• Defends UTME exemption for NCE candidates
Emmanuel Addeh in Abuja
The Minister of Education, Tunji Alausa, yesterday disclosed that the federal government has returned more than one million children from the streets to classrooms in the last 30 months as part of efforts to address Nigeria’s out-of-school children crisis.
Alausa, who spoke during an appearance on Channels Television, said the widely quoted figures by international organisations estimating Nigeria’s out-of-school population at about 18.3 million were outdated and failed to reflect ongoing interventions by the Bola Tinubu government.
According to him, the federal government has embarked on a comprehensive state-by-state mapping and geotagging exercise aimed at generating more reliable data on children currently outside the formal education system.
“Talking about data, this UNESCO data, UNICEF data, 18.3 million, is the same number that has been quoted for 10 years. We do not need to challenge it, and I do not need to get into rhetoric.
“What we are doing is data mapping of our out-of-school children as we continue aggressive interventions to move children back to school. Today, I can tell you that we have moved over one million children on the streets back to school in the last 30 months,” Alausa said.
The minister explained that the ongoing exercise involves physically locating and geotagging out-of-school children across the country to obtain exact figures and addresses, rather than relying solely on broad international estimates.
He noted that preliminary findings from Kaduna State for instance had already shown significant discrepancies between existing global estimates and figures obtained through the federal government’s verification process.
“UNICEF data says Kaduna has 1.8 million out-of-school children. We have completed the data mapping in Kaduna, and we found about 700,000 children who are out of school. Is that still high? Yes. But do we now have a more realistic number? Absolutely,” he stated.
Alausa maintained that once the nationwide exercise is completed, Nigeria’s out-of-school population would likely fall below eight million. “We are going to continue mapping all 36 states and then present our numbers. By the time we are done, we will have fewer than eight million out-of-school children,” he said.
A 2024 UNICEF report had ranked Nigeria as the country with the highest number of out-of-school children globally, estimating that 10.2 million children of primary school age and another 8.1 million of junior secondary school age were not in school.
The report further indicated that about 66 per cent of the affected children are concentrated in the North-west and North-east regions of the country.
Tinubu had described the situation as unacceptable and pledged to prioritise education reforms, school reintegration and skills acquisition under his administration.
Also, the minister defended the federal government’s decision to exempt colleges of education as well as non-technology agricultural courses in polytechnics and monotechnics from the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME), saying the move would significantly boost tertiary admissions and support national food security goals.
According to Alausa, the policy could raise annual admissions into tertiary institutions to about 1.5 million, nearly double the figure recorded two years ago.
“Guess what, this year alone, with the changes we are making through eliminating UTME requirements for college of education and UTME requirement for non-technology agricultural courses in our polytechnics and monotechnics would increase the number of people being admitted throughout tertiary institutions to about 1.5 million.
“That is literally doubling it from two years ago. This has created opportunities for young Nigerians,” Alausa added..
The minister argued that exempting students seeking admission into agriculture-related programmes was necessary to strengthen the country’s food production capacity.
“The exemptions are for people going into colleges of education and people going to monotechnics or polytechnics to study non-technology agriculture courses and there is a reason for that. We need that to help food security in our country,” he explained.
Alausa further disclosed that the ministry had commenced plans to overhaul agricultural curricula across universities, polytechnics and colleges of education to align them with modern realities and emerging farming technologies.
According to him, the proposed reforms will incorporate developments such as greenhouse farming and other modern agricultural practices that have evolved over the last decade.
The minister had announced the UTME exemption policy on Monday during the 2026 policy meeting of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board in Abuja.
Under the new arrangement, candidates seeking admission into colleges of education and non-technology agricultural programmes will only be required to possess a minimum of four O-level credits in their school certificate examinations.
Alausa said the policy was also intended to reduce administrative pressure on the examination body while encouraging more young Nigerians to embrace the teaching profession and agriculture-related careers.