World Bank Senior Director and Head of Education Global Practice, Mr. Jaime Saavedra Chanduvi said Nigeria has one of the lowest education spending in the world, devoting only a paltry $200 to each student per year.
Chanduvi who stated this at a 2-day stakeholders’ workshop in Abuja on Sustainable Funding for Education in Nigeria, jointly organized by the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Finance said funding education is absolutely critical to build the human capital that the nation needs
“Nigeria is spending about 1.7 per cent of its GDP on education and unfortunately that number is too low; that number is about 3.7 per cent in Mexico, 3.8 per cent in Indonesia, and 5 per cent in Kenya,” he said.
“Another way of seeing the challenges is how much we are spending per student; Nigeria is spending $200 per student per year. So what’s that figure in Mexico, its $800; what’s that figure in my country, Peru, it’s $1000,” he said.
The World Bank official noted that the world needs 60 per cent investment in education and health, while Nigeria requires about 34 per cent of its investment on health and education to overcome its current challenges in the sectors.
He said the world was facing a crisis in its basic education subsector as 50 per cent of all the children who are in school are not able to read and write.
Also speaking, the Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu, urged the federal and state governments to start allocating at least 15 percent of their annual budgets to education.
Adamu said despite the articulation of several strategic roadmaps by past and present administrations to address the challenges in the sector, the number of out-of-school children, youth and adult literacy, poor teacher education including data management and weak curriculum were still present in the sector.
Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, who was represented by the Minister of Budget and National Planning, Udo Udoma, said the current administration led by President Muhammadu Buhari has perpetually increased funding for the education sector.
The Vice President said they have consistently supported the education sector by raising its budget every year since they came on board.
“In the first budget that we did, we took up the capital allocation for education to N35.99 billion in 2016. Then in 2017 we took it up to N56.81 billion and this year 2018, the current capital budget for education is N102.9 billion,” he said.
