70% of under-10 children can’t read simple sentences — Official
About 70 per cent of Nigerian children under 10 cannot read and understand a simple sentence, highlighting the country’s deepening learning crisis and raising concerns about its ability to build a productive workforce, the National Human Capital Development Programme has said.
The National Coordinator of Human Capital Development 2.0 and Special Adviser to the President of the National Economic Council and Climate Change, Rukaiya el-Rufai, disclosed this at a media engagement on the nation’s human capital development strategy on Monday in Abuja.
The coordinator said the learning crisis was particularly worrying because being physically present in school did not necessarily mean that children were acquiring the literacy and numeracy skills required to participate productively in the economy.
“The one that worries me and scares me is that learning poverty is so high. It’s about 70 per cent. So the numeracy and the English skills from 10 to 12, in fact, the World Bank puts it at 85 per cent. So it’s not that even the kids that are in school, what they’re learning is not sufficient,” she said.
According to her, the problem goes beyond the education sector because the quality of learning directly affects the ability of young Nigerians to acquire sophisticated skills required by industries.
She illustrated the challenge with the experience of the Dangote Refinery, saying Nigerian workers could not simply be trained for some highly technical jobs without addressing weaknesses in basic education.
“I know this kind of thing, you can’t even, it’s just like when Dangote was building the refinery, they couldn’t train our welders because to achieve that precision you need geometry. You need geometry,” she said.
El-Rufai said the implication was that Nigeria could have young people in school or in the labour market without giving them the skills needed to secure productive and well-paid employment.
“So some of, even the sophisticated skills and some of the jobs that meet the needs of our industries and our sectors, you can’t even sell that with the current level. So you see it’s a lot, and then the youth are not in employment, education and training,” she said.
The Human Capital Development 2.0 programme is consequently focusing on health, education, skills and livelihoods, with the objective of improving Nigeria’s performance on human capital indicators.
El-Rufai said six priority indicators had been selected, including under-five mortality, stunting, immunisation, out-of-school children, learning poverty and youth not in employment, education or training.
She said the programme had also changed its approach from simply measuring activities to tracking measurable outcomes that could improve Nigeria’s Human Capital Index.
The programme is being implemented through the National Economic Council, which provides a platform linking the Federal Government and the states.
El-Rufai said this was important because the human capital challenges varied significantly from one part of the country to another, making a single national solution inadequate.
“We have been having regional sessions with the states in regional blocks because the results are so polarised. You look at the north, you see; you look at the south. So it shows us that there’s no one-size-fits-all. Because what we’ve done is we have this national framework. Each state is now developing theirs.
“So they’re picking based on the nuances of their own developmental challenges. They are coming up with their own HCD plans,” she said.
El-Rufai said the approach was particularly important because some states had made significant progress in areas where others were still struggling, citing differences in school enrollment as an example.
The programme also plans to use data to determine where interventions and resources are most urgently needed.
On her part, the Director of Advocacy and Communications at the programme, Ms Doosuur Zasha, said investment in human capital remained central to Nigeria’s economic development and urged the media to play a stronger role in tracking progress and holding governments accountable for human capital spending.
“That’s the core of what we’re doing here. At the core of it, we’re trying to see how Nigerians can access quality healthcare, whether children are learning, and whether young people and adults have the skills and opportunities to earn a decent livelihood, and if people that face barriers can actually have full participation in the economy,” Zasha said.
The HCD 2.0 programme is an evolution of the earlier Human Capital Development initiative established under the National Economic Council. It is supported by development and private-sector partners, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Aliko Dangote Foundation.
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