By Wole Adedeji, Ilorin
A Kwara State philantropist and a one time governorship aspirant has described as sad, a UNICEF report that a total number of 13.2 million children in Nigeria are out of school and the situation gets worsened every day.
The politician-turn-philantropist, Engr. Adebayo Babalola, said that the figure, according to the UNICEF, represents 7 per cent of the country’s population, while 70 per cent of the figure is from the Northern part of Nigeria, “where the Almajiri system is widely practised.”
Babalola was speaking at the flag off of the 6th edition of an annual scholarship award ceremony often put up by his foundation, Bayo and Bunmi Foundation, where he gave out the sum of N10 million to secondary and tertiary institution students in Kwara State.
The scholarship, he said, would cater for 549 students, made up of 95 final year Junior Secondary Schools’ pupils; 64 final year students of Senior Secondary Schools; 169 students of tertiary institutions and 221 others, who are in need.
He added that though the outbreak of COVID-19 made the 2020 edition of the scholarship scheme impossible, his foundation had in the past, given out a total sum of N19.4 million, comprising of N17 million directly to the beneficiaries and N2.4 million to cater for logistics.
Babalola disclosed that because of the the inability to give out scholarship 2020, due to COVID-19, he decided to jerk up the disbursement this year to make the total sum of N29.4 million.
Still speaking on the disturbing number of out-of-school children in Nigeria and the apparent indifference to it by governments at all levels, Babalola asserted that certainly, the growing diverse vices among youths in the country today, could not be divorced from the inadequate concerns given to the desired education of Nigerian children.
He said, “Education is instrumental to the emergence of outstanding professionals, business tycoons, local government, state, national and world leaders.
“Without education, therefore, the society, alas the world at large, will not only stagnate, but retrogress. Crimes, poverty, sickness, insecurity and total darkness will overwhelm the whole world.”
The non-governmental organization, NGO, owner cited Nigerian Vice President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo, who he said aptly once captured the importance of education when he (Osinbajo) posited that “when a country is underdeveloped, and it is wiped out by disease and infant mortality; it is because most of the minds in that country lack education.”
Babalola continued, “The only way to develop the human mind is education; and the only way by which man can live better than any other creature, and live up to his God-given responsibility, is to develop his community, provide for that community, and providing for the children simply means to provide them education.”
