Poor foundational education is limiting the ability of Nigerians to take up high-skilled jobs, with about 70 per cent of children under the age of 10 unable to read and understand a simple sentence, the National Human Capital Development Programme has said.
The National Coordinator of Human Capital Development 2.0 and Special Adviser to the President on the National Economic Council and Climate Change, Rukaiya el-Rufai, said the learning crisis was affecting Nigeria’s ability to develop the sophisticated skills required by industries, using the construction of the Dangote Refinery as an example.
She said the technical demands of some jobs required strong foundational knowledge in subjects such as mathematics and geometry, which many Nigerian workers lacked.
“I know this kind of thing, you can’t even, it’s just like when Dangote was building the refinery, they couldn’t train our welders because to achieve that precision you need geometry. You need geometry,” El-Rufai said.
She explained that the inability to provide such training was an indication of how weaknesses in basic education could eventually limit access to highly skilled employment, even when jobs were available.
According to her, the challenge was not simply getting children into classrooms, but ensuring that they acquired the literacy and numeracy skills needed to progress to more advanced learning and participate productively in the economy.
“The one that worries me and scares me is that learning poverty is so high. It’s about 70 per cent. So the numeracy and the English skills from 10 to 12, in fact, the World Bank puts it at 85 per cent. So it’s not that even the kids that are in school, what they’re learning is not sufficient,” she said.
El-Rufai spoke at a media engagement on the nation’s human capital development strategy in Abuja on Monday.
She said the learning crisis went beyond the education sector because poor educational outcomes could affect the quality of Nigeria’s future workforce and the ability of young people to obtain productive and well-paid employment.
“So some of, even the sophisticated skills and some of the jobs that meet the needs of our industries and our sectors, you can’t even sell that with the current level. So you see it’s a lot, and then the youth are not in employment, education and training,” she said.
She said Nigeria could therefore have young people physically present in schools or already in the labour market without equipping them with the skills required by industries.
The Human Capital Development 2.0 programme is consequently focusing on health, education, skills and livelihoods as part of efforts to improve Nigeria’s performance on human capital indicators.
El-Rufai said six priority indicators had been selected for monitoring, including under-five mortality, stunting, immunisation, out-of-school children, learning poverty and youths not in employment, education or training.
She said the programme had also changed its approach from merely measuring activities to tracking measurable outcomes capable of improving Nigeria’s Human Capital Index.
The programme is being implemented through the National Economic Council, which provides a platform for collaboration between the Federal Government and state governments.
El-Rufai said the arrangement was necessary because human capital challenges differed significantly across regions and states, making a single national solution inadequate.
“We have been having regional sessions with the states in regional blocks because the results are so polarised. You look at the north, you see; you look at the south. So it shows us that there’s no one-size-fits-all,” she said.
She explained that while the country has a national human capital framework, individual states were now expected to develop plans based on their specific developmental challenges.
“Because what we’ve done is we have this national framework. Each state is now developing theirs. So they’re picking based on the nuances of their own developmental challenges. They are coming up with their own HCD plans,” she said.
El-Rufai added that some states had made significant progress in areas where others were still struggling, including differences in school enrolment, further demonstrating the need for interventions tailored to individual states.
She said the programme also planned to rely on data to determine where interventions and resources were most urgently required.
The Director of Advocacy and Communications of the programme, Doosuur Zasha, said investment in human capital remained central to Nigeria’s economic development and urged the media to play a stronger role in monitoring progress and holding governments accountable for human capital spending.
“That’s the core of what we’re doing here. At the core of it, we’re trying to see how Nigerians can access quality healthcare, whether children are learning, and whether young people and adults have the skills and opportunities to earn a decent livelihood, and if people that face barriers can actually have full participation in the economy,” Zasha said.
The HCD 2.0 programme is an evolution of the earlier Human Capital Development initiative established under the National Economic Council. It is supported by development and private-sector partners, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Aliko Dangote Foundation.
