Nigeria Has 35m Illiterate Adults – Minister

Nigeria's adult illiterates have increased from
25 million in 1997 to 35 million in 2013,
according to Minister of State for Education,
Chief Nyesom Wike.
Speaking, yesterday, at a ministerial briefing to
commemorate the 2013 International Literacy
Day themed "Literacy for 21st century", Wike
said Nigeria had over 10.5 million children out
of school which, according to him, is
embarrassing to the nation.
"Indeed, the embarrassing literacy statistics on
Nigeria, justifies the need for all stakeholders
to redouble their efforts.
"The current Education for All, EFA, Global
Monitoring report ranks Nigeria as one of the
countries with the highest level of illiteracy.
"The report on Nigeria stated that the number
of illiterate adults has increased by 10 million
over the past two decades, to reach 35 million.
"Besides, Nigeria has the highest number of
out of school children put at 10.5 million and
based on this premise that the Ministry of
Education has intensified effort in the task of
eradicating illiteracy. The non-formal
education sector, implementation of
programmes for revitalising adult and youth
literacy have begun," Wike said.
The Minister also tasked state and local
governments to redouble efforts at
eradicating illiteracy in the country, noting
that the eradication of illiteracy in the country
should not be left in the hands of the federal,
state and local governments alone.
"It is important to note that the bulk of the
task of eradicating illiteracy in most of the E-9
countries like India, China, Brazil and
Indonesia among others is borne by non-
governmental organisation.
"The era of leaving such sensitive issues of our
national life entirely in the hands of
government is gone. This is the time to
reiterate the importance of literacy to the
individuals and our national life. The
importance of literacy speaks for itself.
He identified literacy as one of the key
solutions to some of the nation's challenges,
adding that "literacy as we all know is one of
the solutions to our national challenges of
insecurity, poverty, poor health condition,
among others."
"This requires commitment and funding, and
when you see lot of state governments
emphasising most of their budget on issues
that cannot help in reducing the level of
illiteracy, it means that at the end of the day,
instead of literacy reducing, it will be
increasing, building roads and bridges, are
important but if you scale your priorities you
will know that education is very, very
important."
"So the only way we can solve this problem is
to take formal and informal education as an
emergency, it is very, very necessary and
anything short of that, we will not be able to
achieve any meaningful result but
unfortunately, it is something that is within
the ambit of state and local government, it is
not the responsibility of federal government
but the federal will surely do her part".
"If we allow the level of illiteracy to continue to
increase, as it increases, it poses security
problems, and when this happens, you cannot
govern, and when you cannot govern, the
investors cannot come, and when the
investors cannot come, there will be no
employment," Wike said.