Nigeria Has Entered Into Partnership With the Educate-A-Child Programme funded by the Qatari Government to work towards addressing the out-of-school children challenge being faced by various states in the country.
Minister of State for Education, Barr. Ezenwo Nyesom Wike who led the Nigerian delegation to the high level strategic meeting to accelerate efforts to reach out-of-school children in Doha, Qatar recently worked out the partnership after briefing ministers of Education from 17 countries who attended the meeting.
Wike who presented Nigeria's country report to the ministers and former national leaders, pointed out that the nation has taken critical steps to address the issues of out-of-school children since President Goodluck Jonathan took over governance in 2011.
He stated that the Jonathan administration has the political will to tackle the challenge posed by children being out of school, noting that the funding of infrastructure development, recruitment of teachers and involvement of different stakeholders in access creation programmes have led to the reduction of the number of out-of-school children in the country.
He called on international agencies and other development partners to assist the nation in resolving the challenges posed by out-of-school children in Nigeria and other developing countries across the world.
"In our country, we have given education the desired priority under the leadership of President Goodluck Jonathan. We have the political will to ensure that we create access to quality education for our children that are presently out of school. We urge all development partners, especially the Educate-a-Child programme to invest in our nation to reduce the number of out-of-school children.
"For us, we have invested in the development of infrastructure in the form of the Almajiri schools in the northern Nigeria and selected parts of our country, construction of special girl-child schools and schools for the boy-child who is out of school in parts of southern Nigeria. We look forward to targeted investments to help us develop more infrastructure to cater for more out-of- school children."
