Out-of-School Crisis: Gombe Targets 220,000 Pupils Enrolment

The Gombe State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB) connected Monday convened a one-day stakeholders’ engagement gathering to motorboat the 2025 Enrolment Drive Campaign to code the rising fig of out-of-school children successful the state.

LEADERSHIP understands that the engagement was organised successful concern with the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

Speaking astatine the lawsuit successful Gombe, SUBEB Chairman, Mr. Babaji Babadidi said the workout was designed to sensitise stakeholders, parents, and communities connected the urgent request to instrumentality children to classrooms and support them there.

Babadidi explained that each of the state’s 11 section authorities areas has been fixed a people to enrol nary less than 10,000 children for the 2025/2026 world session, amounting to 110,000 caller enrolments statewide.

“Each Local Government Area (LGA) has been fixed a people to enrol nary less than 10,000 pupils for the 2025/2026 world year, making a full of 110,000 pupils crossed the state,” helium said.

Babadidi noted that the authorities authorities has already introduced measures specified arsenic improving schoolhouse infrastructure, grooming much teachers, and providing incentives similar escaped uniforms and textbooks.

However, the Commissioner for Education, Professor Aishatu Maigari called for much targets, proposing doubling the enrolment fig to 20,000 children per LGA, which would bring the wide people to 220,000.

According to Maigari, specified bold steps were indispensable to reverse the increasing situation and to align with planetary acquisition goals.

The commissioner added that addressing the situation besides means tackling barriers that support girls retired of school.

She argued for policies that guarantee safer schoolhouse environments, amended entree for agrarian communities, and enactment systems for children with disabilities.

The UNICEF Bauchi Field Office representative, Mohammed Kudi, who facilitated the meeting, emphasised that the situation indispensable beryllium treated arsenic a corporate emergency.

Kudi highlighted that much than 80 per cent of school-age children nationwide look challenges of accessing education, with poverty, taste practices, insecurity, and anemic infrastructure contributing to the problem.

“In Gombe State, the fig of out-of-school children has risen to 737,000, a shocking fig that should interest each stakeholder,” helium said, stressing that occurrence volition beryllium not conscionable connected enrolment drives, but connected ensuring retention and completion of basal education.

Participants astatine the meeting, including accepted rulers, spiritual leaders, educators, policymakers, and civilian nine groups, were unanimous that reversing the inclination requires a whole-of-society approach.

Speakers urged assemblage leaders to instrumentality ownership of enrolment campaigns, spiritual leaders to champion the origin from the pulpit, and parents to prioritise acquisition implicit kid labour oregon aboriginal marriage.

Data from UNICEF and the World Bank estimates that Nigeria is location to 13.5 cardinal out-of-school children, the highest fig globally.

Of this number, Gombe State accounts for implicit 787,000 children, representing astir 13 per cent of its population, the figure, officials said, has climbed sharply from an earlier estimation of 500,000.

Experts reason that the state’s semipermanent improvement hinges connected however galore children were presently kept successful school.

High illiteracy levels, unemployment, and cycles of poorness are already linked to the out-of-school crisis, with implications for information and economical stability.

The enrolment run volition tally up of the caller world year, with tract teams expected to spell from location to house, spiritual places to entreaty for parents to registry their children.

Also, vigor jingles, assemblage municipality halls, and marketplace campaigns were besides planned to dispersed awareness.