The newly appointed Executive Secretary of Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), Aisha Garba, has promised to deploy strategies that would advance the delivery of quality basic education for millions of school-aged children in Nigeria.

Garba made the promise on assumption of duty at a meeting with members of management and staff of the commission in Abuja.

He said education was the right of every Nigerian child regardless of religion, class, gender or economic condition as captured in the Article 26 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

In a statement signed by UBEC’s Head Public Relations & Protocol, Mr. David Apeh, she lamented that with approximated 17 million children, Nigeria has one of the highest number of out-of-school children in the world.

While noting that the menace of out of school children was constituting a staggering obstacle to the nation’s progress towards universal access to education for every Nigerian child, Garba added that even when children were in school, they were lagging behind in learning outcomes.

She said: “According to a World Bank Capital Index, students in Nigeria score 309 on a harmonized test score scale, where 625 is considered advanced attainment and 300 represents minimum attainment.

“And according to UNICEF, the primary school completion rate for Nigeria was at 59% in 2020 for boys and 51% for girls. The secondary school completion rate is even lower, with boys at 42% and girls at 36%.