Abike Dabiri-Erewa, head of the Nigerians in Diaspora Commission (NIDCOM), has urged Nigerians living abroad to invest in delivering quality education to out-of-school children in Nigeria.
This, she said, will go a long way towards complementing the government’s efforts to reform the education sector.
Dabiri-Erewa stated this during the IA Foundation Annual Charity Event 2024 Lagos, which was recently hosted at the Lagos Civic Centre and tagged, Panacea to a Menace.
She added the event’s theme is appropriate, and the time is particularly auspicious, as all hands must be on deck to provide solutions to the country’s numerous issues.
She hailed the IA Foundation’s work as admirable, emphasising the need of supporting it in addition to government efforts to address the issue and ensure that out-of-school children have access to quality education.
Speaking at the occasion, Femi Falana, a human rights activist, stated that the presence of 20.2 million out-of-school children in Nigeria is unacceptable, calling for increased investment and the government’s commitment to re-enroll these children.
He said that the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) disclosed to “our utter embarrassment as a nation that the country has not less than 20.2 million out-of-school children, the highest in the world. For me, it is a sad development in regard to our enormous resources.”
He stated that the goal before everyone is to increase efforts to remove those children off the streets and enrol them in schools.
Mrs. Ibironke Adeagbo, CEO of the IA Foundation, previously urged donations, stating that she believes children are the country’s future.
She also argued that sending them back to school would alleviate poverty, lessen insecurity, and result in improved skills that could be used to fuel the economy.
According to her, the Foundation’s ideology is to provide opportunities for everybody, particularly those in disadvantaged circumstances, to benefit from education’s potential transformative power.