Failure to educate teeming children fuels Nigeria’s crisis — Expert

Geoffrey Njoku, a Communication Expert, has said many of the problems confronting Nigeria today stem from the country’s failure to properly educate its teeming population of children.

Njoku made the remark on Monday while speaking at a regional workshop on ethical reporting of children for journalists from the North-East and North-Central zones organised by the Federal Ministry of Information and National Orientation in collaboration with United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) held in Gombe, Gombe State.

He noted that the growing number of out-of-school children in the country reflects a major failure to apply the basic principle of investing in education as a foundation for national development.

“Now, this basic principle is not even being applied. That is why we currently have 18.2 million children out of school. I saw the figure yesterday—18.2 million.

“To put that into perspective, 18.2 million is larger than the population of Togo, larger than the population of Benin, and even larger than the population of several other countries. So when we talk about this 18.2 million, we must understand the seriousness of the situation”, he said.

Njoku further stressed that the rule of law must be applied fairly and without discrimination, warning that selective implementation of laws undermines governance.

According to him, all laws work together and must be implemented collectively, noting that it is wrong to choose certain aspects of the law to follow while ignoring others.