National Commission for Mass Literacy, Adult and Non-formal Education held a two-day stakeholders’ workshop to re-examine its operational strategies. MARTIN PAUL writes on the challenges.
Seven years ago, the Global Monitoring report put Nigeria’s literacy rate at 69 per cent of the population, signifying that 31 per cent were illiterate.
Two weeks ago, the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) disclosed that over 62 million Nigerians are without basic education.
The organisation lamented that it will take Nigeria 58 years to stamp out illiteracy among Nigerian populace, despite modern trends in education such Information and Communications Technology and other learning mechanisms in the educational system.
In order to water-dawn the alarmist report, the National Programme Officer, UNESCO Regional Office in Abuja, Dr. Muhammad Alkali, who stated this at an international workshop on Teaching and Learning organised by Afe Babalola University, Ado Ekiti, said over 4.2 million Nigerians have been educated through its Radio Literacy programmes.
The worrisome situation continues even as the 11th Education for All (EFA) Global Monitoring reports of 2013/2014 stated that Nigeria has the world’s largest number of 10.5 million out of school children.
Similarly, the World FactBook put Nigeria’s literacy rate, as at last year, at 61.3 per cent of the population, showing that 39.7 per cent represents 46 million illiterate adults in the country.
Executive director, African Centre for Leadership, Strategy and Development (Centre LSD), Dr. Otive Igbuzor, in a paper: “Policy Dialogue on Mass Literacy: Issues of Concern”, presented at a two-day stakeholder meeting organised by national Mass Education Commission (NMEC), listed the challenges militating against efforts aimed at eradication of illiteracy in the country.
Identifying poor funding of MNEC, an organ established to fight illiteracy in the country, he said the challenge facing the commission in further compounded by the fact that there is increasing rate of youth illiteracy in the country.
The reason to this, he added is lack of access to quality education and the slow pace of expansion of public schools, stating the obvious that children who are not going to school, at their tender ages, would grow and become illiterate adult, thereby increasing adult illiteracy each year.
Igbuzor reiterated that between 1960 and 1970, Nigeria and other African countries invested heavily on education and this resulted to rapid expansion.
But, in the 80s, the Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart narrative that the white man came and put knife in the thing that held us together and things began to change reared its head.
That decade’s economic recession, led to Nigeria’s introduction of Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP), powered by prescriptions of International Monetary Fund (IMF), saw the government’s inability, at that time, not seriously paying attention to education anymore.
Studies, according to Igbuzor, has shown that capital expenditure on education declines from the early 80s and by 1988, the real value of capital expenditure was less than 17 per cent of the annual budget, as against the 26 per cent recommendation by UNESCO.
It is interesting to note that because budget for the education sector has remained low each year, the non-formal and adult education sectors are utterly neglected.
Despite being enshrined in the 1999 Nigerian Constitution that “government shall provide free adult literacy programme”, previous governments in the country never given priority to it even though NMEC was established and given mandates.
Igbuzor argued that “these two main issues have led to ancillary problems such as low level of mobilisation of learners, inadequate number of literacy instructors, lack of skilled human resource, poor remuneration of facilitators, poor record keeping”, among others.
In addition to these, it has been observed that states and local governments were showing lackadaisical attitude towards adult education, while local community leaders play the ostrich with learners, who are peasant farmers and traders, not showing interest.
It is against this backdrop that the MNEC organised the stakeholders’ conference entitled: Strengthening Policy Dialogue for Effective and sustainable support for Literacy and Non-formal Education”, to examine ways of rejuvenating the drive to revitalise adult and non-formal education in the country.
Executive Secretary of the commission, Alhaji Jibrin Yusuf Paiko, in a keynote address, said now was not the time to apportion blames or pour encomium, but a time to look inward in trying to find solutions that would ensure achievement of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) on literacy.
Similarly, the chairman, national Steering Committee on Revitaliing Adult and Youth Literacy in Nigeria, Professor Gidado Tahir, stressed the need for positive change in adult and non-formal education sub-sector.
While calling for frequent meetings of stakeholders, he emphasised on the need to re-strategies with a view to bringing positive impact on the drive to eradicate illiteracy in the country.
In the same way, the representative of Regional Director and Country Representative of UNESCO, Mrs. Alice Attah-Abang, spoke on the need to make adult and non-formal education an autonomous body to confront the monster of illiteracy in the country.
She also spoke, in the paper: “NMEC and civil Society Organisation: Engagement in Policy Dialogue”, on the need to develop the capacity of the civil society organisations on policy tools, policy making, processes, challenges and way forward for adult and non-formal education.
Packaging all contributions, the stakeholders agreed on the need to empower NMEC for its statutory responsibility as co-developer of the economy.
In line with this, they advocated constant policy dialogue and the streamlining of the roles of stakeholders focused on NMEC Act of 1990 which empowers the commission to run programmes on “basic literacy, post literacy, continuing education and extra mural studies.
State governments should be stimulated to establish agency for adult and non-formal education and make provision for basic literacy, post-literacy, continuing education and extra mural studies as measures to eradicate illiteracy in the various domains.
The role of local governments in illiteracy eradication is enshrined in the 1999 constitution as amended to provide and maintain primary, adult and vocational education.
International organization and non-governmental organisations, are also partners with the NMEC I driving literacy programmes through the mandate of national Commission for Mass Literacy, adult and Non-formal Education (NMEC).
However, the parameter constituting illiteracy must be understood in the cause of the fight and they include adult, 15 years and above, who have never been to school and cannot write.
Adults and adolescents, age 15 and above, who are above school age, but have no achieved the competence of reading, writing and numeracy and early school leavers, who could not stay to achieve literacy for effective work.
The other groups are adult or youth that need rehabilitative education, such as prisoners and school aged children of ages 6 to 14, who are not enrolled in the formal school system at all.
The hope of achieving these goals is, however, not lose with the advent of a new administration led by President Muhammadu Buhari, whose part, the All Progressives Congress (PAC) manifesto outlined various ways to tackle education in the country.
The party stated that it would “established an adult education centres in each of the wards in the 774 local government areas”, where adult and non-formal education would be conducted to eradicate illiteracy in the country.
