Lagos Govt calls for birth control law to address out-of-school children
The Lagos State Government has called for the enactment of a birth control law to address the menace of out-of-school children in Nigeria.
Commissioner for Basic and Secondary Education, Mr Jamiu Alli-Balogun, made the call at a two-day regional stakeholders meeting in Ibadan.
Alli-Balogun commended UNICEF for the initiative and said that the issue of out-of-school children was a global issue that needed to be tackled from the root.
He suggested that the federal government should enact a law establishing an average family size in Nigeria to address the issue.
The Commissioner also highlighted measures deployed by the Lagos State Government to curb the menace, including Project O, which aims to combat poverty and empower parents to send their children to school.
He also advised that the federal government’s school feeding programme be activated to attract more children to school.
UNICEF Education Specialist, Azuka Mentiki, said that the agency would continue to create an enabling environment to strengthen states and ensure that students have access to quality education.
The meeting was attended by commissioners for education, religious leaders, and civil societies from six southwest states.
He advised that the school feeding programme of the federal government for the basic primary schools be activated to attract more children to school and make the environment more conducive.
“This factor is readily available; the federal government has done it in the past, and it was effective.
“If the federal government can probably create a budgetary line for it in our education system down to the state level, it will be a welcome fortune for states in addressing out-of-school children.
“The more we harness more resources, the more we take care of the children and improve our educational governance in Nigeria,” he said.
Earlier, UNICEF Education Specialist, Azuka Mentiki, said that the agency would continue to create an enabling environment to strengthen the states so that students have access to quality education.
Also, officer-in-charge, UNICEF Lagos office, Mr Muhammad Okorie, said that quality education was a right of every child.
Okorie said that stakeholders in the education sector must agree on a workable model to minimise the menace of out-of-school children in the country.
“This meeting creates an enabling environment for southwest states to design a model that will work as it concerns child’s retention, transition, and completion. “And this is the mandate of UNICEF,” he said.
In his remarks, Director, Social Mobilisation, Lagos State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB), Mr Hamzat Omolaja, described the meeting as laudable.
Omolaja said that recommendations from the meeting would be beneficial to stakeholders.
“UNICEF has been making efforts towards ensuring that every child has access to education. In Lagos, we have a slogan in SUBEB called ‘Leave No Child Behind’.
“The ‘leave no child behind’ is to ensure that every child that is of school age is enrolled in the system.
“And that is why, since 2020, we have been working on ‘Project 0’ which means zero tolerance for out-of-school children,” he said.
