‘$10tr income at risk if children miss school for five months’

By Nduka Chiejina (Assistant Editor)

Children missing out on five months of education would collectively result in $10 trillion loss of future incomes.

Already COVID-19 has forced many children around the world to miss out on more than five months of education.

Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning Zainab Ahmed made this disclosure in Abuja over the weekend.

According to Ahmed: ”If trends continues, the worse-case scenario predicted is that half of all young people will not have skills necessary for entry level employment reducing country workforces and moving the countries back into poverty.”

Nigeria, she noted, is facing a socio-economic crisis born out of an education crisis.

According to her: “A history of poor education provision has been exacerbated by the on-going COVID-19 pandemic, and conflict across the country has led to over 13 million children being out of school- the highest rate of out of school children in the world”.

Ahmed lamented that “out of school children are especially vulnerable to exploitation and abuse and critically are ‘fundamentally ill-equipped’ to positively contribute productively to the economy”.

Ahmed stated: “Recent studies show only 20 percent of children in the North East of Nigeria who complete primary school can read.

“Education is critical to Nigeria’s future given that almost 44 percent of Nigeria’s population are between the ages of 0-14. The World Bank estimates that COVID-19 may have increased learning poverty from 53 percent to 63 percent in countries like Nigeria”.

The impact of out of school children in Nigeria is a structural impediment to Nigeria achieving the SDGs she said.

The Finance Minister noted that the combination of multi-dimensional attacks (in the North Eastern region) and the on-COVID-19 crisis means an urgent multi-dimensional approach is needed.