According to the group’s Executive Director, Gbenga Rufai, the brief highlights the challenges before the educational system and timely solutions to combat the problems.
Citing UNICEF’s data on the rate of out of school children, he said approximately 10.5 million children aged 5-14 years in Nigeria were not in school, adding that the figure was not only alarming, but a reality fast becoming a “global menace as a result of the pandemic.” “Unfortunately since March 2020, schools have shut down across the country and due to lack of infrastructure for online learning, education has for the most part ground to a halt. Though privately-run schools have made haphazard attempts to use digital tools to keep their students engaged, these attempts according to the authors are however not fully approved by Ministries of Education and thus not guided by any uniform strategy.