35 per cent of Nigerian adults ‘are uneducated’

Nigeria’s illiteracy level is rising at such a rapid rate that about 56 million adult Nigerians are uneducated.

According to the executive secretary of the National Mass Education Commission (NMEC), Alhaji Jibrin Paiko, the alarming figure represents more than 35 per cent of the country’s adult population.

Paiko said, therefore, that the commission has designed various programmes towards reversing the trend.

One of them is the Revitalising Adult and Youth Literacy Programme, for which 11 master trainers for different states were trained between May and June 2013.

“Also 111 facilitators have been trained and we are scaling up the training programme to the zonal level with additional 20 facilitators for each state excluding Rivers State and the FCT,” he told NAN.

He added that $1 million had been handed to Procter and Gamble to train 60,000 women and girls in skills acquisition, but lamented that the commission would have fared better in its pursuit of literacy programmes were it not for the challenge of funding.