January 18, (THEWILL) – Nigeria plans to increase primary school enrollment from the current 46 percent to 90 percent by 2030.
The country also plans to double the enrollment of females in schools and ensure a secondary school education completion rate from 42 percent to 80 percent by 2030.
The disclosures were made in Benin by Mrs Yosola Akinbi, National Coordinator of the Human Capital Development (HCD) project of the National Economic Council.
Speaking at the opening of a two-day South-South Regional conference on human capital development, Akinbi said the project had been positioned to promote an inclusive and functional education system.
She said it was also poised to promote equitable access to affordable and quality healthcare for every Nigerian.
“We are also looking at reducing the figure of out-of-school children by 70 percent”, she said.
Akinbi noted that the conference was held to engage state governments to ensure the prioritisation of human capital development investments, adding that it focused on the three thematic areas of health and nutrition, education and workforce participation.
According to her, the overall target of the human capital development project is to achieve 24 million additional healthy under-five-year-old children that will survive and not be stunted by 2030.
Such children, she said, would be educated to become productive Nigerians.
In her remarks, the focal person of the human capital development project in Edo, Mrs Violet Obiokoro, called for more investments in the development of Nigerians.
Obiokoro, Managing Director of Edo State Skills Development Agency, noted that Edo had invested greatly in human capital development.
She said the state had also adhered to many strategies outlined in the national human capital development framework.
“Nigeria has seen first-hand what can happen to its people if we continue to pay lip service to invest in the development of human capital.
“Payment of lip service to human capital development in the past has partly resulted in poorly trained graduates struggling to provide value in the corporate sector.
“It has also seriously impacted the calibre of people entering into government and private sector organisations”, Obiokoro said.
In his address, the regional consultant of the project in the South-South, Olusoji Adeniyi, noted that Nigerians often had misconceptions about the actual meaning of human capital development.
“The first challenge I faced was that people thought that human capital development means training and staff development. This is a complete misconception
“Human capital development begins from the conception of the baby. Our quality of life when we come out of that system is dependent on the quality of nutrition of our mothers.
“It is dependent on the health conditions of the mothers and the environment the mother gives birth in and also depends on the skills of the midwife or the traditional birth attendant taking the delivery”, he said.
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