20m out-of-School children: Another ‘B’Haram’ looms – Obasanjo
Former President Olusegun Obasanjo declared yesterday that Nigeria's 20 million out-of-school children was another Boko Haram waiting to happen, if they were not put back in school urgently. He said the number constituted 10 per cent of the country's population which should not be ignored. Obasanjo, who spoke as a panelist at the National Summit on Tertiary Education Reform, with the theme, "Re-imagining Tertiary Education in Nigeria: Issues, Challenges and Solutions,'' in Abuja, said: "The greatest resources we have in this country are the people. How many are we today? We are about 216 million and that is a great resource. ''Tertiary education is very important but education, particularly education that has left 20 million of our children out of school and those twenty million have no access to education. ''They cannot be effectively part of nation building because they have not had the opportunity to develop their innate capacity to the ext...