Illiteracy level still high in Nigeria, say experts
From Kelechi Okoronkwo and Nkechi Onyedika, Abuja
EXPERTS have rated Nigeria as having the highest number of illiterates in the world.

They have therefore warned that the country might neither meet its Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of halving illiteracy by the year 2015 nor its dream of joining the 20 world largest economies by the year 2020.

This was contained in papers presented yesterday in Abuja by the Senior Special Assistant to the President on MDGs, Hajiya Amina J. Ibrahim and the Director and Country Representative of the United Nations Education Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) Mr. Abhimanyu Singh, to the International Conference of Mass Literacy Campaign.

The duo, in their separate papers asked the Federal Government to step up efforts in making child and adult education affordable to the people if Nigeria was to meet up with its Education For All (EFA) by 2015, lamenting that the country was already at the centre-point of 2015.

Hajiya Ibrahim noted: " In view of our efforts in Nigeria to achieve sustainable development through our global and national aspirations, namely National Economic and Empowerment Development Strategies (NEEDS), MGDs, EFA, 7-Point Agenda and the vision 2020, the importance of mass literacy as it relates to this trends, current status and a way forward on the topic of adult literacy cannot be underestimated.

"In Nigeria, we have over 50 million illiterate men, women and children. The majority of whom are women. Not to see the potential of these large group of people with important human resources to our Gross Domestic Product 'GDP' will be a great injustice to our women and nation," she added.

Singh in his paper also said: " Of the 77 million out of school children in 2004, half are in the sub-Saharan Africa. It is a disconcerting fact that despite Nigeria's efforts to improve the reach and quality of education system, it still has 8 to10 million children of the school-going age who are neither in primary or secondary school".

A majority of them, Singh said were girls, and most of them, he added lived in the rural areas and were from poor families.

He further disclosed: "Today, there are about 60 million adults in Nigeria, 85 per cent of them under the age of 35 years can neither read nor write."

Meanwhile, inadequate funding, capacity gaps, dearth of reliable/desegregated data and lack of gender dimensions of various problems by duty bearers have been identified as challenges, which must be overcome if Nigeria is to meet up with the MDGs.

Minister of Women Affairs and Social Development, Mrs. Hajiya Saudatu Usman Bungudu, stated this yesterday in Abuja at the Children Variety Show to mark the nation's 47th independence anniversary.

She observed that while there were indications that Nigeria's chances of achieving the MDGs in some areas were good, available data as contained in the 2006 MDG report underscores the challenges that must be overcome if Nigeria was to attain the target by the designated date.

According to her, the Nigeria's 2006 report on the MDGs shows that efforts by different agencies of government are yielding some returns and that steady progress is being made towards achieving some of the goals like in the education sector, which has witnessed a significant increase in enrolment ratio. The story of child mortality is not encouraging as the report shows that infant mortality worsened between 2004 and 2005, while under-five improved marginally.

IN THE SAME VEIN[b][/b]


22.5 million Nigerians are blind, says expert
No fewer than 18 million Nigerians are blind due to cataract and 4.5 million others through glaucoma, a medical practitioner, Dr. Bob Egba has said. Speaking at a training programme organised by the Lagos State Ministry of Health for 114 eye care officers from the 20 local government areas of the state, Egba warned against drug abuse, which he said was one of the causes of eye defects. He also advised Nigerians to refrain from self-medication and treating eye infection through traditional methods such as applying breast milk, salt and water solution, urine, petrol and battery water. "All these are harmful to the eyes,'' he said. Egba counselled pregnant mothers to always attend antenatal and post-natal clinics to receive information on blindness prevention to safeguard themselves and their unborn babies. The state Director of Blindness Prevention Programme, Dr, Brigid Erikitola, said the training was to promote healthy eyes. She said it was also to enable the trainees create awareness on blindness and how to prevent eye related diseases within their communities. The trainees, Erikitola added, were expected to treat patients with minor cases and refer serious ones to appropriate hospitals in the state. Erikitola said cataract and glaucoma were the greatest causes of blindness in the world, and could be corrected surgically if detected on time. She attributed the increase in blindness to diabetes, family history, use of steroids and late reporting of symptoms. Erikitola advised people with eye problems to report at health centers where there are trained workers.

http://www.guardiannewsngr.com/breaking_news/article01/270907

Surprised?

Why?

After so many years of being ruled by illitrate dictators, I'm even surprised illitracy is not higher in Nigeria.

Though he was not a dictator, Shagari started the downward turn in Nigerian educational standards.

Then Buhari, then the man the put the final nail on the Nigerian educational sysytem: Babangida.

He took Nigerians back so many years- educationally, that it would probably take long to reverse this ugly trend.

Babangida not only stole the June 12 election, but many did not also realise that he also stole our nations future to compete, educationally.

is this a surprise to anyone? That's what you get when you fill the corridors of power witih cattle rearers whose idea of education is no better than a grade 2 teacher training certificate.

@poster
Rome was not built in a day

@davidylan
If we had all those percentages of illiteracy 2 b grade 2 teachers, we wont even b complaining, at least they can read n write. The problem is education has always been the least priority of successive governments from the word go.

tonia2000:

@poster
Rome was not built in a day

Yes i know Rome was not built in a day.
does that mean, it have to take Nigerians (100million) years or more to build one house. why it took other nations less than 20yrs to finished their Rome.

Nigeria should not be compared to some developed countries of the world.Nigeria,is a developing country,even with that, several youths and adults are now so conscious of the importance of Education and are into it.So i believe with time the society will be 100% literate.

statistics/discourse is questionable. How can you vouch for the veracity of this report?

tonia2000:

@poster
Rome was not built in a day

Why come up with that as an excuse?? Nigeria is 47 years old today, The illiteracy number was LOWER back when the country was younger. Come on!!! It did not get better, it actually GOT WORSE is the point here,


Kobojunkie

Part 1.

The fact is the present Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves has no real plan and is just posing and posturing. Because, go back to his state and ask for the realities.

The Governor of the apex bank, talking of Vision 2020, is an ignorant technocrat.
The fact is, majority of the gullible Nigerians are ready to be hoodwinked by anyone with an academic wig and assume that the person is intelligent. But one can be a professor by simple good retention and being smart.
You can cram and cheat your way to the peak of the Ivory Tower.

It is very annoying to be well read, but to lack common sense.

How can we waste millions of dollars on the Nigerian Economic Summit since 1994 to date and these so called educated fools continue to lie to the ignorant masses that Nigeria will be one of the largest economies in the world by 2020.
On which platforms?
Where are the indices?

I have been through all these falsehoods when millions were spent on seminars and workshops and pampering participants, facilitators, coordinators and directors in luxury hotels in Lagos, Calabar, Kaduna and Abuja. Then we fly back or ride in jeeps to our offices to publish reports without substance.
I thought they were really interested in the education and welfare of the masses. But they were only there for the fat fringe benefits and seven-digit salaries to boost their false egos.
Even the nomadic education project is neglected.

How can we learn from the mistakes of the past when we prefer to repeat them to maintain the false status-quo?
It is business as usual.
Life goes on.

Ex-governors Dr. Peter Odili and James Ibori misappropriated millions of dollars of the revenue allocations meant for the education sectors in Rivers state and Delta state.
Odili wasted N100 million monthly on the Niger Delta cultists and political thugs for rigging elections in favour of the notorious People's Democratic Party (PDP).

If you go on tour of our public schools, colleges and universities, you will weep for Nigeria.

How can our rulers and their parasites and apologists be so inhuman and wicked?

Yet their pastors, reverend fathers and Imams continue to hobnob with them to collect fat offerings and tithes from them.
Odili gave the Catholic Church in Rivers state, N100 million.
And they never asked him to address the realities in the state until the catastrophic plane crash and you saw how many pupils of Loyola Jesuit College of Abuja who were killed?

Jesuits in Europe - WelcomePlane Crash Kills Students from Loyola Jesuit College in Nigeria , messages from parishioners, and drawings from Jesuit primary school pupils.” ,
www.jesuits-europe.info/archive/news/news0501.htm - 94k - Cached - Similar pages - Note this

Part 2.

There is a very wealthy female top player in Abuja who has a graduate degree in legal studies. But she only hired a Nigerian lawyer to acquire the degree.

Most of our students take the projects of others and dub them and simply make some changes and submit them to the HoDs and the equally questionable HoDs pass them.

The educational system in Nigeria collapsed years ago. And to worsen the critical situation, the same rulers who neglected and destroyed our institutions, misappropriate our revenue allocations to build private universities where they charge exorbitant school fees. But these private universities do not have qualified teaching staff. Because, they simply employ anyone with a college diploma or university degree. Ignorant of the academic fact that having a diploma or degree is not enough to qualify you to teach. You must be qualified to teach, otherwise, you cannot teach. That is why Nigerian univesities are at the bottom of the global rankings for universities. And the most annoying is the ill-conceived competition among the religious organizations to set up their own denominational universities, but they lack the qualified academic and administrative staff to provide the high standard of education our children need to succeed in the fast developing world.

May the Almighty God punish all these unrepentant evil and wicked enemies of our progress in the corridors of power, in churches and mosques.

If I have my way, I will shoot all of them.
Because they have wasted millions of lives of the majority of the Nigerian population.

Our rulers and their hypocritical ministers of God and Imams cheat, deceive and exploit the poor masses to go to the useless public schools while they use our revenue allocations and offerings and tithes to send their own children to Ivy League schools in Nigeria, America, UK and other developed countries.
One of the most celebrated "Christian" ministers sent their children to the US and then turn around to pay lip service and eye service to their congregations.

God said He will cut off all lying lips and overthrow the wicked.
May God use me to cut off all these liars and overthrow the wicked rulers and their collaborators in government, clergy and the laity.

University of Ibadan was ranked 44th in Africa and none of the so called Christian and secular universities made the top 50 in Africa. But they will pay hundreds of thousands of naira to advertise lies on the pages of The Guardian, The Punch, Daily Sun and other newspapers that they are providing world class education.

God will punish all of them from Lagos to Okada to Otta to Adamawa to Abuja.

God forbid evil!
Tuffia!

@Orinkala
I feel your pain

@poster
Illitracy is so pervasive in naija that even among people contributing to this thread, you could pick up some confusion and disregard for statistical analysis.

Why would anybody question a UNESCO report without providing their own figure, or try to give other types of stupid excuses.

Yes, Rome was not built in a day, but we have not even agreed to build naija.
Until, the powers that be understand the need to build naija, then we can begin estimate time line.

If you deny the exisitence of high rate of illitracy in naija, then you're either limited in your knowledge base, short term politically motivated, or simply evil.

60 million illiterates, 22 miliion blind. So what % is productive?

38million is productive which is 62%


do the maths,

22 million Nigerians blind? That's not possible. That would imply that one in 6 Nigerians are blind. What?

Seun:

22 million Nigerians blind? That's not possible. That would imply that one in 6 Nigerians are blind. What?

True! i wonder how the came up with those figures- With a population of 140million, how can 22 million or 15.7% be blind. Thats a bogus claim i think!

Those statistics are FALSE. Every single one of them.

This is the rubbish that these foools have started. They come in with some dubious figures proclaiming the worst news in order to secure some sort of cooperation, funding, tax exemption etc etc.

For instance. ''There are 60 million adult Nigerians 85% of whom are illiterate.'' That's an outrageously false statistic.

The UN literacy figures place Nigeria at something like 68%, which completely flies in the face of those figures.

And to claim that 22 million Nigerians are blind, is just outrageous. It is a BIG FAT LIE.

22 million is a huge number. If 22 million Nigerians were blind, we would know,  because we would definitely be seeing blind men all over the place. That's 1 out of every 5 or 6 Nigerians!

Where are they all hiding?