Minister of Education, Tunji Alausa, says the Federal Government has succeeded in returning more than one million children from the streets to classrooms over the past 30 months as part of efforts to tackle the country’s out-of-school children crisis.
Alausa made the disclosure on Tuesday during an appearance on Channels Television’s Politics Today, while responding to questions about recent UNESCO and UNICEF figures estimating that 18.3 million Nigerian children are currently out of school.
According to the minister, the widely cited figure has remained unchanged for nearly a decade and does not reflect the Federal Government’s ongoing efforts to generate more accurate, state-by-state data through a comprehensive mapping exercise.
“Talking about data, this UNESCO data, UNICEF data, 18.3 million, is the same number that has been quoted for 10 years. We do not need to challenge it, and I do not need to get into rhetoric.
“What we are doing is data mapping of our out-of-school children as we continue aggressive interventions to move children back to school. Today, I can tell you that we have moved over one million children on the streets back to school in the last 30 months,” Alausa said.
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Geotagging Out-Of-School Children
The minister explained that the government has begun geotagging out-of-school children across the country to identify their exact locations and addresses, a process he said would provide more reliable figures than the estimates currently used by international organisations.
“UNESCO, UNICEF can quote their data, and others may say 15 million. What I am telling you is that we are now doing detailed mapping of these children.
“We have gone to seven or eight states. We are geotagging out-of-school children and locating where they are through their addresses.
“UNICEF data says Kaduna has 1.8 million out-of-school children. We have completed the data mapping in Kaduna, and we found about 700,000 children who are out of school. Is that still high? Yes. But do we now have a more realistic number? Absolutely,” he said.
Fewer Than Eight Million
The minister maintained that Nigeria does not currently have 18.5 million out-of-school children, insisting that the final number would be substantially lower once the nationwide verification exercise is completed.
“We are going to continue mapping all 36 states and then present our numbers. By the time we are done, we will have fewer than eight million out-of-school children,” he said.
A UNICEF report published in 2024 stated that Nigeria had the highest number of out-of-school children globally, with 10.2 million children of primary school age and 8.1 million of junior secondary school age not attending school.
The report noted that 66 per cent of these children are concentrated in the North-West and North-East regions.
In 2024, President Bola Tinubu described the situation as “unacceptable” and pledged to make education a central pillar of his administration’s agenda, with a focus on school reintegration and skills development.
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