Empower to Develop!

Education remains at the core of society’s development. It equips people with the capacity of developing and managing their environment for human survival and sustainability. Wise governments continually invest in education to ensure that its population are well-positioned to grapple with the dynamics of human existence.

In Nigeria, education has been met with many challenges: political, economic, ethnoreligious, security. The literacy rate in the country reflects on the poverty level as well. In March 2019, Nigeria was regarded as the poverty capital of the world, with about 91 million Nigerians living below $1.90 per day. Nigeria’s literacy rate is about 59%. There are about 13.2 million out of school children in Nigeria, with 69 percent in Northern Nigeria, where some states have known terrorism for a decade.

It is important to note that Nigeria cannot achieve sustainable growth and development with a high percentage of its population uneducated, poor and without sustainable livelihoods. It is not far-fetched to link the spate of insecurities nationwide to poor access to education which suggests limited capacity to afford basic life amenities. To tackle insecurity, means to address the problem of poverty and education. For instance, in the terror-ravaged northeast Nigeria, percentage of out of school children and level of poverty steadily increases with onslaughts by insurgents.

Insecurity cannot be treated as a standalone concept. For instance, as part of the counterinsurgency strategy of government, emphasis should be placed on the education of children and youths in the region who have been linked to the recruitment pipeline of insurgents. There should be targeted interventions committed at providing free education to vulnerable people affected by terrorism in the region.  Permanent educational processes and structures should be implemented in internally displaced persons’ camps by government with support from aid agencies (local and international). Ethnoreligious institutions should be incorporated in education intervention programmes to break the ethnoreligious barriers preventing people from accessing education.

In developed societies, efficient social security system ensures welfarist packages for people regardless of the circumstances they find themselves. Victims of violent conflicts where there is an effective social security system will be properly catered for to ensure that circumstances of life do not deny them access to public goods.