Jonathan, Gordon Brown, Govs Meet to Salvage Nigeria’s Education

Gordon Brown

Determined to decisively tackle the challenges of the education sector in the country and ensure that the 10.5 million Nigerian children who are currently out of school are enrolled in schools by 2015, President Goodluck Jonathan, former British Prime Minister and the UN Special envoy for education, Mr. Gordon Brown, state governors and all education commissioners in the 36 states of the federation, will today hold an education summit in Abuja, aimed at charting a new course for the sector.

In furtherance of the effort, Brown will also announce a $250 million education fund raised by the international community to match the $250 million provided by the Nigerian government for education.

The fund from the international community will be used to boost the drive for wholesome education opportunities and facilities for the 10.5 million Nigerian children who are out of school.

Brown while lamenting that Nigeria has the largest number of out-of-school population in the world, noted that the intervention is geared towards building “a world where for the first time, no boy or girl is denied the right to education,” adding, “In this, the challenges faced by Nigeria are real and many – with 10.5 million primary school-age children not in school, Nigeria is home to the world’s largest out-of-school population.”

Since he stepped down as PM, Brown has used his influence as a global statesman as well as his position as the UN envoy for education to mobilise global partners on education for the intervention in Nigeria and other countries.

Such partners include leaders of USAID from Qatar’s Educate a Child, the Global Partnership for Education, from the business community represented by the Global Business Coalition for Education, along with other global development partners.

The target of the fund is to revitalise the nation’s education sector by providing more school buildings, recruiting and training more school teachers in modern educational pedagogy, provision of new innovation teaching via tablets and phones, and designing new curriculum to strengthen the development of literacy and numeracy skills.
“Nigeria has a shortage of nearly 1.3 million teachers. Basic infrastructure is lacking and there is a shortfall of up to 1.2 million classrooms.

“Worse, each year there are fewer children in school due to child marriages, gender and religious biases, and the sheer cost for poorer families. For those that do find ways to get their children into school, learning can be limited, if it happens at all,” Brown said in statement issued by his office.

The statement regretted that the level of illiteracy in Nigeria, rather than decreasing, was on the rise, so much so that the number of adults who cannot read or write has risen to 35 million in the country, adding that “the number of illiterate girls are even more, especially as 52 per cent of young women who complete primary education remain illiterate.”

Brown declared that “illiteracy is standing between Nigeria and its deserved success as an economic power house of the world.

“In order to further encourage parents to release their children for educational opportunities, there is a proposal to provide some families conditional cash transfers that can encourage enrolment and attendance.”

Narrating the role being played by Nigeria’s National Youth Advocate for universal education and the Millennium Development Goals, Ojonwa Deborah Miachi, a B.Sc holder in Economics from Bingham University in Karu, Abuja, and Malala Yousafzai, the 16-year-old Pakistani girl shot by the Taliban, Brown noted that their zeal for the education of the girl child particularly, was the inspiration for the summit.

Today’s summit will also seek to draft an action plan that can be practically implemented by all states of the federation expanding the access to education for the Nigerian child. Recommendations will also be made to give states financial support to enable them to participate effectively in ensuring the success of the scheme.

“Our delegation will put their support behind the implementation of state plans for education. We will look at what more can be done by making better use of the Universal Basic Education Fund to provide central ministry incentives alongside investments from the delegation itself,” the former British PM added. 

Promising to do more in the future, Brown noted that the quest for better and richer education for the Nigerian child is receiving great support from the citizenry as “about 20,000 Nigerians have signed the petition to support President Jonathan’s commitment to education.”