The House of Representatives is working on a framework that will ensure that over 14 million out-of-school Nigerian children are back to schools tagged ‘Nigeria Mass Reduction of Out-of-School children and Youth Project’ (NiMPROP).
The Framework is proposed to last for a period of four years.
The intervention by the House under the leadership of the Speaker, Abbas Tajudeen, is aimed at addressing public education by tackling poverty and value gaps.
It will be implemented in partnership with relevant government agencies and aims at improving access to education for all Nigerian children in line with Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs-4) objectives on qualitative and inclusive education for all.
Government agencies that the committee is working with include the National Commission of Almajiri and out-of-school children, the National Commission for Mass Literacy, Adult and Non-Formal Education and the National Commision for Nomadic Education.
The committee is also working assiduously to ensure that 16.5 million Nigerians are lifted out of poverty, which will ensure the return of out-of-school children to schools.
The project would significantly reduce the number of of out-of-school children through non-formal accelerated education system and other alternative schooling programmes, according to Rep Almustapha Aliyu.
Speaking on the project, Rep. Aliyu said the committee had already had several engagements with the relevant agencies in the past week with favourable responses.
He said the necessary machinery has been put in place for the actualization of the intervention as the House gets set to reconvene from its annual recess on Tuesday.
According to him, part of the initiative is to ensure the significant reduction of poverty in the six geopolitical zones of the country.
The intervention targets reduction of poverty among population as follows; Northeast, 4 million people; North West, 3.4m people; North Central, 2.5m; South East, 3m; South South, 2.1m, and South West, 1.6m.
Based on the statistics from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), the Northeast leads in the poverty index with 71.86 percent of its population in poverty, followed by the Northwest with 64.84 percent, while the North Central has 42.70 percent. Others are: South East, 42.44%; South South, 21.28% and South West, 12.12%.
