With 13 million children out of school in 2019, Nigeria faces the daunting task of expanding access to quality and equitable education for all. Despite education being free and mandatory for the first ten years of a child’s education, Nigeria has, over the past decade, recorded the highest out-of-school children (OOSC) number in the world. As highlighted in a recent Southern Voice report, these statistics represent a fundamental obstacle to achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goal 4 on quality education for all.

So far, education policy reforms have been insufficient in solving the access problem in Nigeria. The causes are inherently multifaceted and require and equally multipronged approach.

Conceptually, Nigerian OOSC are grouped into three subsets:

First are children of school age that have never attended school. Nomadic populations represent the bulk of this category, contributing some 5.2million OOSC. Cultural and economic factors well beyond the scope of education policy are the critical drivers for poor enrolment of the nomadic populations. For instance, the permanent migration characterising these populations makes conventional school infrastructure unsuitable for their livelihood pattern. Moreover, nomadic children enter the labour force at an early age due to the types of skills their economic activities (herding/fishing) require. This itinerant lifestyle makes the opportunity cost of schooling high among this group vis-à-vis the perceived benefits, “justifying” the lack of attractiveness of formal education.

The second group of OOSC in Nigeria is captured by the children enrolled in Almajiri schools, currently numbering 4-5million pupils. Historically, the Almajiri system was developed to train the children and youth (5-22-year-olds) in Qur’anic literacy in Northern Nigeria. As stressed in Southern Voice’s SVSS report, the Almajiri system has failed to integrate with the formal education system. It does not even provide basic numeracy and literacy skills. The situation is so dire that Almajiri pupils are officially categorised as out-of-school children. Despite their shortfalls, Almajiris continue to be popular, primarily due to demographic trends and high poverty. These are issues that go well beyond the realm of education policy alone. Northern Nigerian cultural practices, especially the preference for large families, still underpin the high fertility numbers seen today. Poverty levels in the region are currently conservatively estimated to be above 70%. This financial condition constitutes a burden for large families, particularly in the unproductive formative years of the children. Almajiris function almost like a boarding school. They allow people to have more children at no burden, as they are sent to these schools at a very early age until they transition into adulthood, without financial costs for the family. Parents benefit from shifting their monetary burden to the teacher while satisfying cultural pressures for large families. The teachers in the Almajiri system, in turn, benefit by deploying children to “work” (often a euphemism for begging). The real losers are the children. They will never acquire essential skills to improve their livelihood.

The third and last type of OOSC is the dropout. The causes of dropouts are manifold. But a 2015 survey identified monetary costs, including school development levies, textbooks and examination fees to be the most prominent. Ironically, such costs are all supposedly covered by the government under the free education policy. This challenge highlights the limited fiscal space. It leads to inadequate funding of education, forcing school administrators to transfer the shortfall in financing onto parents.

There is a need for crosscutting policies, ranging from the economic to the social realm. A diversity of causes is keeping children out of school, plus the failure of past education policies to curb the issue of OOSC. For instance, demographic intervention through family planning can reduce population growth and improve school attendance. The link between the fertility reduction rate and improved school attendance is well proven, even in the African context.

Moreover, reducing fertility rates can also impact education access numbers. Poverty reduction increases women’s participation in the labour market. Also, the number of children requiring childcare at home would decrease.

Comprehensive poverty alleviation programs reducing the pressure on families to monetise with children will also be necessary. Labour market policies aimed at providing employment opportunities outside of small-scale, labour-intensive subsistence farming, be it through diversification, must be considered. Such policies would reduce the economic productivity of having young children. It would make families less inclined to see them as a form of financial investment, thus reducing the perceived opportunity cost of education.

As Southern Voice’s SVSS report highlights, education is inextricably linked to a wide variety of other development indicators. The report shows the potential for harnessing synergies among development goals. But it also underscores the impossibility of achieving significant results if each goal is seen individually. In this light, an education-sector reform, albeit necessary, is an insufficient step towards ensuring Nigeria’s progress for achieving universal primary education.

If Nigeria really wants to reduce OOSC numbers, then a creative multipronged solution, that simultaneously focuses on a plurality of development goals, is essential. Following the COVID pandemic, Nigeria’s fiscal constraints are indeed worrying. But millions of Nigerian children cannot afford further reluctance to act boldly and decisively.

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