10m Nigerian children shut out of early education — UBEC

…70% of 10-year-olds unable to read simple text
…States risk losing ECCDE funding over October 5 deadline

By Joseph Erunke, Abuja

About 10 million Nigerian children are currently shut out of early childhood care, development and education, ECCDE, the Universal Basic Education Commission, UBEC, has disclosed, warning that the gap is deepening the country’s learning crisis.

The commission said only 35.6 per cent of Nigerian children aged between 36 and 59 months currently attend any form of early childhood education, leaving millions without the foundation needed for successful learning later in life.

Executive Secretary of UBEC, Dr Aisha Garba, who disclosed this in Abuja, also revealed that about 70 per cent of Nigerian 10-year-olds cannot read and understand a simple text.

Garba, represented by UBEC Deputy Executive Secretary (Technical), Rasaq Olajuwon Akinyemi, spoke at a three-day capacity-building workshop for state actors on the utilisation of the ECCDE Minimum Standards, Implementation Guidelines and UNICEF Parental and Community Engagement documents.

She said the country’s poor learning outcomes could not be addressed effectively without confronting weaknesses in early childhood development.

According to her, the 2021 Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey showed that about 46 per cent of children aged 24 to 59 months were developmentally off track, underscoring the scale of the challenge facing Nigeria’s youngest population.

“Only 35.6 per cent of Nigerian children aged 36 to 59 months attend any form of early childhood education. That leaves roughly 10 million of our youngest children outside ECCDE altogether,” she said.

Garba said the consequences of failing to give children a strong foundation become increasingly evident as they advance through the school system.

She disclosed that only about 2.4 million of the 5.9 million children who enter primary school annually remain in the education system by the end of junior secondary school.

The UBEC boss therefore called for early childhood development to be treated as a national priority cutting across education, health, nutrition, water and sanitation, social welfare and other sectors.

“There is no cheaper place in the education system to buy results,” she said, citing Nobel Laureate James Heckman’s estimate of a 13 per cent annual return per child on quality birth-to-five programmes.

Garba warned state governments that ECCDE programmes must be captured in their State Matching Grant Action Plans to qualify for funding and implementation support.

“I must be blunt: what is not in the Action Plan will not be funded, will not be procured and will not be monitored,” she said.

She disclosed that UBEC had extended the deadline for states to submit their ECCDE Action Plans for the next intervention year from September 30 to October 5, 2026.

The extension, she stressed, was not an opportunity for states to delay action.

“I expect every State to leave Abuja with a costed, integrated and inclusive draft plan, to present it to your Executive Chairman on your return, and to submit the final plan through the digital planning template within the extended period.

“Plans received after that date will not be considered for this intervention year,” she warned.

Garba also directed states to design ECCDE interventions around the needs of the whole child, urging collaboration among education authorities, health agencies, nutrition stakeholders, water and sanitation institutions, women affairs and social welfare departments, as well as Local Government Education Authorities.

The UBEC chief further raised concern over the nutritional condition of Nigerian children, citing the 2023–24 Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey, which put the national stunting rate among under-five children at 40 per cent.

She said the situation varied sharply across states, from 12 per cent in Rivers State to 65 per cent in Katsina State.

She consequently urged states to ensure that ECCDE centres meet essential standards for child safety, supervision, safeguarding, food and water safety, structural safety and emergency exits.

Garba also called for deliberate measures to ensure that children with disabilities and those in hard-to-reach, nomadic, riverine and conflict-affected communities are not excluded from early childhood programmes.

She urged stronger engagement with parents, caregivers, School-Based Management Committees, traditional institutions and religious bodies, noting that communities could provide alternative delivery platforms for children who could not easily access conventional classrooms.

Earlier, Acting Director, Department of Special Programmes and Early Childhood, UBEC, Dr Chijioke J. Onwuzurike, disclosed that Nigeria currently has more than 45 early childhood development delivery channels spread across the health, nutrition, education, agriculture and social protection sectors.

She, however, said the multiplicity of platforms had created fragmentation, with some programmes duplicating one another, failing to share data and delivering inconsistent services across communities.

Onwuzurike said UBEC expected states, within the next 18 months, to map and streamline their existing early childhood development platforms, establish functional multisectoral coordination mechanisms and strengthen frontline workers’ capacity for screening and follow-up.

“School readiness is not something that begins at the primary school gate; by the time a child reaches that gate, it is largely decided,” she said.

She urged states to treat the National ECCDE Minimum Standard and Implementation Guidelines as practical working tools rather than documents to be filed away.

Also speaking, UNICEF Nigeria Education Specialist, Yetunde Oluwatosin, described early childhood development as critical to tackling Nigeria’s out-of-school challenge.

She likened early childhood development to the foundation of a building, saying that getting the foundation right would improve children’s chances of entering school at the appropriate age, remaining in school and progressing through the education system.

“So it’s really important for us to get the foundation right, because it helps the child to continue learning,” she said.

Oluwatosin said UNICEF had supported the Federal Government in developing the ECCD policy, minimum standards and curriculum, with the documents benchmarked against global standards.

The three-day workshop, organised by UBEC’s Department of Special Programmes and Early Childhood in collaboration with UNICEF, brought together state and other education actors, including SUBEB directors of special programmes, ECCDE desk officers and UBEC officials.

The workshop is aimed at strengthening state capacity for ECCDE planning, financing, implementation, monitoring, data management and community engagement, while helping participating states develop or strengthen state-specific ECCDE and early childhood development work plans.