Chairman, Senate Committee on Education (Basic and Secondary), Senator Lawal Adamu Usman, has reiterated Nigeria’s commitment to equitable education delivery.
He said the country was taking bold steps to ensure access, quality and inclusiveness in learning across all levels, especially for marginalised groups such as the girl-child and children in conflict-affected communities.
Speaking at a high-level global education summit themed, “Global Priorities, Local Realities: Delivering Equity in Education,” at the Education World Forum in London, the senator, who represents Kaduna Central in the National Assembly, said the forum offered an opportunity for nations to assess the state of education and scale up efforts toward achieving Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG4).
Addressing distinguished delegates and global leaders, Usman noted, “This forum is more than an annual tradition. It is a global checkpoint. It reminds us that while the barriers to education may span continents, the solutions must be rooted in our local contexts, cultures and communities.”
Reflecting on his personal journey from a modest upbringing in Kaduna, the senator emphasised the urgency of tackling educational setbacks in developing countries.
He cited data from UNESCO which showed that only 17 percent of the SDGs are on track, with over 250 million children and young people out of school globally. Even more alarming, he stated, is the fact that two-thirds of children in low-income countries cannot read a simple sentence by age 10.
“More than half of the world’s out-of-school children live in sub-Saharan Africa,” Usman said, “In Nigeria alone, over 7.6 million children are out of school, with girls making up more than half of that number.”
He described the girl-child’s persistent challenges in enrolment, retention and completion of education as not just a human rights crisis but an economic emergency, warning that failure to invest adequately in education could cost the global economy massively in lost lifetime earnings by 2030.
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