… UNESCO representative to Nigeria, Prof. Da Rosa pledged UNESCO’s unwavering support for Nigeria’s educational
Precious Nwonu, Enugu
The Federal Government has successfully returned more than one million out-of-school children to classrooms over the last 20 months as part of its ongoing strategies to tackle Nigeria’s educational crisis, the Minister of Education, Dr. Tunji Alausa, has revealed.
The Minister also disclosed that nearly 6.7 million girls have benefited from various government interventions specifically designed to expand access to learning and keep children enrolled in schools.
Dr. Alausa shared these details in Abuja during a courtesy visit from the newly appointed United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) Country Representative to Nigeria, Prof. Isaiah Barreto Da Rosa.
He noted that these metrics reflect the government’s relentless drive to overhaul the education sector by widening access, lifting learning outcomes, and removing the chronic barriers keeping millions of Nigerian children out of the formal school system.
However, the Minister cautioned against tilting intervention frameworks heavily toward a single gender, explaining that while progress in girl-child education must be aggressively sustained, rising attention must also be paid to boys who face a high risk of dropping out or being entirely excluded from formal education.
“We must sustain the gains we have made with the girl-child, but we also need to pay attention to the boy-child,” Dr. Alausa stated.
He maintained that Nigeria’s human capital development goals can only be fully realised when every child, regardless of gender or socio-economic background, has access to quality schooling and opportunities to acquire relevant skills.
He identified six core priority pillars driving the ministry’s current structural reforms: Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET); Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM); the reintegration of out-of-school children; data and digitalisation; girl-child education; and rigorous quality assurance.
The Minister added that the government is heavily investing in practical skills development, modern technology, and comprehensive teacher training to produce graduates who can successfully compete in a rapidly transforming economy.
He explained that enhanced, high-fidelity education data is increasingly being utilized to map out areas of high need, target state interventions, and accurately measure long-term impacts, rather than relying on estimates that could severely distort policy planning.
On the critical front of teacher development, Dr. Alausa welcomed UNESCO’s technical support for the ministry’s Accelerated Teacher Professional Programme (ATPP), which targets the upskilling of one million in-service teachers.
He also formally acknowledged the agency’s assistance in TVET assessment, digital transformation, education for peace, and media and information literacy.
The Minister actively called for a deeper operational alliance with UNESCO, pushing the body to align its external interventions directly with the Federal Government’s education reform blueprint to completely avoid a duplication of efforts and guarantee measurable results.
“We want partnerships that complement what Nigeria is already doing and help us deliver faster and better results,” the Minister emphasized.
Dr. Alausa assured the visiting delegation that the government will continue to combine its domestic resources with strategic international partnerships to expand schooling access, raise education quality, and equip young Nigerians with the exact skills required for national development.
Earlier in the meeting, Prof. Da Rosa pledged UNESCO’s unwavering support for Nigeria’s educational transformation agenda, describing the organization as a dedicated technical partner fully prepared to deploy its global expertise to areas where the country requires urgent help. He recalled UNESCO’s deep, long-standing engagement with Nigeria dating back to the 1960s, spanning the critical sectors of education, science, culture, communication, and information.
Prof. Da Rosa highly commended the Ministry of Education’s progress in digitising education data, stressing that reliable, verified statistics are entirely indispensable to effective planning, policy formulation, and successful execution. He reaffirmed that UNESCO stands ready to deepen its collaboration with Nigeria in TVET, teacher development, and specialised programmes aimed at returning out-of-school children to the classroom.
According to the Country Representative, UNESCO-supported programmes have already trained more than 28,000 teachers across various states and successfully reached over 1.7 million students.
Prof. Da Rosa concluded by noting that the organization’s highly specialized institutes remain fully available to provide any further technical expertise necessary to back Nigeria’s education reforms.
