The United Nations Children’s Fund, UNICEF, says education remains a panacea to ending violence in Nigeria as it enrolls over 720,000 out-of-school children in distance learning to increase access to studies.
The Unicef Representative in Nigeria, Ms Cristian Mauduate stated this during an exclusive interview with Voice of Nigeria as the world celebrates the 2024 International Day of Education with the theme:. “Learning for Lasting Peace”
She said education impacts peace because it makes a substantive change in the way an individual does things and behaves.
“If you are educated you understand that violence is not the means of living, whether in the house, community, or anywhere. Education touches your understanding of life and behavior. It nourishes your respect for others.
“Peace is an essential factor in education and education is an essential factor for peace. If things don’t work well it becomes a vicious cycle because it creates social unrest. That is why education for lasting peace is prioritized as the theme for the year,” she said.
According to her, education is an essential factor to build citizens and a prosperous nation, stressing that social cohesion, development, economic prosperity, and gender equity cannot be reached, if education is not provided for all children in Nigeria.
She said Nigeria is home to 15% of the world’s out-of-school population, explaining that 10.2 million of them are at the primary school level, while 8.1 million of them are at the junior secondary level with children living in the Northern part of the country worst affected.
“Out-of-school children and poor learning outcomes are being driven by poverty, insecurity, negative social norms, poor quality teaching and learning, and low domestic financing of education resulting in a shortage of infrastructure and qualified teachers,” said
Mauduate.
She said 439 schools closed due to various conflicts and fears of attacks in 2023 as School attacks continue to occur in all zones across Nigeria.
“Education disruption affects children’s safety and peace-building opportunities. These attacks contribute to the escalating out-of-school problem and learning crisis. Education deprivation fuels poverty, inequality, unemployment, and further violence,” she said.
Mauduate said UNICEF does not only identify challenges in schools but contributes to mitigating them to engender peace, stressing that the agency has been aiding Nigeria to implement the policy standards of the global Safe School convention it signed into as well as create access to education for deprived children beyond the normal classrooms.
“We have supported 13 of the highest risk states to develop costed safe school implementation plans and set up steering committees in them.
“We have also generated data on the implementation of the minimum standards in 6,000 schools in the Northern part of the country. We have developed TV, Radio, and digital learning to ensure continuity of learning during school closures and trained thousands of teachers on psychosocial support when schools are attacked,” explained the UNICEF boss in Nigeria.
She said UNICEF has also built a successful model with the government on how to solve the out-of-school problem in six northern states, which involves the provision of cash transfers to households to mitigate the impact of poverty, community mobilization, small grants to schools to fix infrastructure and a focus on early grade reading and numeracy in formal and non-formal settings.
“This model has been highly successful in bringing millions of children into school in Nigeria and is part of the framework of action on out-of-school children being led by UBEC at federal and state levels.
“Inclusion means that all children have access to education irrespective of their background. We deliberately target poor and rural children and increasingly children with disabilities and girls’ education,” she said.
She highlighted that another way the agency is working with Federal and state ministries of education on out-of-school children is the distance learning approach, where over 720,000 out-of-school children have been enrolled in the programme.
“The programme comes along with curricular content, so we have several learning packages where children can learn through access to mobile internet.
“In some geographical areas we partner with the private sector, especially the telecoms operators so that when they come to power their base stations, they support schools and communities with internet access or equipment such as small phones that the children can use and learn,” she explained.
She applauded the 25 percent Budget allocation to the education sector in 2024 by the President Bola Ahmed Tinubu-led administration, advising that it should be effectively utilised, especially in the areas of enrolment, infrastructure, and teachers’ education.
“It should be implemented in a timely and quality manner. The Governors will have to ensure it translates into tangible results meaning children learn with more quality, teachers are capacitated and show that they have the skills to teach, and more children enrolled in schools as well as scaling up the alternative solutions such as distance learning,” she said.
She advocated for parents, teachers, and youths to be consistently involved in the campaign on learning for peace as they play pivotal roles.
“Lack of school safety means that parents don’t feel comfortable sending their children to school. This fuels the out-of-school problem and the learning crisis. And when children are unable to learn there is little chance to build positive discipline and conflict resolution skills, key to promoting peacebuilding.
“Teachers must implement positive discipline in classrooms and teach conflict resolution as part of the life skills programme. They must engage communities in these actions because the school is a microcosm of community events.
“Youths are important leaders in building life skills among adolescents and in role modeling good behaviours free from violence, building friendships across dividing lines, and participating in education,” she said.
She urged the Nigerian government to make different policy choices that favour education with its enormous resources. While adhering to the commitment to increasing allocation to the sector and to reach 4% of GDP by 2025.
“What money does have for education must be fully released, and used better to target poor children, and focus on improving the quality of learning outcomes, especially at the basic education level. Then, it can have a significant impact on beginning to build a generation of well-educated children who are able to provide for their families and see social cohesion and peace as the success of the country”.
She also commended the removal of the fuel subsidy in Nigeria describing it as a step in the right direction, adding that the savings must be redirected to the social sector including education.
Dominica Nwabufo
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