By Emmanuel Elebeke

Human rights advocate, Dr. Otive Igbuzor says about 10 million Nigerian children within school age are out of school. This trend he said, must be addressed for Nigeria to attain its full potential in terms of development.

This is as he also canvassed for increase in the funding of public schools to enable Nigeria curb the increasing challenges of poverty and illiteracy in the country.

Dr. Igbuzor stated this in Abuja at the 6th anniversary and award of scholarships to some less privileged children by Emoeferotu Foundation.

He said that the successive governments in the country had not done much to give education the priority it deserves,   as a key factor in measuring real development.

Igbuzor, who blamed the increasing rate of poverty in the country on lack of access to quality education and bad leadership, emphasised the need for increase in girl-child education, which he said is key to curbing child and maternal mortality in the country.

“Education is a key factor for measuring development. The right to education is an enabling right for every child. When you have the right to education, it favours you to enjoy other rights that you have as a human being. It gives you capacity to live a better life. There is correlation between education and health.

So, the more educated a person is, the higher the possibility of having a better health. Also there is a correlation between education and maternal mortality rate. If a woman is educated, the possibility of dying an avoidable death is reduced. That is why girl-child education must be encouraged,” he said.

According to him, lack of access had kept many Nigerian children out of school, especially, the less privileged ones. This, he said, must be addressed for Nigerian to actualize its dreams of becoming a developed nation, just as he lamented the poor quality of education in the system.

He further blamed the problem of education on government neglect and lack of adequate funding of the sector.

For him, government must allocate a substantial percentage of its annual budget to education to enable the over 10 million Nigerian children, who are out of school to access quality education, adding that attention must be paid to teachers’ training to guarantee the quality of their teaching.

“There are about 10 million Nigerian children, who are out of school. Nigeria belongs to the top countries of the world with the highest number of out-of-school children.