-made, teaching learning practices, such as Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL) and Reading and Numeracy Activities (RANA), Diop stated.
UNICEF called for more to scale-up Foundational Literacy and Numeracy in Nigeria, with adequate support of every ally and stakeholder is needed particularly from the media.
Urged the media to mobilize all stakeholders and to raise awareness of the learning crisis in Nigeria and to advocate increased funding to the education sector, especially the allocation of adequate resources to pre-primary and primary level of education in Nigeria; and investing in improving teacher quality.
Earlier speaking on the objective of the SDGs and the media dialogue, the UNICEF Communication Specialist Godfrey Njoku
said that it is to let stakeholders know that without education of children it will be shallow , adding that the SDGs cannot be achieved without focus on children.
We want to begin to push the narrative that those children who are in school and out of school are not learning, adding that there is need for government to focus on learning of children and even teachers in Nigeria.
