By Lemmy Ughegbe, Ph.D.
A child outside the classroom today is not merely an educational statistic. He or she is a question mark hovering over Nigeria’s tomorrow. That is why the latest figures from Kano State should trouble the whole country, not just one state.
A recently released survey puts the number of out-of-school children in Kano at 875,593. Pause over that figure: eight hundred and seventy-five thousand, five hundred and ninety-three children. That is not an education problem alone. It is a national emergency unfolding quietly in plain sight.
Nigeria already carries one of the world’s heaviest burdens of children outside formal education. UNICEF estimates that 10.5 million Nigerian children aged five to fourteen are out of school, with attendance rates particularly troubling in parts of the North.
Yet numbers have a peculiar capacity to numb us. Ten million becomes a statistic. Eight hundred thousand becomes another headline. But behind every number is a child: a boy who should be learning mathematics, a girl who should be discovering science, a child who should be reading literature, developing social skills, asking questions and imagining possibilities beyond the circumstances of his or her birth.
Instead, millions are growing up beyond the reach of the classroom, and Nigeria should be frightened by what that means.
Education is not simply about obtaining certificates. The classroom is one of society’s most important instruments for preparing children for citizenship, productivity and independence. It is where children acquire literacy and numeracy, where horizons expand, where poverty can begin to lose its hereditary character.
Take that opportunity away from millions of children and the consequences do not disappear; they merely resurface elsewhere: in unemployment, in poverty, in child marriage, in vulnerability to crime, in susceptibility to extremist recruitment, in poor health outcomes, in low productivity, and ultimately in insecurity.
The child Nigeria refuses to educate today does not vanish. We meet that child again tomorrow, only under harder circumstances.
This is why the Kano numbers should force a broader conversation. The reasons children remain outside school are complex. Poverty is undoubtedly central: for a desperately poor family, sending a child to school can compete directly with the immediate need for another pair of hands to support household survival.
But poverty is not the only explanation. Cultural attitudes play a part, as does insecurity. Schools and teachers are often inadequate. Many children are enrolled instead in Qur’anic educational systems that operate outside conventional schooling. Some girls leave school prematurely because of marriage. And some parents simply do not appreciate the transformative value of formal education.
A serious response must address all of these realities rather than imagine that building more classrooms alone will solve the problem.
There is also an uncomfortable constitutional question. Nigeria’s Constitution declares that government shall strive to eradicate illiteracy and provide free education at different levels when practicable, and the Universal Basic Education framework goes further by making basic education free and compulsory. But what does “compulsory” mean when millions of children remain outside school? A law without effective enforcement gradually becomes an aspiration rather than a guarantee.
Government has responsibilities. So do parents. A parent should not be permitted to casually deny a child basic education simply because that parent does not consider schooling important. But enforcement without addressing poverty would be equally unjust. A family cannot fairly be punished for failing to send a child to school where there is no accessible school, no teacher, no security, or where hunger makes attendance practically impossible.
Government must first make compliance realistic. That means schools within reach of communities, qualified teachers, safe classrooms, school feeding where necessary, targeted financial support for the poorest families, and special attention to the education of girls.
It also means finding a more intelligent relationship between conventional education and Qur’anic schooling in northern Nigeria. This should not become a false choice between religion and education. A child can receive religious instruction and still acquire mathematics, English, science, technology and the other skills necessary to function in a modern economy. Integration, rather than confrontation, offers the better path.
But there is a larger economic issue Nigeria cannot escape. What kind of economy are we building if millions of the children who will constitute tomorrow’s workforce cannot read, write or perform basic calculations? The global economy is moving towards artificial intelligence, automation, advanced manufacturing and digital services. Other countries are preparing their children to write software, build robots and compete in knowledge industries. Nigeria cannot seriously aspire to become a major economic power while millions of its future citizens remain outside classrooms.
Population without education is not automatically an asset. It can become a liability. Nigeria often celebrates its enormous youthful population as a demographic advantage, but a demographic dividend does not arise simply because a country has many young people. Those young people must be educated, healthy, skilled and economically productive. Otherwise, a demographic dividend can become a demographic crisis.
That is why the 875,593 children identified in Kano should not be regarded merely as Kano’s problem. They are Nigeria’s children, and the solution requires federal, state and local governments, traditional rulers, religious leaders, communities, parents and civil society working together.
We need measurable targets. How many children will return to school this year? Which communities have the highest numbers? Why are children dropping out? How many new teachers are required? What interventions are working? And who is accountable when targets are missed? We cannot keep announcing millions of out-of-school children as though we were reporting rainfall.
Every year spent outside the classroom makes recovery harder. Every child lost to illiteracy represents potential deliberately wasted.
Nigeria’s greatest resource is not beneath the ground. It is sitting in our homes, walking through our communities and playing along our streets. Oil will eventually diminish in importance. Human capital will not.
The question, therefore, is not whether Nigeria can afford to educate these children. It is whether Nigeria can afford not to. Because the children we leave outside the classroom today will inherit the country tomorrow, and the Nigeria they build will depend substantially on what we taught them when we had the chance.
Lemmy Ughegbe, Ph.D, FIMC, CMC
FIMC, CMC
Email: lemmyughegbeofficial@gmail.com
WhatsApp ONLY: +2348069716645

By Lemmy Ughegbe, Ph.D

There is something fundamentally wrong when citizens have to look outside their country for an assessment of how transparently their own government manages their money. That, more than the verdict itself, should trouble Nigerians about the latest Fiscal Transparency Report from the United States Department of State.

The report says Nigeria failed to meet America’s minimum fiscal transparency requirements for 2025. Again. For the second consecutive year, Africa’s most populous country has fallen below the threshold Washington sets for transparency in the management and disclosure of public finances.

Ordinarily, this could provoke the familiar argument about sovereignty. Who appointed the United States examiner of Nigeria’s fiscal conduct? Those questions are legitimate, but they can also become convenient distractions. The more important question is not whether America has the right to grade Nigeria’s books. It is whether Nigerians themselves can sufficiently see, understand and interrogate how their own money is raised, allocated and spent. That is the question that matters.

The assessment was not entirely dismissive of Nigeria. It acknowledged that the Federal Government made its enacted budget and end of year report publicly available, including online, and that information on debt obligations, including major state owned enterprise debt, was available to the public. It also acknowledged the legal framework around Nigeria’s sovereign wealth fund. These are important positives, but they were not enough.

The report raised concerns about whether Nigeria’s budget documents presented a complete picture of government revenues and expenditures, and whether actual figures corresponded with what had been approved. It flagged the timely publication of the executive budget proposal, questioned the independence of the supreme audit institution, and identified shortcomings in procurement disclosure. Taken together, these point to something larger than bookkeeping. They point to a transparency deficit.

The Presidency has responded. Sunday Dare, Special Adviser to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu on Media and Public Communication, cautioned against treating the American report as a comprehensive assessment of Nigeria’s public financial management system. That qualification is fair; the report measures Nigeria against criteria established for America’s own purposes and should not be elevated into an infallible judgement. The Presidency also points to ongoing reforms, including the Open Treasury initiative, debt disclosures, procurement reforms and stronger digital systems for accessing fiscal information. Those efforts deserve acknowledgement.

But here is the problem. The existence of transparency mechanisms is not the same thing as transparency. A government may publish hundreds of documents and still leave citizens unable to determine how much money was received, where it went, and who benefited from public contracts. Transparency is not measured by the volume of information government releases, but by how clearly it allows citizens to follow their money.

The national budget is not merely an accounting document. It is perhaps the most important statement of government priorities in any fiscal year. Every figure represents a choice; money allocated to one project is money unavailable for another. A billion naira spent on an administrative convenience cannot simultaneously build classrooms, equip a hospital or fund security.

That is why budget transparency is inseparable from democratic accountability. The money belongs to the people; government merely administers it. Citizens have a right to know not only what government intends to spend but what it actually spends, where revenues originate, where they go, and why approved budgets change during implementation. They should know who receives government contracts, and have access to audit institutions independent enough to interrogate those expenditures without fear or favour.

This is where the transparency conversation must move beyond rhetoric. Successive governments have announced impressive initiatives for opening the public purse: budget portals, treasury portals, procurement platforms, Freedom of Information legislation, digital payment systems. Yet controversies over opaque expenditure, duplicated projects and poorly explained fiscal decisions continue to surface. The question is no longer whether mechanisms exist, but whether they work.

There is another reason Nigeria should take fiscal transparency seriously: it has economic value. Investors care about the predictability of public finances. Creditors care about debt disclosure. Opacity carries a price; it increases suspicion, weakens investor confidence, creates opportunities for corruption, and makes difficult economic reforms harder to sell to the population.

That last point is especially important today. Nigerians have endured painful economic reforms, from higher fuel prices to higher transportation and food costs, and enormous pressure on household incomes. When government asks citizens to make sacrifices, it assumes a corresponding obligation to show it is managing those sacrifices transparently. Fiscal transparency becomes more important, not less, during periods of economic difficulty. People asked to tighten their belts are entitled to see what government is doing with its own. That is a question of trust, one of the most valuable currencies in governance.

The Presidency is right that Nigeria should not treat the U.S. Fiscal Transparency Report as the complete story of its public financial management. But neither should government use that qualification to diminish the weaknesses identified. The appropriate response is not indignation, nor defensiveness. It is improvement.

Publish budget proposals early enough for meaningful public scrutiny. Make implementation reports detailed and timely. Explain significant deviations between appropriations and actual expenditure. Strengthen the independence and capacity of the Auditor General. Make procurement contracts readily accessible. Ensure citizens can trace expenditure from appropriation to delivery, in language comprehensible not merely to accountants and economists but to the citizens whose money is being spent.

Ultimately, Nigeria does not need to become fiscally transparent because Washington demands it. It needs to become transparent because Nigerians deserve it. The true audience for government’s accounts is not the U.S. State Department; it is the Nigerian taxpayer, the market woman paying levies, the worker whose salary is taxed, the commuter paying indirectly through fuel costs. They are the shareholders of the Nigerian state, and shareholders have a right to inspect the books.

The greatest mistake government could make would be to reduce this latest report to another Nigeria versus America argument. It is not. It is about Nigeria and Nigerians. America’s assessment may be debated, its methodology questioned. But the principle cannot reasonably be disputed: public money demands public accountability.

Until Nigerians can easily follow public money from revenue to appropriation, from appropriation to expenditure, and from expenditure to tangible results, the transparency deficit will remain. Not because America says so. But because democracy demands otherwise.

Dr Lemmy Ughegbe, FIMC, CMC

Email: lemmyughegbeofficial@gmail.com

WhatsApp ONLY: +2348069716645

By Sam Otuonye

There are moments in history when a simple sentence captures the spirit of an entire political struggle. In Nigeria, one such sentence was: “If you Tarka me, I Dabo you.” Today, as the United States and Iran wrestle over the Strait of Hormuz, that old Nigerian political expression has acquired a new international meaning: ‘if you hit me, I will hit you back.’

But history teaches that such a contest can become dangerous when the people involved are not ordinary individuals but powerful governments, armies and nations.

The present confrontation between United States President Donald Trump and Iran is, in many ways, a classic case of action and retaliation. Washington wants Iran to yield. Tehran wants Washington to pay a price for every pressure put on it. And in the middle of the struggle is a narrow stretch of water through which a huge part of the world’s energy supply passes.

The Nigerian story goes back to1974, during the military administration of General Yakubu Gowon.

There was a Joseph Sarwuan Tarka, a prominent politician from the Middle Belt, a powerful member of Gowon’s government who had served as Federal Commissioner for Transport and later Federal Commissioner for Communications. He was one of the most influential political figures from what was then Benue-Plateau State.

Then came a Godwin Daboh, a businessman and fellow Tiv from Benue. In 1974, Daboh publicly accused Tarka of corruption and impropriety. He went as far as swearing an affidavit containing allegations against the powerful Federal Commissioner. The controversy became a major national political story.

Tarka fought back.
The confrontation became so bitter that it produced the famous political expression: “If you Tarka me, I will Dabo you.” In simple language, it meant: ‘if you attack me, I will retaliate.’

Under mounting public and political pressure, Tarka resigned from the federal cabinet in August 1974. The controversy did not end there. It became one of the memorable political battles of that era and eventually entered Nigeria’s political vocabulary as a metaphor for retaliation.

Tarka returned to politics during the Second Republic. He was elected Senator for Benue East in 1979 and became Chairman of the Senate Committee on Finance and Appropriation.

The Strait of Hormuz is not merely another waterway. It is a narrow maritime passage between Iran and Oman, linking the Persian Gulf with the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea. At its narrowest point, it is only about 20 miles wide. Yet through this narrow passage moves an extraordinary volume of the world’s energy supplies.

This explains why Hormuz is everybody’s business. If the Strait is seriously blocked, the consequences do not stop in Tehran, Washington or the Gulf. They travel to Beijing, New Delhi, Tokyo, Seoul, London, Lagos and every economy that depends on affordable energy.

Oil prices rise. Transport becomes expensive. Electricity costs rise. Food becomes more expensive. Inflation returns. Businesses suffer. Poor countries suffer even more.

That is why Hormuz is sometimes described as the world’s energy artery.

President Trump has demonstrated a willingness to use military power against Iran. But the present crisis shows the limits of military power.

The United States and Iran have been involved in a prolonged conflict since the U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran began on February 28, 2026. The fighting has centred not only on Iran’s nuclear and military capabilities but increasingly on control of the Strait of Hormuz.

Washington can destroy military installations. It can attack infrastructure. It can impose sanctions. It can deploy warships. But destroying Iran is a different matter.

Iran can retaliate against American interests and Gulf infrastructure. It can threaten shipping. It can disrupt energy supplies. And because Hormuz is so important to the world economy, every additional military escalation carries a global economic price.This is the dilemma now confronting Trump.

This is where the phrase “If you Tarka me, I Dabo you” becomes relevant.

Iran has effectively demonstrated that it has a weapon that cannot easily be bombed away: Geography.

The Strait lies beside Iranian territory. Iran does not need to defeat the United States in a conventional war to impose enormous economic costs. It only needs to make the movement of ships sufficiently difficult, dangerous or expensive.

Trump therefore faces an uncomfortable choice. He can continue escalating and risk a wider war, higher energy prices and greater pressure on the global economy.

Or he can negotiate, even if negotiation requires concessions that may look politically uncomfortable.

Diplomacy often means accepting something less than everything one wants in order to prevent something worse.

That appears to be the calculation behind the current discussions. It is expected that a deal between Iran and Oman would soon ensure commercial shipping to proceed, with U.S. measures tied to Iran’s compliance.

Trump may therefore be discovering the oldest lesson in international politics: military superiority does not automatically produce political victory.

The strongest man in the room may still need the cooperation of the man controlling the doorway.

Nigeria should understand this lesson.
For Nigeria, the Hormuz crisis should not be treated as a distant Middle Eastern quarrel.

Nigeria is an oil-producing country, but Nigerians remain heavily exposed to international energy prices. Any prolonged disruption in Hormuz can affect crude prices, shipping costs, foreign exchange, inflation, petroleum products and government revenue.

The crisis should therefore remind that oil security is also national security.
Nigeria must develop strategic fuel reserves, improve domestic refining, strengthen alternative energy sources and reduce its vulnerability to shocks in international oil markets.

When two individuals fight, they hurt each other. But when two governments fight, millions of innocent people pay the bill.

That is why the world should hope that Washington and Tehran do not allow “If you Tarka me, I Dabo you” to become the governing principle of international diplomacy.

Because in the Strait of Hormuz, there is no room for a fight in which everybody wins.

There is only room for restraint, negotiation and a settlement that keeps the world’s energy artery open.

Sam Otuonye, anipr
Journalist/Public Affairs Analyst, writes through samotuonye22@gmail.com