This week Tuesday, May 27, 2025 is Children’s Day in Nigeria. While the date for celebrating Children’s Day varies from one country to another, the day is marked to, among several other reasons, raise awareness about the rights of children and to help us appreciate the fact that they are the future of our societies. Although it isn’t a public holiday in Nigeria, school children are, in many cases, given a day off school to celebrate the Day with events that usually include quiz competitions, match past, children’s party, etc. In urban cities, radio and television programmes are organised for children to broadcast news and anchor live programmes. The theme for the 2025 Children’s Day in Nigeria is “Tapping the Untapped Natural Treasure”. This theme highlights the immense yet often ignored potentials of the Nigerian child.
But, is there anything for today’s Nigerian child to celebrate particularly in northern states where school-age children in their tens of millions roam the streets in droves with plastic bowls in their hands; chanting Islamic songs for listening sympathizers to give them food or money to buy food? A government that allows a huge population of its children to remain out of formal school education is a government mortgaging its country’s future. This is even as the same government said that the 9-year basic education is free and compulsory. Similarly, a society that allows parents to irresponsibly derelict parental responsibilities for whatever reason, religious or economic, is a society ruining its own future.
As a consequence of his prolonged plight of huge deprivations, the average Nigerian child is naturally born vulnerable as both the home and the school have separately failed to guarantee his rights and basic needs including the right to quality education, care and love. The challenges confronting the Nigerian child appear more disturbing when the inadequacies from which he suffers and their cumulative impacts on his intellectual and moral upbringing are put into context.
If a huge number of Nigerian children who are out of the formal school system would miss out of knowledge and character training required to make them useful to the Nigerian society; and if many of those out-of-school children are street hawkers, child -labourers, and scavengers (otherwise called ‘Baban-Bola’ in Hausa), then the future of Nigeria is better imagined. One would not wish to be around when the young vagabonds and scavengers of today would, as tomorrow’s leaders, be in charge of the affairs of our country.
The generation of children I belonged to felt inspired by the public and private lives of many public officers particularly during the country’s First and Second Republics. As young boys and girls, we grew up to admire the sense of responsibility, commitment, honesty, and sacrifices of some select political leaders, administrators, and technocrats. As I sat to draft this column, I asked myself a question that could only be answered by God, the Omniscient. Given the manner in which the country has downplayed education especially at the basic level in addition to the overall degeneration of societal values, my mind kept asking itself whether it’s possible to have a set of credible Nigerians as we hitherto had up to the end of the second decade of Nigeria’s post-colonial history.
Some names still ring bell in the ears of Nigerians who knew the worth of such names. A lot of awe goes with such names whenever and wherever they are mentioned. I feel some sense of inspiration each time I hear of names such as Sir Ahmadu Bello, Alhaji Tafawa Balewa, Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Malam Aminu Kano, Alhaji Hassan Lemu, Alhaji Muhammadu Jega, Alhaji Sulaiman Liman Agaie, Chief Sunday Awoniyi, and Sheikh Ahmed Lemu. Much later came other names like those of Professor Tam David West, General Ishola Williams, Engr Hamman Tukur, and Prof. Olukoye Ransome-Kuti (who gave up smoking when he became Nigeria’s minister of health). From the military, we’ve had such ‘big’ names as General Tunde Idiagbon, General Mamman Kontagora, General Garba Ali Muhammad, Colonel Ahmed Daku. The list of such trustworthy Nigerians from different parts of the country is too long to be captured here.
Of course, they were products of schools where quality education was the watchword. Most of their teachers had only Teachers Grade II or III certificate, their salaries, allowances and other entitlements were promptly paid without having to go on a warning or total strike. Government cared for their welfare and gave them all the teaching materials required to make them function efficiently. The pupils never sat on bare floors or in a classroom with a blown roof. For free, pupils and students were provided all the resources needed for effective learning including textbooks, notebooks, writing and drawing materials such as pen including the ink, coloured pencils, and markers; and sporting equipment. Up to the end of my primary education in 1974 through my graduation from teachers’ training college in 1979, my father never bought any learning material for me except footwear. Education was practically free at that period; first under the northern regional government, and later under the twelve states in the north. Yet, government never made any noise or policy propaganda about it.
Now, there are more teachers in the system that have higher teaching qualifications but their technical output is next to nothing especially in public schools. Many states claim to ‘expend’ more resources on basic education; yet, its products remain abysmally substandard. Books and other library supplies are obsolete. Laboratories and workshops are ill-equipped. The physical structures in most public schools are dilapidated. Teachers’ welfare is zero. For example, teachers under the payroll of the FCT Area Councils have gone on strike for more than three times in 2025 alone. How do you expect this sort of education system to produce the best of credible Nigerians needed to lead and manage the country’s resources prudently? Certainly, it’s not this kind of system that produced the likes of Audu Bako, Shehu Usman Aliyu Shagari, and Yusuf Maitama Sule (late Dan Masanin Kano).
If we fail to guarantee the topmost right of the Nigerian child which is quality education, we are likely going to get every other thing wrong. If we desire to tap from the untapped natural treasure (the Nigerian child), we must first stop wasting school-age children. May Allah guide our leaders to go beyond revising the county’s 9-year basic education curriculum by providing the most conducive environment and orientation for teaching and learning to take place, amin.
