Poverty keeps countless Nigerian children out of school

DW (English)

One in three children in Nigeria don't go to school. Many work to help support their families. The country has become the global epicenter of children out of school. As the school year begins, DW's Fanny Facsar reports on the situation in Lagos.

Transcript

00:00You can see children like these all across Lagos.

00:04Some are barely big enough to see through the car windows.

00:09They should be at school, but they are in the streets doing what they can to earn some small change.

00:16Buy us 6 granades.

00:19Will do, calm down.

00:20How much is this one? 200?

00:22No, sir. Granades are so expensive.

00:25Every little bag of nuts Ezekiel sells helps his mother with school costs.

00:31But if the family can't collect enough, he and his brothers won't be able to go.

00:36Thank you, sir.

00:38Sometimes I work from night to night, but people don't have money to buy granades.

00:43My father has no work, so I'm helping my mom to sell so that she can pay our school fees and everything.

00:50It's the start of the new school year.

00:53Billboards advertise uniforms and equipment, but such things are out of reach for many children across Nigeria.

01:01It's the worst country in the world for out-of-school rates.

01:05Millions of broken promises.

01:08Now, Nigerian law says all children have the right to basic education,

01:14but an estimated one in three children between 6 and 15 years do not go to school.

01:19And that rate is expected to be pushed up by economic austerity measures and the resulting inflation.

01:26Children in the poorest communities are affected the most.

01:31Some who could afford to send their children to school last year now have to send them out to work.

01:37This is Ezekiel's mother.

01:40She has two other children of school age and another who's younger.

01:44This year, because the economy is getting worse, I have to carry the little one to join the older one,

01:49because gari and rice is too expensive.

01:52She would like to send them to school.

01:55Every mother wants their children to go to school and become something.

01:58If I didn't go to school, I could not be here.

02:01Just under 8% of the federal budget is spent on education,

02:06well beneath the 15 to 20% recommended by the United Nations.

02:13What comes in from the federal accounts depends not only on our resources,

02:18but on the international markets out there.

02:21And the price of oil in the international market will determine the revenue that will come to our disposal

02:27that will be meant for so many things in our economy.

02:31Ezekiel doesn't know about the oil market or rampant corruption,

02:36but he does know what he would like to be doing.

02:39If I didn't have to sell my nuts, I would read my books.

02:42He has no choice.

02:44He walks up to 10 kilometers every day, he says, and it's risky.

02:49I'm really afraid of accidents, like maybe a car hitting me when I'm selling my nuts.

02:54He's good at math, he says, and would like to become a banker.

02:58But without stable access to education,

03:00his young mind will remain one of countless in Nigeria left to fend for themselves.

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