You cannot keep children in school if you cannot keep them safe
By Precious Ebere-Chinonso Obi
Nigeria’s education conversation often begins with enrollment. How many children are in school? How many classrooms have been built? How many teachers have been recruited? These are important questions, but they leave out another question that is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore: can children safely remain in school long enough to learn?
The latest picture is troubling. The Guardian’s review of the state of education in Nigeria points to the scale of the access challenge, including UNICEF’s estimate that about 10.5 million Nigerian children aged five to 14 are out of school. UNICEF also reports that only about 61 per cent of children aged six to 11 regularly attend primary school. In the North-East, the challenge becomes even more complex, with 2.8 million children in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa reportedly in need of education-in-emergencies support in 2026.
Behind these figures are children whose education is being disrupted by circumstances far beyond the classroom. Insecurity can close schools, displace families and make the journey to school dangerous. Poverty can make attendance difficult when families must choose between sending a child to school and meeting immediate household needs. For girls, the barriers can become even more complicated when displacement, household responsibilities, early marriage, pregnancy or caregiving enter the picture.
This means Nigeria cannot treat school access as an education ministry problem alone. A child who has no safe route to school, whose family has been displaced, or whose household cannot afford the indirect costs of attendance is facing an education barrier that cannot be solved simply by building another classroom.
The answer requires a much more deliberate system for identifying children who are being left behind and understanding why. We need to know which children are out of school, where they are, how long they have been out, what pushed them out and what support would realistically bring them back. We also need to know what happens after they return. Re-enrolment without retention is only a partial success.
This is particularly important for girls at risk of permanent exclusion from education. A girl who returns to school after pregnancy or marriage may still face financial pressure, stigma, childcare responsibilities, inadequate learning materials or a school environment that is not prepared to support her circumstances. If the system records only enrollment, these barriers remain invisible.
Technology can help, but the solution is not simply putting more technology into schools. What Nigeria needs is education intelligence that allows governments and communities to identify risks early and respond before a child disappears from the system. Attendance patterns, transition points, household circumstances and other relevant indicators can help schools and education authorities identify children who need intervention. The same system should allow governments to see whether that intervention worked.
This is where early warning and tracking approaches can become useful. If a child is identified as being at risk of dropping out, the objective should be to connect that child to the right support and continue tracking her progress afterwards. The question should move from “How many children did we enrol?” to “How many children did we prevent from being lost?”
There is also a financing implication. Education budgets must recognise that keeping a child in school may require more than tuition or infrastructure. In some communities, it may require transportation support, school feeding, learning materials, social protection, psychosocial support or targeted assistance for vulnerable families. These interventions should be based on evidence about why children are absent rather than assumptions about what communities need.
Nigeria has a young population that could become one of its greatest economic assets. But demographic advantage only becomes an advantage when children have a realistic pathway from childhood to learning, skills and productive adulthood.
The starting point is therefore simple: every child who is absent from school should be visible to the education system, and every major reason for that absence should trigger an appropriate response. Until we can do that, the number of classrooms or enrollment campaigns will tell only part of Nigeria’s education story.
A child cannot learn in a system that cannot find them. And a child cannot remain in school when the conditions around that school make staying unsafe or impossible.
- Precious Ebere-Chinonso Obi, CEO of Do Take Action, is an independent consultant on edtech, climate change, public policy, and women’s procurement empowerment
