Outdated Statistics, Outdated Progress – Nigeria’s Out-of-School Children Crisis

Nigeria’s official statistic for out-of-school children (OOSC) hasn’t been updated since 2010? That’s 14 years of running on the same number - 35.65%. Surprising? Yes. Troubling? Absolutely. Especially when that figure translates to 15.1 million children - the highest in the world. But here’s the kicker: some state governments seem just fine with it.

by
BJ Maxwell

A Tale of Numbers Frozen in Time

Did you know that Nigeria’s official statistic for out-of-school children (OOSC) hasn’t been updated since 2010? That’s 14 years of running on the same number - 35.65%. Surprising? Yes. Troubling? Absolutely. Especially when that figure translates to 15.1 million children - the highest in the world. But here’s the kicker: some state governments seem just fine with it.

Why? Because that number comes with international grants, and fewer questions asked. Between 2007 and 2024, over $1 billion has poured into education interventions, yet Nigeria has failed to provide new data on OOSC since 2010. Why are we still relying on an obsolete figure, and why aren’t donors demanding accountability?

Outdated Data: A Convenient Excuse?

Think about it: with so much at stake—grants, international support, and public perception—could it be that some stakeholders find this outdated number convenient? Consider this:

  1. Misleading Progress: If we don’t update the numbers, there’s no pressure to show tangible progress.

  2. Unaccountable Grants: Funds keep rolling in, but without fresh data, there’s no clear measure of success or failure.

  3. Global Complicity: International organizations like UNICEF, UNESCO, and the World Bank rarely demand updated data before granting funds.

Does this mean these organizations are complicit in Nigeria’s stagnant education statistics? Could their silence be enabling state and federal governments to avoid accountability?

The Curious Case of the Frozen 35.65%

Let’s break this down:

  • In 2010, Nigeria’s population was 158.5 million, with 35.65% of children aged 6-18 out of school. That’s 5.3 million kids.

  • Fast forward to 2024: our population has soared past 220 million, yet we’re still using that same percentage. Now, the OOSC figure balloons to 15.1 million children, simply by extrapolation.

Here’s where it gets murky. According to UNESCO, children attending preschool or informal education setups aren’t counted as “in school.” So, a child enrolled in pre-primary education at age six—after never attending school before—still counts as OOSC.

More worrisome is the fact that the population of children within school age - 6 to 18 years, in sub-Sahara Africa has been summarily pegged at 30% of the population of each country based on demographics from the the United Nations Population Division's World Population Prospects with revisions that includes data from national censuses conducted between 1950 and 2023. Just for proper context, Nigeria conducted only two census exercises in the last 45 years.

This methodology raises critical questions:

  • How accurate are these numbers?

  • Is the problem truly growing, or are we misinterpreting the statistics?

  • Why hasn’t Nigeria updated its records in over a decade?

Who Benefits from This Silence?

The sad reality is that state governments stand to gain from inflated OOSC figures. Bigger numbers mean bigger grants and less scrutiny. For instance:

  • The Better Education Service Delivery for All (BESDA) program allocated $611 million across 17 states to reduce OOSC numbers. Yet many states fail to demonstrate clear progress.

  • Programs like the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) and Education Cannot Wait (ECW) have poured millions into Nigeria. Where are the results?

Could it be that the system is designed to reward failure rather than incentivize progress?

One wonders if the 14 northern state governments of Adamawa, Bauchi, Borno, Gombe, Jigawa, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Kebbi, Niger, Sokoto, Taraba, Yobe, and Zamfara, as well as the 3 southern state governments of Oyo, Rivers, and Ebonyi have judiciously utilized the grants and assistance they got from the BESDA program. What has happened with all the other grants and aid given to Nigerian states to tackle this menace?

Nigeria's federal government's budget on education hovers around the 10% mark out of which about 70% goes into recurrent expenditure with little left for major projects and policy drive that could at least, come up with a new, acceptable and reliable statistical factor about the out-of-school children.

If 17 years of funding and international support haven’t solved Nigeria’s OOSC crisis, what needs to change? Is it the government? The donors? Or the people? Stay tuned for Part Two, where we unpack the deeper layers of this crisis and explore the way forward.

BJ Maxwell, a Business and Data Analyst, writes from Canada. Follow him on X.com: @bjmaxwell1

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