There are more boys out of school than girls in Nigeria, government data shows.
On a state by state basis, Kano State leads the pack with 748,468 out of school boys.
This is 84,653 more than the combined figures for thirteen other states in Nigeria.
With that, Kano constitutes 11.8% of all the 6,340,621 out of school boys in Nigeria.
This is according to data EduCeleb.com obtained from the Federal Ministry of Education in 2019.
An earlier report from the data of out-of-school children shows that 38% of them are girls.
The United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) describes out of school children as those who are within the official primary school age range but not enrolled in pre-primary, primary or secondary schools.
This data suggests that more is still needed to be done regarding providing access to education especially regarding the Compulsory, Free Universal Basic Education Act of 2004.
Compared with other countries globally, Nigeria has the highest number of out-of-school children.
Government data appears to show that enrolment figures across states keep increasing but many boys are likely still being left behind.
How other states fare in out of school boys
The data also ranks Yobe next to Kano with 334,556 out of school boys. It is followed by Ondo with 309,000, Plateau with 297,342, Akwa Ibom with 283,639, and Kaduna with 282570 boys out of school.
Also making the top ten states with high number of out of school boys are Borno, Bauchi, Katsina, and Zamfara. The states have 269,828, 269,216, 269,990, and 253,800 boys respectively not enrolled in school.
Among the states with the least number of out of school boys are Edo with 8061, Bayelsa with 24,344, Abia with 33761, Ekiti with 34,990, Niger with 35,535 and Kogi with 37,487.
The Federal Capital Territory (FCT) has 48,294 boys out of school while Kwara has 50,392, Enugu has 61,672 and Cross River has 71,640.
Check out this infographics below which shows how each of the 36 states and the FCT stands in the number of out of school boys.
Most prevalence of out-of-school boys in the North West
An analysis of the data based on the six geopolitical zones by EduCeleb.com puts the North West ahead of the five other zones with 2,047,531 boys. That constitutes 32.3% of the total number of out-of-school boys.
The North West is followed by the North East with 1,341,857 boys not enrolled in school. That is 21.2% of the sum of out-of-school boys.
This shows that 53.5% of all out of school boys are in the North East and the North West. These regions have the higher prevalence of itenerant Qur’anic school children popularly known as the almajiri in the country.
The South West follows the North East in numbers of out-of-school boys with 1,032,449. 16.3% of out-of-school boys are from the region.
North Central geopolitical zone has 700,498 boys out of school constituting 11.1% of the total.
Whereas the South South has 675,821 boys out of school with 10.7%, the South East is the least with 542,467 boys constituting 8.6%.
Details of these are reflected below.
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