Olalekan Ojumu, Ibadan, Nigeria
In December 2018, at a Global Education meeting held in Brussels, the United Nations adopted a resolution to celebrate the role of education in development every 24th of January. The day, tagged International Day for Education will see the world celebrate the role of education in development.
International Day of Education is a manifestation of the international community’s willpower to improve the standard of education and their efforts towards eradicating illiteracy. It also emphasizes the importance of education in socio-economic development. The celebration is geared towards improving the quality of education and protecting the rights of children to go to school.
Education plays an important role in eradicating poverty, illiteracy and providing livelihood through employment, skill acquisition, improvement in health and reduction of crime rates. Late Kofi Annan aptly described education as ‘… a human right with immense power to transform. On its foundation rest the cornerstones of freedom, democracy and sustainable human development’.
However, it is unfortunate that Nigeria currently has 13.2 million out-of-school children of which 65% are girls, according to UBEC and they are mainly concentrated in northern Nigeria. Of those who are privileged to go to school, less than two-thirds complete primary education and even fewer girls complete their secondary education. In regions where women have a lower social status, many parents opt to send their girls to work in markets rather than to school. Lack of education vastly reduces a child’s chances of escaping poverty and has led to many girls becoming wives before their 16th birthday.
For any society to prosper, everyone has to be given an equal chance to succeed and realize their dreams. Attendant to this, urgent steps and concerted efforts need to be made to build human capital through education. In Nigeria, a vast number of young girls and children living in marginalized and low-income communities are disadvantaged and likely at the risk of exclusion from future prosperity.
Goal 4 and Goal 5 of the SDGs meet at the intersection of education and empowerment for the girl-child. For Nigeria to be able to achieve this objective and have a real sense of celebrating international education day, the private sector and government at all levels need to inject more funds to pursue this agenda. Just like Malala said, ‘With investment in women, the returns are very high and the opportunity costs very low’. Educated, skilled women lift economic growth, help reduce poverty, change perceptions and eradicate evils like child labour. But we must make the first step and start funding for learning’.
Education must be reinforced by the development of self-esteem to liberate girls from the inferior status to which the society confines them. Similarly, in the absence of education and healthy self-esteem, empowerment cannot be achieved. All these elements go together hand-in-hand.
