The United Nations International Children’s Education Fund (UNICEF) in 2019 said 70% of children are out of school in Nigeria. This is sad. Education is the illuminating platform of every successful nation, but in Nigeria things keep falling apart whereby our schools are dilapidated and children are taught under trees.
The introduction of school feeding was a good step at promoting education, but the programme is facing serious challenges. States like Kano, Sokoto, Jigawa, Katsina, Borno, among others, are lagging in the scheme. At the initial stage of the programme, children attended school very early in the morning.
The food given to them was a motivation for them to attend school regularly, and that started yielding a positive outcome. Children were no longer staying at home; they attended school four times a week and stopped roaming the streets.
Government has been doing pretty well in managing the crisis before the situation changed due to emergence of the novel Covid-19. Schools were shut as part of the government’s efforts to contain its spread. Consequently, the feeding programme stopped and quite number of children stopped attending school.
Therefore, I want draw the attention of the government and the various stakeholders to look at the school feeding issue critically and return the program with immediate effect, because the more children are out of school, the more the situation deteriorates.
Now, the out of school wards returned to the streets creating problems for people. Parents are not doing well in bringing up their wards so the general public must assist in this direction. Insecurity is everywhere in Nigeria, and such children are main the factors.
The root of every conflict is hunger. When people are hungry they can do anything so survive. That’s why crime and child abuse are rampant.
However, the negligence of government at readdressing the issue of out of school children and its refusal to fix infrastructure keep adding fuel to the problem.
A lot of private schools came on board without having the required manpower to run the schools. The school feeding programme is the only policy that can attract both the children and the parents to enrol their wards in public schools
Finally, I am calling on the government to do the needful by reviving the school feeding programme, otherwise we can’t count the number of out of school children in Nigeria in the next four to six years. This is because a lot of people were pushed out of their home and have no place to live anymore. That means there is a tendency that the problem will multiply as a result of homeless kids and that of out of school children.
A bad tree never yields a good plan, so let’s reenergize the popular slogan “children are the leaders of today and ambassadors of tomorrow” and that could only be achieved by giving them priority in the all spheres of life.
Adamu Ali Usman .
Department of Mass Communication
University of Maiduguri
