Hit or miss? Fact-checking former lawmaker Dakuku Peterside's statistics advising Nigeria's new education minister
- Peterside was right that the majority of out-of-school children are in Nigeria's northern states. This is in line with the higher poverty rates in these regions.
- The former lawmaker was mostly correct about the number of applicants vying for limited places in tertiary education, and that education funding in Nigeria is well below an international benchmark of 15 to 20% of the national budget.
- Peterside was however wrong about Nigeria having the highest rate of out-of-school children in the world, the unemployment rate of graduates and the number of unqualified teachers in the country, among other incorrect claims.
Nigeria's new education minister, Dr Tunji Alausa, is still getting used to the job after being appointed on 24 October 2024 following a cabinet reshuffle.
But he won't be short of advice, including from former federal lawmaker, Dakuku Peterside, who wrote an article published in several newspapers, advising Alausa on how to fix the education sector.
Peterside headed the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency from 2016 to 2020. In the article titled Tunji Alausa and Nigeria's Grand Education Strategy, Peterside made many claims.
We fact-checked 10 of them.
Peterside attributed the 7% statistic to the World Bank, but did not specify where this had been published. We have asked him to provide evidence for all the claims we have fact-checked and will update this article with his response.
We checked the 2024 budget documents on the federal budget office's website and found Peterside's percentage incorrect.
The data shows that N1.59 trillion (about US$950 million at current rates) was allocated to the federal ministry of education and all its agencies and parastatals in 2024.
In addition, a statutory allocation of N700 billion was made to the Tertiary Education Trust Fund - an intervention agency set up to provide additional support to Nigeria's public tertiary institutions.
N74.44 billion was also earmarked in the form of service-wide votes, a contingency budget. In total, the education sector received N2.36 trillion out of the N28.78 trillion federal budget.
This works out to 8.2% of the budget, not 7% as Peterside claimed. - Allwell Okpi
Peterside compared Nigeria's education budget for 2024 with the "Unesco recommendation" of 15 to 20% of the national budget often -cited. Some claim that this is set at a higher 26%.
While there is evidence of a benchmark of 15 to 20% of total public expenditure on education, it is not a recommendation of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco) alone.
The benchmark was part of the Incheon Declaration for Education 2030 adopted at the World Education Forum 2015 in Incheon, South Korea in May 2015. The forum, organised by Unesco and several other UN agencies, was attended by more than 1,600 participants from 160 countries, including more than 120 ministers, heads and members of national delegations.
Paragraph 14 of the declaration calls for increased public funding for education "in accordance with country context and urge adherence to the international and regional benchmarks of allocating efficiently at least 4-6% of Gross Domestic Product and/or at least 15-20% of total public expenditure to education." - Allwell Okpi
For more than a decade, "over 10.5 million" has been used to quantify the number of out-of-school children in Nigeria, Africa's most populous country.
Africa Check first looked into this in 2017, when Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai claimed that the country had "the highest number of out-of-school girls in the world".
The Malala Fund said the source of the claim was the Nigeria page of Unicef.
We found that the figure of 10.5 million out-of-school children was derived from 2010 enrollment statistics from Nigeria's education ministry. Unesco revised this figure to 8.7 million in 2014, following new population data.
More recent figures
The agency has since published much higher figures. Its 2023 Nigeria Education Fact Sheet estimated that 12.9 million children between the ages of five and 14 were out of school. A further 4.9 million at the senior secondary level were also not in school.
This data was obtained from the 2023-24 Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey, which collects detailed data on the well-being of children and women every three to five years.
In a statement in May 2024, Unicef put the figure at 18.3 million. We have asked the agency for its best estimate and will update this claim with their response.
Unesco's 2024-2025 Global Education Monitoring Report estimated that 18.2 million Nigerian school-age children are out of school. This figure is made up of 8.58 million children out of school at primary level, 4.06 million at junior secondary level and 5.54 million at senior secondary level.
The report drew on national household surveys and censuses for its data.
The claim is correct in saying "over" 10.5 million, but the available evidence shows that the number is significantly higher. - Allwell Okpi
Peterside also claimed that Nigeria had the highest rate of out-of-school children in the world.
The rate of out-of-school children is the percentage of a country's school-age population not attending school.
The available data shows there are other countries with higher rates than Nigeria.
A 2019 factsheet by Unesco's Institute for Statistics shows that South Sudan (62%), Equatorial Guinea (55%), Eritrea (47%) and Mali (41%) have the highest out-of-school rates in the world.
Nigeria's out-of-school rate is 26% for children of primary school age, 25% at the junior secondary school level, and 34% at the senior secondary level, according to Unicef's 2023 Nigeria education factsheet. - Allwell Okpi
There is available data to support this claim. Unicef's 2023 Nigeria education factsheet showed that states in the northern region of Nigeria had higher rates of out-of-school children than those in the south. Seven states had rates above 50% at the primary level.
The states are Bauchi, Borno, Gombe, Kebbi, Sokoto, Yobe and Zamfara. All are in the north. This means that every second child of primary school age in these states is not in any form of education, the document says.
On the other hand, some states, such as Imo, have extremely low rates of out-of-school children, at 1%. Imo is in the south. Other southern states such as Ekiti, Lagos, Abia, Bayelsa, Cross River, Akwa Ibom, Ebonyi, Rivers and Ondo have rates of less than 5%.
'Nigeria's out-of-school burden comes mainly from the north'
Poverty and the large population in the north were to blame for the high number of out-of-school children, Adedayo Abdulkareem, a professor of educational management at the University of Ilorin in north-central Nigeria, told Africa Check.
Abdulkareem also said in the north, parents who could not afford to send their children to formal schools sent them to what were called Islamiyya.
Islamiyya typically refers to Islamic schools that focus on religious education for children and young people, especially in Arabic and Islamic studies.
"The children are then allowed to wander about to fend for themselves, and in some villages, they prefer allowing their boys to go to Islamic education," Abdulkareem said. - Allwell Okpi
Peterside advised the new minister to pursue specific initiatives for girls, claiming that they made up more than 60% of out-of-school children in Nigeria.
Unicef's 2023 factsheet on education in Nigeria estimated that 8.98 million children of primary school age were out of school. Of these, 4.47 million were female, or 49.8%.
At the junior secondary level, girls accounted for 2.01 million out of the 3.92 million out-of-school children, or 51.3%.
This shows that there is almost gender parity among out-of-school children in Nigeria.
"In some societies, they believe that when you educate a female, they will go to other families where they get married. So there will be no [return on investment]," Abdulkareem from the University of Ilorin told Africa Check.
"They [out-of-school children] are all over the place. Because of the economic situation, there is likely to be more. When you go around you see them hawking during school hours."
Abdulkareem believed that the National Commission for Almajiri and Out-of-School Children Education, established in May 2023 under the direct supervision of the education ministry, would help reduce the number of out-of-school children. - Allwell Okpi
Nigeria's tertiary education sector was drastically failing to meet demand, the former lawmaker said.
The Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination is the entrance examination into universities, polytechnics, colleges of education and other tertiary institutions in Nigeria. It is conducted by the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board.
In April 2024, the registrar of the board, Prof Ishaq Oloyede, announced that 1,989,668 candidates had registered for the 2024 examination, including those who registered at foreign centres. There were 1,595,779 candidates registered in 2023.
In 2022, when 1.8 million candidates registered, 557,626 candidates were admitted into Nigerian universities. In 2021, 312,666 students were admitted to universities.
The former minister of education also set the expected acceptance rate at 20% of the candidates. For example, 20% of the 2024 candidates is about 400,000 - less than 600,000. - Muktar Balogun
The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) calculates Nigeria's unemployment rate. A person is considered unemployed if they are not employed but are actively seeking work and are available to start work.
Anyone who worked for one hour in the seven days before the bureau's survey is considered to be employed.
A graduate is someone who has successfully completed a course of study at a school, college, or university and usually received a diploma, degree or other formal recognition.
The NBS does not collect data specifically on unemployment of graduates, but covers unemployment of those with post-secondary education, which would include graduates.
The unemployment rate for people with a post-secondary education was 9% in the first quarter of 2024.
We looked at other sources. The World Bank defines advanced education as a short-cycle tertiary education, a bachelor's degree or equivalent education level, a master's degree or equivalent education level, or a doctoral degree or equivalent education level.
The bank's latest data on the unemployment rate among Nigerians with advanced education is from 2022, and it says 7% of people in this category were unemployed. This seems in line with Peterside's definition.
'Graduate unemployment rising amid economic crisis'
While the available data does not support the claim, Gafar Ijaiya, a professor of economics at the University of Ilorin in north-central Nigeria, told Africa Check that the latest unemployment figures released by the NBS do not reflect reality.
Ijaiya said many graduates were looking for jobs, and the problem of graduate unemployment started a long time ago. "In the past, you would not need a university degree to prosper," he said, citing his experience. That was the case because jobs were available, he said.
"In this kind of economy, graduate unemployment will continue to rise," he said. The country's economy is struggling.
Ijaiya encouraged graduates to get involved in any job for a start, noting that universities were now including entrepreneurship in the curriculum to combat unemployment. - Muktar Balogun
Nigeria defines qualified teachers as those who "hold the minimum teaching qualification of the Nigeria Certificate in Education (NCE) or a postgraduate diploma or certificate in addition to a university degree or equivalent qualification".
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Africa Check accessed statistics from the Federal Ministry of Education and the Nigeria Education Management Information System (Nemis).
The 2022 data shows that Peterside was way off the mark.
There were then 915,593 primary teachers, of whom 662,260 were qualified. This brought the proportion of qualified primary teachers to 72.34%.
There were 416,291 teachers at the junior secondary school level, and 309,747 were qualified, giving a percentage of 74.37%.
The lowest percentage of qualified teachers was at the senior secondary level (64.24%). There were 523,120 teachers and 336,549 qualified teachers.
Overall, the percentage of qualified teachers in both private and public schools in Nigeria is 70.54%.
In Abdulkareem's view, the percentage of qualified teachers could be higher if the country's colleges of education had adequate funding. - Muktar Balogun
The Universal Basic Education Commission (Ubec) is an organisation established by the federal government to ensure that every Nigerian child has access to basic education.
The commission has 2022 data on schools with libraries, covering primary and junior secondary schools. In its data, Ubec classified junior secondary schools with libraries as usable or not.
According to the data, 19,364 libraries were usable, and 1,550 were unusable, making a total of 20,914 libraries. The number of schools in the report was 38,217, bringing the percentage of junior secondary schools with functional libraries to 50.67%.
The data, however, excludes senior secondary school, which is outside of the commission's scope. However, the norm is for both junior and senior secondary schools to be together and for the school to have one library.
This means that most of the libraries counted for the junior secondary school would also be counted for the senior secondary school.
So, we rate the claim as incorrect.
'School library coverage remains low in Nigeria'
It was unfortunate that library coverage in primary and junior secondary schools in Nigeria remained low, Okee Okoro, a professor who teaches library and information science at Imo State University in south-east Nigeria, told Africa Check.
"We are way into the 21st century and behaving as if we are still in the 18th century. Everyone knows libraries are important, but unfortunately, many people, including governments and organisations, do not behave that way.
"Even in universities, libraries don't buy newspapers, which means that newspapers that could be research material are lost," he said.
Okoro, who was a librarian at the university for 10 years, said the library did not buy a single newspaper during his time there.
He noted the importance of the phrase "catch them young" but said the Nigerian government had not done enough over the years to do so.
"If you have libraries and make students go through the tutelage of how to use, read and consult books, they will grow into better students. - Muktar Balogun
