By McPatrick Michael Linus and Awaal Gata
Statistics show that there are out of school children in our streets today in sharp contrast to the testimonies from the government.
Nigerian government claims to have an increment in the number of children in school presently, especially since the current administration took over a little over five years ago.
However, a trip around the city of Abuja tells otherwise, more so the last UNESCO’s report concerning this issue.
It is important to make known that UNESCO and its informants claimed that 10 million Nigerian children are out of school. It further asserts that Nigeria leads 12 other countries in the rungs of lowering the future of its children along the axis of Pakistan, Yemen and Niger.
It is common today to still see children who are supposed to be in school still run after moving vehicles on highways and traffic snarls in Abuja while agencies of government saddled with the responsibility of addressing this menace look the opposite direction.
The ever-busy Umar Musa Yar’adua way, popularly called Airport Road, major route of Mr. President and high dignitaries coming in and out of Abuja, is filled with indigent children running after moving vehicles under the scorching sun hawking all manner of things while these government officials pass in convoys and siren.
They harass and scare these kids off the road with impunity.
One of these kids who simply gave his name as Adamu, narrates his touching stories when confronted along the similarly ever-busy Dutse-Alhaji/Bwari road with a bucket brimmed with iced sachet water worth only N150 in total, running after a gravel-filled truck’s driver one afternoon, while his mates were in school preparing for the term’s examination.
“I can’t be in school because my daddy can’t pay my fee; neither can my mum. We’re very poor. I have to sell ‘pure water’ so we can feed ourselves,” the 10-year old Adamu panted.
Another out of school kid, Obinna, would turn 15 in September. He has never been to secondary school even though there is one close to where he lives.
Coincidentally according to Obinna, that is the same school where his neighbour’s first son and friend, Kunle, who is just a year younger than him would be resuming a new class of SS2.
“After my primary six, I lost my dad. My mother is just a petty trader and we’re four children in number. My mum advised that I stop school so that my siblings can at least get primary education like me,” he narrated with teary eyes.
Another silent fact and reasons for this eyesore is the number of automobiles applying our urban roads today. There is heavy vehicle traffic on the road today compared to years back. These young ones who are mostly street boys take advantage of it to make fast money since a space in the class room is completely beyond their reach.
The story is not different across other major cities and towns in the country, this is because a cross section of those interviewed were unanimous in condemning this ugly trend and decries the way government continue to treat issue of education with kid glove.
To many local and international observers, the finding as reported was a true expose of the rot in the governance in Nigeria. Many believed UNESCO regarding the cited number.
Similarly, many children experts who spoke to Blueprint on the situation ‘chided’ the government for not “doing anything about it.”
One of them, Mr. Isaac Mathews said: “We read in the papers every day that literacy rate has increased in Nigeria. Yes, there is increment considering how things were in the past, but we need to weigh the number of child-hawkers on the streets hawking away their future just because they can’t afford education and the government cannot help them.
“Drive around Abuja, you will see hundreds of child-hawkers disturbing you to buy their wares, when they should be in school. In this age, no government should allow that. It is not that these children do not want to go to school or their parents do not want them to go to school; they cannot just afford it.
“If you complain they tell you that government has made education free; it is a lie. You call primary and secondary education free, yet school heads are levying pupils and students thousands of naira that their parents can’t afford.
“If we really want to stop this problem, child-hawking must be banned and free education must be re-prioritized.”