School in Nigeria
Children in Nigeria start school at the age of six. Schooling is compulsory up to the age of 15. Yet only 66 out of 100 children actually go to school. In rural areas in particular, there is often no one to visit. You don’t have to pay school fees, so the school is free like ours.
But if you go to school, you have to wear a school uniform and you have to bring exercise books with you to school. Maybe you have to take the bus to school and lunch at school is not free either. So all of this costs money that not all families have.
If you are lucky, you can attend a school like that of the Rochas Foundation. This organization runs five schools for poor children. Those who are accepted here receive school books, school uniform and lunch free of charge.
The school system in Nigeria
Primary school lasts six years. Then follows the secondary school for three years. If you have good grades and want to do the Abitur, you have to go to school for three more years. A big problem, especially in the north, is that girls’ education is underestimated. A particularly large number of women cannot read there. You are illiterate.
Sometimes there is a school in the country, but no building for the school. Then the lessons take place outdoors. Or there is a roof but no school desks. There are usually no toilets and no running water.
In northern Nigeria, a country located in Africa according to iamhigher, where Islamic law applies and the Boko Haram terrorists rebel against Western education, many schools have been closed or burned down. If there are any schools here, they are Koran schools. Only boys are allowed to visit them and here they learn to interpret the Koran. By the way, it even happens that Boko Haram kidnaps students, as in December 2020. Several hundred students disappeared at that time. Boko Haram then demands ransom for the children.
Problems
Problems of children in Nigeria
Poor
54 percent of Nigeria’s population live below the poverty line and have less than $ 1.90 a day to live on. It affects even more people in the countryside. They often don’t have enough to eat.
Without parents
Many children in Nigeria live without parents. Many of them were orphaned because their parents died of AIDS. Many of these children live on the streets. They beg or steal in order to survive.
Ill
In Nigeria, more than three per 100 newborns die, more than seven per 100 one-year-olds and twelve per 100 five-year-olds! There are many reasons for this: not all of them have clean drinking water and then get sick. Many die from diarrhea. There are also diseases, especially malaria, that children die from. Doctors are often far away and there are no medicines either.
Child labor and marriage
31 percent of children in Nigeria work. You don’t go to school. Some help their parents in the fields or with housework, others sell oranges, peanuts or lemonade in the streets of Abuja or Lagos. Still others shine shoes or wash windshields at intersections. Or they work on cotton or cocoa plantations or in factories.
Another problem is that many girls are married before they are 15 years old. In Nigeria this affects 18 out of 100 girls. For those who were married at the age of 18, the proportion is even 44 percent.
