Life After Primary School Education
It has become a well-known phenomenom that young university graduates in Nigeria don’t always find life easy, especially when it comes to securing jobs. But having acquired a university education, they are better equipped to take their destiny in their own hands. But what happens to those poor children who have zero opportunity of going beyond primary school level? This section focuses on the ordeals such kids are made to go through after leaving primary schools.
As has been pointed out before, the educational system in Nigeria today allows only a compulsory primary school education of six years for all children under the Universal Basic Education (UBE) scheme. With the introduction of the Universal Free Primary Education (UPE) in 1976, the afore-mentioned UBE and the State Primary Education Board (SPEB) in each state to liaise with the UBE, the Nigerian government has continued to demonstrate its interest in reviving the primary school education in the country. However, while some people laud government’s efforts to the skies, others, especially the critics, are still very sceptical about these educational programmes and their set objectives.
Well, be that as it may, the fact still remains that after the primary school education, sending children to secondary schools, and later to institutions of higher learning, becomes the sole responsibility of parents and relatives. For children from poor families and poverty-stricken villages, their hopes and aspirations to attain a reasonable academic standard in life are often dashed. Having thus been forced to abandon the idea of going to school, some of them take to street hawking and other menial jobs while the more desperate ones among them resort to stealing and other misdemeanours as a means to an end. Catering for themselves and their families early in life becomes a way of life.
In most cases, this untold hardship leads to frustration and helplessness, and having no one to turn to, these poor creatures, may end up committing felonies, thus exposing themselves to more dangers. Such Juvenile delinquencies, which are now becoming very rampant in Nigeria due to hopelessness, pose a serious threat to the entire society.
Children with bleak future abound in many Nigerian villages. Better Future Foundation Amodu was set up to help create a better tomorrow, through education, for the poor children from Amodu. BFFA relies on your donations to give these children a better future.