Over 17 million Nigerian children and youths between the ages of 15 and 17 are out of school a report by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation Institute for Statistics has said.
This was contained in a statement by Executive Director of Mothers and Marginalised Advocacy Centre, Ola Onyegbula, on Wednesday.
Onyegbula called for the full implementation of the various regulations and laws backing child rights, including access to quality education, to encourage and reinstall personal liberty and dignity of girl child at all levels in Nigeria.
She said, “We are worried that half of youths between the ages of 15 and 17 in Sub-Saharan Africa (Nigeria included) are not in school, totalling more than 93 million children and youths of primary and secondary school age out of school across the region, as reported by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics.”
The group added, “We are not unaware that about 17 million Nigerian children and youths do not have access to education and many more are without access to good education despite the growing importance of quality education to individual personal development and socio-economic prosperity.”
Meanwhile, reports have indicated that girls are particularly disadvantaged across Sub-Saharan Africa with nine million girls who will never attend school compared to six million boys.
