There has been a running battle to tackle out- of-school children syndrome across Nigeria.
Although, the northern part of the country bears the highest number of out-of-school children, other parts of the country do have their fair share of children not enrolled in schools.
United Nations Children’s Fund, UNICEF, stated that about 18.3 million Nigerian children are out of school.
The National Commission for Almajiri and Out of School Children Education would provide a multi model system of education to tackle the menace of illiteracy, develop skill acquisition and entrepreneurship programmes, prevent youth poverty, delinquency and destitution in the nation.
In this vein, the Executive Secretary of the Commission, Mohammed Idris, who announced that the Commission was set to on-board 3 million out-of-school children into the school system and commence data gathering this year.
To achieve this, it is worthy to note that the Commission plans establishment of offices across all the six geo-political zones in the country soon.
The Commission is also set to begin gathering the data of Out-of-school children across the country in line with the Federal Ministry of Education DOTS agenda.
DOTS is an acronym for (D) building a robust data repository for the ministry capable of generating the ministry’s data; (O) addressing the nation’s out-of-school population, (T) encouraging teacher training and development; and (S) prioritising skills acquisition targeted towards quality education and bridging unemployment in society.
The attempts have not yielded expected fruits but the Federal Government has sufficiently shown the passion about the plight of the Almajiris and Out-of-school children.
In this vein, we identify with every effort of the Federal Government to take out-of-school away from streets nationwide.
We strongly believe that no cost would be too much to bear in achieving this noble objective. Leaving these children unattended to would spell doom for our collective future.
We also call on Non-Governmental Organisations, NGOs, and relevant stakeholders to join hands with the government to with a view to tackling out-of-school children syndrome in Nigeria.
