TRIBUNE

Nigeria needs N51.8bn on education annually – Modibbo

Clement Idoko, Abuja – 15.08.2008

THE Executive Secretary of the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), Dr. Ahmed Modibbo, on Thursday said Nigeria needed to invest about N51.8 billion annually to revamp the primary and secondary education in the country.

He said currently, over 10 million school-age children in the country were out of school because of lack of access to education, despite the Federal Government’s efforts to remedy the situation through implementation of the Universal Basic Education (UBE).

Modibbo said this while delivering a paper entitled “Access to Quality Education: A necessary tool for achieving MDGs 2, NEEDS 2 and the 7-point agenda” presented at a workshop on school enrolment advanced initiative in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), organised by NEPAD-Nigeria, in collaboration with the Federal Ministry of Education, Abuja.

He said of the 10 million children out of school, 6.2 million are girls, a situation he described as worrisome and a threat to attainment of MDGs by 2015.