The Federal Government has said it has drastically reduced the number of out-of-school children from 10.1million to 6.9 million in the last one year.
Minister of Education, Malam Adamu Adamu, made this known at the 2020 annual Ministerial press briefing, on Thursday, in Abuja.
Adamu also disclosed that the current administration of President Buhari has spent over 1.7 trillion of capital projects in universities, polytechnics and colleges of education in the last five years.
He also revealed that the Federal Government secured a World Bank credit facility in the sum of $611,000,000 and disbursed to state governments, which he said has encouraged massive enrolment of children in schools.
The Minister who said he was concerned on the assumption of office that Nigeria was ranked one of the countries in the world with the highest number of out-of-school children, regretted that not much was done during his first tenure to reduce the menace, saying this was, however, pursued vigorously on his reappointment by President Buhari.
He said: “On the 21st of May last year, I had an interaction with you in what I considered as my valedictory press briefing. I termed it so because the tenure of that Administration and by extension my tenure as the then Minister of Education had come to a logical end.
“I told you that my greatest regret then was our inability to tune down the number of out-of-school children to tolerable limits. Having been reappointed, we confront the task of reducing the number of out-of-school persons with renewed vigour,” he said.
