Education in Nigeria is divided into primary, secondary, and tertiary. The first six years of formal education in Nigeria are free and compulsory by law; and on average, each Nigerian child is meant to spend 16 years combined going through the country’s education system.
Yet one in five out-of-school children globally is in Nigeria, making up about 20% of children that are not getting any kind of formal education globally.
This situation exists because Nigeria’s education sector is plagued with quite a few issues that need to be fixed to ensure that every child has access to quality education, in line with the UN’s Global Goal 4 for quality education, starting with these five:
1. Funding
Similar to health care, education is seriously underfunded in Nigeria. In 2018, only 7% of the national budget was allocated to education, far below UNESCO’s recommended 15%-26%. In 2020, it was 6.7%.
While many schools are owned and funded by the government, the education sector is also heavily privatised with private, often more expensive schools proliferating across various levels of education. These schools are usually out of the reach of most Nigerians, who live below the poverty line.
