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About 10 million Nigerian children are currently not included in the Early Childhood Care, Development and Education (ECCDE) system, as the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) has warned that the situation is contributing to poor learning outcomes among children across the country.
UBEC Executive Secretary, Dr. Aisha Garba, disclosed this on Monday in Abuja at a three-day capacity building workshop for state actors on the use of ECCDE minimum standards, implementation guidelines and UNICEF documents on parent and community engagement.
UBEC head shares statistics
Garba, represented at the event by UBEC Deputy Executive Secretary (Technical), Rasaq Olajuwon Akinyemi, said only 35.6% of Nigerian children aged between 36 and 59 months currently attend some form of early childhood education.
She said the situation is exacerbated by developmental delays among young children, noting that analysis of the 2021 Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey showed that about 46% of children aged 24 to 59 months were developmentally off track.
According to her, the consequences of inadequate education in early childhood become more evident as children progress through the school system.
“Only 35.6% of Nigerian children aged between 36 and 59 months attend any form of early childhood education. This leaves about 10 million of our youngest children overall outside of ECCDE,” he said.
Garba added that around 70% of Nigerian 10-year-old children are unable to read and understand simple text, while only around 2.4 million of the 5.9 million children who enter primary school each year remain in the education system at the end of lower secondary school.
He said early childhood development must therefore be treated as an integrated national priority rather than a stand-alone educational programme.
“There is no cheaper place in the education system to buy results,” Garba said, citing Nobel Prize winner James Heckman’s estimate of about 13 percent annual return per child on high-quality programs from birth to age five.
The UBEC chief urged states to ensure ECCDE interventions were reflected in their state matching grants action plans, warning that programs not included in the plans will not receive funding, procurement or monitoring attention.
“I have to be blunt: what is not in the action plan will not be funded, will not be procured and will not be monitored,” she said.
Garba further disclosed that the deadline for submission of ECCDE action plans by States for the next year of intervention has been extended from September 30 to October 5, 2026.
She, however, stressed that the extension does not present an opportunity for states to delay, adding that plans submitted after the new deadline will not be considered for the intervention year.
“The extension is not an invitation to delay. I expect every State to leave Abuja with a costly, integrated and inclusive draft plan, present it to the Executive President upon his return and present the final plan through the digital planning model within the extended period. Plans received after that date will not be considered for this intervention year,” he added.
It also directed States to develop ECCDE programs that focus on the needs of the whole child, working with local government health, nutrition, water and sanitation, women’s affairs, social welfare and education authorities.
Garba said the Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey 2023-24 estimates the stunting rate among children under five to be as high as 40 percent nationwide, with the figure ranging from 12 percent in Rivers State to 65 percent in Katsina State.
It said ECCDE centers must also comply with essential standards covering child safety, supervision, safeguarding, food and water safety, structural safety and emergency exits.
The UBEC chief urged States to ensure that children with disabilities and those living in hard-to-reach, nomadic, riverine and conflict-affected communities are not excluded from ECCDE programmes.
He also called for greater involvement of parents, health workers, school management committees, traditional institutions and religious bodies, stressing that communities could serve as important reception platforms for children who could not easily be reached through conventional classrooms.
The director of UBEC complains about the situation
Earlier, the Acting Director, Department of Special Programs and Early Childhood, UBEC, Dr. Chijioke J. Onwuzurike, said Nigeria currently has more than 45 early childhood development channels spread across the sectors of health, nutrition, education, agriculture and social protection.
Shee, however, said the multiplicity of channels has created fragmentation, with platforms sometimes duplicating each other, failing to share data and providing inconsistent services across communities.
Onwuzurike said the Commission expects each State, over the next 18 months, to map and rationalize their existing early childhood development platforms, establish functional multi-sectoral coordination mechanisms, and strengthen the capacity of frontline workers for screening and follow-up.
Se said the goal is to ensure children don’t fall into gaps between sectors. said the goal is to ensure children don’t fall into gaps between sectors.
“School readiness is not something that begins at the primary school gate; by the time a child reaches that gate, everything is already decided,” Onwuzurike said.
He urged state actors to use the ECCDE national minimum standards and implementation guidelines as working tools, rather than documents to be archived.
UNICEF speaks on critical issues
In his speech, Yetunde Oluwatosin, UNICEF Nigeria Education Specialist, said early childhood development was key to addressing the country’s out-of-school challenge.
He likened early childhood development to laying the foundation of a building, noting that getting the foundation right would help children enter school at the appropriate age, stay in school and move through the education system.
“So it’s really important for us to create the right foundation, because it helps the child continue to learn,” she said.
Oluwatosin said UNICEF supported the Federal Government in developing the ECCD policy, minimum standards and curriculum, adding that the documents were benchmarked against global standards.
The three-day workshop, organized by the Department of Special Programs and Early Childhood of UBEC in collaboration with UNICEF, attracted state and relevant stakeholders in the field of education, including directors of special programs of SUBEB, officials of ECCDE and officials of UBEC.
The workshop aims to strengthen state-level capacity for ECCDE planning, financing, implementation, monitoring, data management and community engagement, while enabling participating States to develop or strengthen state-specific work plans on ECCDE and early childhood development.
