More than 50 percent of girls in Nigeria are not attending school at the basic education level, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has said.
Jutaro Sakamoto, education manager at UNICEF disclosed this on Friday night at the education conference organised by the French Institute in Nigeria.
He said 7.6 million girls are out of school (OOS) in Nigeria – 3.9 million at the primary and 3.7 million at the junior secondary level.
Sakamoto also said 48 percent of OOS girls are in the Northwest and Northeast, adding that gender parity in net attendance ratio is below 1.0 in 10 states (primarily in the North) but is decreasing in 15 states.
According to him, 9 percent of the poorest girls attend secondary school compared to 81 percent from the richest quintile.
While lamenting that Nigeria accounts for 15 percent of OOS children globally, Sakamoto said: “If we can’t address the situation in Nigeria, we can’t solve the situation in the world.”
He said those who are going to school are not being taught well as a result of a lack of facilities, adding that UNICEF’s Education Opportunity for Out-Of-School Children (OOSC) project had been able to make some impact.
