A four-year education intervention in Nigeria’s North-East has successfully enrolled 48,575 out-of-school children across Borno, Adamawa and Yobe states. The achievement was announced at the close-out ceremony of the Education for Every Child Today (EFECT) project, held in Abuja over the weekend.
Project scope and implementation
Implemented by Street Child of Nigeria (SCoN) in partnership with Street Child UK and the Education Above All Foundation, the EFECT project targeted vulnerable and conflict-affected children across more than 20 local government areas and 80 communities in the three states. The project adopted an integrated approach combining school enrolment, livelihood support for families, child protection services, teacher training and community engagement.
Integrated approach to education
Speaking at the event, Country Director of SCoN, Jummai Lawan-Musa, said the project tackled multiple barriers preventing children from accessing education, particularly in conflict-affected communities. She noted that the project supported more than 5,000 caregivers with business grants to strengthen household incomes and enable parents to keep their children in school.
“We are empowering vulnerable women because about 65 per cent of the beneficiaries are women who are either displaced or living in host communities,” she said.
Psychosocial support and infrastructure
Lawan-Musa explained that the programme also provided mental health and psychosocial support for children traumatised by conflict, while family tracing services helped reunite separated children with their caregivers. Temporary learning spaces were established in communities where access to schools remained limited, while teachers and community volunteers received specialised training to improve learning outcomes.
According to her, the project established 74 temporary learning spaces and learning centres, while 126 classrooms and educational facilities were constructed, renovated or upgraded. She added that more than 400 teachers and facilitators were trained, while over 62,000 parents, traditional rulers and community members were reached through advocacy and sensitisation activities promoting education.
Learning poverty and funding challenges
Lawan-Musa, however, warned that Nigeria’s education crisis extends beyond access to schooling, noting that learning poverty remains a major concern. “Access is only one part of the problem. We also have learning poverty,” she said, stressing the need for stronger investment in foundational literacy and numeracy. She described the project’s success as evidence that combining education, livelihoods and child protection can significantly reduce barriers to learning in fragile communities.
Government role and economic empowerment
Also speaking, Adamawa State Education and Emergency Coordinator, Maidugu Silvanus Stephen, said governments must adopt more deliberate strategies to tackle the country’s growing out-of-school children crisis. He argued that while governments at federal and state levels were making efforts to expand access to education, the scale of the challenge requires greater investment and targeted interventions.
“Government has to be deliberate in its intention to target out-of-school children, not just through policy statements,” he said. Stephen identified poverty as one of the leading factors driving children out of school, particularly in Northern Nigeria, and called for more economic empowerment programmes for vulnerable households.
“So many parents cannot send their children to school. A lot of economic actions need to take place by empowering people economically because if parents are not supported, many children will not remain in school,” he said.
Almajiri system and funding gap
He also urged greater attention to children in the Almajiri system, arguing that many of them remain outside functional education despite not being officially classified as out-of-school. According to him, although governments have invested in new schools, classroom construction and examination support programmes, current education funding remains inadequate compared to the magnitude of the problem.
“There is a need for deliberate intention from government because the percentage allocated to education is still not enough to cater for the number of children who need support,” he added.
Model for future interventions
Stakeholders at the event said the EFECT project has provided a model for addressing educational exclusion through a combination of school access, family support and community participation, while calling for similar interventions in other parts of the country.
