- …Cultural, religious, economic factors responsible for high incidence of withdrawals- Analysts
By Juliana Uche-Okobi
Jonah Agwu, a native of Akaeze, Ivo Local Government Area of Ebonyi State, was seven when he lost his father in 2013. Devastated by the death of her husband, Josephine, his mother, who was a Primary III teacher at Community Primary School, Iyioji, decided to relocate from the village to her hometown in Okigwe, Imo State.
Little Jonah was in Primary II when the tragedy struck and he was withdrawn from school with a promise to continue his education there. In the process of relocating to Okigwe, Josephine lost her job, as she could not successfully transfer her service from Ebonyi to Imo State. Things became tough for Josephine and her three children, among whom Jonah was the first.
The widow eventually shelved the idea of re-enrolling little Jonah in school and instead introduced him to the family business of rice milling, while she set up a foodstuff business. Now 13, little Agwu is at home with the milling business such that any discussion on going back to school does not sound right to him.
Whereas Agwu abandoned school because of lack of fund, Kayode Olatunji, 16, abandoned school for reasons other than shortage of cash. Before he left school, Olatunji was already a Senior Secondary 1 student in a public secondary school in Iju, a suburb of Lagos. In October 2016, Olatunji attended a friend’s birthday party, where they were entertained by a live band led by a musician almost his age. That encounter changed his disposition towards education. He decided instantly to go into music, which, in his view, would rake in money faster than whatever certificate he hoped to acquire from school. All entreaties by his parents to make him change his mind failed.
“I know that I will make my money from music someday,” he bragged in an encounter with our correspondent.
There are millions like Agwu and Olatunji.
The issue of dropping out of school among children and youth is now a thing of great concern globally. In its 2017 school year ending report published in September last year, the United Nations Scientific, Educational and Cultural Organisation Institute for Statistics (UIS) announced that though there had been a reduction in the number of out-of-school children, there was still about 262 million, translating to one out of every five children, adolescents and youth between the ages of 6 and 17, out of school. In poor countries, however, the report showed a rise in the figure to about one dropout in every three children that enrolled in school.
According to the UNESCO report, the slight reduction, compared to previous figures, followed measures by some countries to remove obstacles that hindered many, especially girls, from accessing education. That notwithstanding, the report maintained that 64 million children of primary school age were still out of school, as well as 61 million adolescents of lower secondary school age (12 to 14 years) and another 138 million youth of upper secondary school age.
As the UIS report showed, girls still faced barriers to education in most regions, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, where it said that girls of every age were more likely to be excluded from education than boys. But as the report stressed, certain factors, particularly wealth, determine the level of denial of education. In fact, the report made this clear that at the primary level, almost every child is in primary school in high-income countries, whereas it was 80 per cent of children in low-income countries.
In the UIS education report in 2013, UNESCO said that countries in sub-Saharan Africa accounted for more than half of all out-of-school children, with Nigeria having highest number of out-of-school children in the world.
One would have expected the Nigerian government to put up measures to ensure a better report concerning the country in subsequent reports. But the efforts of government did not seem to have made any impact, as the ministry of education has admitted.
In 2017, the Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Education, Adamu Hussaini, disclosed that Nigeria still retained its position as the country with the highest number of school dropouts in the world. Hussaini, who noted that both local and international interventions in the sector had been low, lamented that the situation had adversely affected efforts to meet the Sustainable Development Goals on inclusive education for all.
But how has Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, managed to retain this unenviable title? What socio-economic factors created it and how have government policies over the years supported this negative trend?
As analysts have noted, certain factors contribute to the school dropout phenomenon in Nigeria. These factors, ranging from cultural to religious, seem to be sabotaging government’s efforts to stop or reduce the issue of school dropouts.
Jeremiah Ogbe, a social critic based in MaKurdi, Benue State, said culture has a big influence on education in Nigeria. In the northern part of the country, for instance, he said the chances of girls completing their primary education or secondary education were slim because parents considered girls’ education to be of little or no benefit to them since they would be married out
Ogbe, who said that education was necessary to prepare the minds of girls towards marriage, regretted that parents denied their children needed knowledge, preferring, instead, to give them out in marriage.
In his view, early marriage is a factor that must be addressed in solving the problem of school dropouts in the country.
Aside from cultural issues, analysts believe that another factor is the economy. Though many states of the federation have made education free at the primary level, some parents still find it difficult to provide uniforms and textbooks for their wards, especially parents who do not have steady means of livelihood. Ogbe noted that since recession crept into the Nigerian economy in 2015, many breadwinners have lost their jobs and could no longer provide for their families as they should.
“And when you cannot provide the basic three square meals in a day for your family, is it books and uniforms that will occupy your mind?” Ogbeh queried.
The situation is particularly worse for those whose children are in private schools with high school fees.
“When parents can no longer meet the basic educational needs of their children, they simply withdraw them to assist in providing for the family. I think the harsh economic situation in the country takes the blame for the high rate of school dropouts the country records,” he said.
The UIS report of 2013 maintained that, “Children from poor households are three times as likely to be out of school as children from rich households.”
But there is also another angle to the matter. The issue of almajiri is another factor fueling the number of school dropouts in Nigeria. This was also the opinion of the education permanent secretary, Hussaini, who tried to provide a better understanding of the issue of school dropouts and those mostly affected.
“Almajiri-children, those of the nomadic pastoralists, boy and girl-child dropout, social miscreants, children living with disability, those of migrant fishermen and, more recently, children displaced by insurgency, constitute the bulk of the affected children,” he said.
And the consequences are weighty and costly to the economy. Though some individuals who dropped out of school for lack of finance continue to help in some ways to generate funds for the upkeep of their families, others do not.
Speaking with our correspondent, the National President of the Academic Staff Union of Universities, Prof. Biodun Ogunyemi, said the menace of school dropouts was devastating to the society. He mentioned some social vices such as kidnapping, armed robbery and cybercrime as offshoots of dropping out of school.
Ogbe on his part said that because the economy was bad, some school dropouts were usually forced to look for alternative means of survival. And because they are vulnerable, bad friends introduce them to robbery and cybercrime. Others, too, turn to kidnapping just to make ends meet. The end result, Ogbe noted, is that in addition to ranking high in school dropouts, Nigeria is also seen as a country with high crime rate as well as insecure.
Analysts, however, believe that there is a way out. Betty Abah, founder, CEE-HOPE (Centre for Children’s Health Education, Orientation and Protection) said one of the ways out of the problem is through school feeding.
“One major way of encouraging school enrollment and retention, and successfully reducing school dropout rate, from my experience working with children and young persons from very poor backgrounds, is to ‘entice’ the children. One of such methods that have recorded global success is the school feeding programme. The Federal Government started a really commendable initiative in the form of the National School Feeding Programme, but, as usual the programme is riddled with corruption.
“Children in many of the states covered by the programme are either not supplied food at all or when they are, they are fed substandard food. There have been several reports about these misdemeanors but no response from the government because fundamentally, the contractors are mostly members of the ruling party, their cronies or other local stakeholders,” she said.
Princewill Akpakpan, a lawyer, who advised that education should be made free, also said the economy should be made friendly.
“You don’t expect a father earning N30,000 to keep his five children in school with such amount,” he said.
If government puts the right policies in place, stakeholders believe that things would change for the better soon.
