Nigeria could enrol 2.4 million of its children into school, findings from UNESCO show, as the country continues to lag behind in education with a Nigerian child among every five out-of-school children in the world.
The findings from UNESCO’s Education for All Global Monitoring Report show that Nigeria could raise nearly half a billion dollars per year for education if 20 percent of its oil revenue was invested in the sector.
The amount raised would be almost three times the amount Nigeria currently receives in aid to education, the report found out. The paper, based on 17 developing countries, shows they could finance access to primary school for 86 percent of their out-of-school children or 42 percent of their out of school adolescents, if they managed their revenues from natural resources better.
The policy paper reveals that an extra $5 billion in funding for education could be raised from these 17 countries per year if 30 percent of income from their minerals and 75 percent from their oil and gas was converted into public revenue and 20 percent of this sum invested in education. This is equivalent to two and a half times the amount that these countries received in aid to education in 2010. It would fill a fifth of the $26 billion financing gap needed to give all children a good quality basic education.
“National commitment to education has to be supported by adequate resources. The 17 countries covered in this study face tremendous educational challenges that can be met only through additional financing to expand their systems,” said Irina Bokova, Director-General of UNESO.
“The study finds that revenue from natural resources could enable these countries to reach over 11 million out-of-school children. This is an investment in future generations that should be seized now.”
The EFA Global Monitoring Report’s paper, ‘Turning the resource curse into a blessing for education’, gives examples of the revenue that natural resources could bring to education.
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