Netizens have fumed at a United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) report stating that Nigerian children can’t read or solve mathematics.
According to a report published by PUNCH Newspaper, UNICEF said seventy-five percent of Nigerian children between the ages of seven and fourteen years can not read a simple sentence or solve a fundamental mathematics problem.
Marking the International Day of Education, UNICEF Nigeria representative, Cristian Munduate disclosed this in a statement on Tuesday. Munduate urged the presidential candidates to include education as one of their priorities ahead of the election.
Part of the statement reads, “On this International Day of Education, I join the global call to “invest in people, prioritise education” and deliver on the commitments made by His Excellency, President Muhammadu Buhari at the UN Secretary General’s Transforming Education Summit in September 2022 to end the global learning crisis.
“In Nigeria, 75 per cent of children aged 7 to 14 years cannot read a simple sentence or solve a basic math problem. For children to be able to read to learn, they must be able to learn to read in the first three years of schooling.
“As Nigeria’s presidential elections draw near, on behalf of UNICEF and the children in Nigeria, I call on all presidential candidates to include adequate investments in education as a top priority in their manifestos.”
Netizens fumes at UNICEF result
Netizens have reacted with outrage to the seventy-five percent statistics presented by UNICEF. According to some Netizens, UNICEF needs to reveal how it arrived at its statistics. Others claimed it’s a big fat lie because foreign employers seek Nigerians in various sectors.
One sir Coded wrote: “I totally disagree. Lol, they rate Africans low is things that are good, and rate us high in bad things that we are not even known for “
Eva Dee 4real wrote: “Where did you get your facts from, the last time I checked, Nigeria have dominated the first world country. its nobody’s fault when the old western region embraced free education while the north did not value education as at then. at your own free time, check the number of graduates Nigerian produces annually? I challenge you to make the 75% derivation public.”
Topnotch Gloria wrote: “This is a big fat lie. Nigerians are over brilliant. White people na only English cover them honestly.”
Real Sis Marks wrote: “What data is this result based on? When was this data collected? What kind of statistics analysis was carried out. Where can we see the full report? Did the analysis include group statistics covering the six geopolitical zones, 36 states (inc FCT) ? Is this a longitudinal study?”
Fortune wrote: “UNICEF should stop all this nonsense cos even in Europe and america they have a lot of this people there but they don’t come out to say this things and the same Nigerian go there and make first class and they are looking for there doctor and nurses who are they fooling”.
Eno Fefel wrote: “This is absolute falsehood. If the publication was a reference to out of school children which is quite a scary number and children in public then they may be cooking with gas.”
Mrnawa wrote: “What’s then is the use of the emergency fund? How long have they been in Nigeria?”
Successful Jerrri wrote: “Teach us maths in our native languages we will understand it and stop using foreign language to teach us science and technology, but people was able to translate your religion books to our local languages, why can’t you do that with other books”.
Oluwasegun Agbebi wrote: “es we can’t read but at the end they come and take our doctors, nurse, teachers etc tif people”
Pastor Adebayo wrote: “It is a lie. Nigerian NGO should take the matter up. This is another avenue to relegate our children among international community. Racism”
Pretty Peekabo wrote: “his is a big fat lie 👍🏻 they like to discredit us but most of us are far better than them”.
Stiii wrote: “Not true,our kids can they are smarter than you think.”
Diffitest health wrote: “It very funny UNICEF I mean that the way west look at us hmmm na wa oooooo we have to start writing our own story and tell them not let them tell us about our talent, progress, development, culture and way of life…”
General Gadafy wrote: “All black doctors & nurses in a whole state in the United States are Nigerian … unicef take that as an assignment find the state, I’m waiting”
The Enyola wrote: “They drive to a village in Jigawa, Northern Nigeria, carry out a survey and label it Nigeria, what they forget to tell you is that 99% of the children they saw can read Arabic. Literacy is not only define by learning English or your mathematics. An average Yoruba boy or girl that can count the numeral in Yoruba language from 1-20 can already naturally do addition, subtraction, division and multiplication because the Yoruba natural counting system is mathematical.
“I lived most of my life in Lagos and you’ll hardly ever see the presence of this UNICEF in the rural areas, all they have here is a big office and diplomats in trucks with towering antennas, go to the North and you’ll see them everywhere so apparently their data came from the north, they assumed it’s the same everywhere and roll out dead statistics to fuel their poverty ingraining exploits.”
Segun Fenwa Stanley wrote: “This is totally untrue… how did they arrive at this statistic? Come to England and see Secondary school students struggling to read simple sentences. I was posted to a school last week as a supply teacher. I accessed the lesson plan through the shared drive (as usual). I was surprised to be teaching Year 8 students (JSS2 equivalent in Nigeria) decimal fractions… conversion of fractions…. these are topics that pry 5 and 6 pupils in Nigeria will conveniently trash. These Year 8 students were struggling with it.”
Shina Bellow wrote: “I don’t know where they collected the 75% from. The worst public school system from primary to secondary will be less that 55%. Huge numbers of the children in the age barracked are in private schools which over 75% of them must be able to read, write and solve simple mathematics. Some people needed more funding from UNICEF and choose to insult our system with falsified data.”
Yakubu Aishat wrote: “How do u expect them to know how to read and solve maths when they are hungry mtchewww…”
