Self Help Effort:

Responses to the literacy campaigns vary from one locality to another. For instance, the enthusiasm with which the people of Alela, a remote community in Tangaza Local Government northeast of Sokoto, only few kilometres away from the border of Niger Republic embraced the literacy programme enthusiastically. This whole community was brought together through self help effort or the Hausa equivalent of "aikin gaiya' for the purpose of building new classroom blocks. With the assistance of a block-molding machine donated by UNICEF, the people of Alela were able to start building of literacy classes using available local materials such as sand, clay and cement contributed through community effort. A class room block built previously through self help now no longer can contain all the pupils because of over crowding due to increase in enrolment. Malam Umar Farouk, the cheerful proprietor of the Alela Koranic School, said, "we found a temporary solution to the problem of overcrowding by holding classes under the trees". "As you can see we need more assistance to be able to build the class rooms that can accommodate the children including those from the surrounding villages." Farouk said. A few years back there were probably not enough pupils to fill a single classroom. Making school interesting to these children requires being adept with a new pedagogical approach to the teaching of non-formal education. This book is the form of reorientation workshops for the proprietors and instructors on instructional materials and curriculum development. "We introduced the teaching of Fiqh, Hadith and Arabic in addition to learning the Koran" say Yahaya Ahmed, Deputy Director, Agency for Mass Education

Unlike in the conventional school system, instruction here is in Hausa a language, which all the children speak and understand very well. Classroom instruction does not employ the rigid and conventional instructional method commonly found in the conventional school system rather, a child friendly approach is encouraged.

At Kanwuri Qur'anic school, a few metres outside the Sultan's Palace, in Sokoto North Local Government, it is 9.00 o'clock and a night class session is holding the zaures with children in separate classes of boys and girls huddled in clusters on the floor. Half way through the teaching a few of the children are fast asleep while others nod their heads and sway in different directions as they fight sleep. It is probably well past their bedtime. But the teachers are still engaged in teaching until 10.00p.m. when the class will be over.

But unlike in Sokoto or any of the big urban centres where learning takes place both during the day and night because of the availability of electricity, learning taken place in some of the makeshift classes of Gidan Madi, Gagi, Dingyadi, Kwannawa and Ruggar Liman only during the day. In more Qur'anic school, Kware Local Government a wealthy community business man, Usman GAda has promised to give prizes each year to the most outstanding three boys and three girls in the literacy classes as his contribution towards encouraging literacy education in the community.

Under the integrated Qur'anic school basic literacy programme a whole new expression to the purpose of literacy is gaining momentum. Bashir Mohammed an 8-year-old wants to become an Arabic Teacher when he grows up, while 12-year old Shafaatu Abubakar is in the literacy class so that she can read and write letters for her illiterate parents who are not so fortunate to acquire literacy.

Acquiring, as these children are discovering, will improve the quality of life on several fronts. For one, it gives the opportunity to acquire skills that will enable them to be employed or even self employed. Another advantage is that it will enhance their status in the society making it possible to acquire a perspective or an entirely new outlook to societal issues and problems. All this is made possible with UNICEF assistance especially in the area of training. Other forms of technical assistance in the form of instruction materials are rubber mats, sewing machines, is changing the lives of the children of Sokoto State.

Non-Formal Education has for long been neglected. Otherwise it should have by now formed the nucleus of our technological breakthrough, said Muhammed Bello. Sokoto State still faces enormous challenges in its war end massive illiteracy. Intensive mobilization and sensitization will have to continue if the result attained so far is to be maintained throughout the state. From every indication the response to the literacy drive has been most encouraging.

12.2.8 Notable Achievements in Literacy

Mass Literacy and Adult Education campaigns have no doubt yielded a measure of success as statistics have shown despite the various problems that have been encountered over the years Nigeria’s success in this area has found expression in the UNESCO literacy prizes and honourable mentions which are awarded in recognition of the services of institutions, organisations or individual displaying outstanding merit and achieving special success in contributing to the fight against illiteracy.

Since its inception, Nigeria has featured prominently, winning honourable mentions six time, (1983, 1984, 1990, 1991, 1992 and 1994) but the real literacy prize came in 1989 when the Adult Education Department of the University of Ibadan was awarded the Literacy Prize of the International Reading Association.

The Department has since recognised that only community based literacy programmes can survive in rural areas where tradition is strong, and the outsider is a suspect. It was the realisation of this fact that led to the Department’s Community Development literacy and Health Project which began in 1989 as a special contribution to literacy promotions. This project metamorphosed into the University Village Association, UNIVA, a non-governmental organisation seeking to build a bridge between the university and the community and between theory and practice in Adult Education, contributing to policy formulation and literacy promotion, offering seed money to participants in the literacy classes to enable them to initiate small-scale enterprises.

Presently, UNIVA has been become one of the best known non-governmental organisations involved in rural development in Nigeria. UNIVA began as a literacy project, promoting the co-operation of the university academic community and the village communities for development purposes, has been transformed into a movement, and an expression of community ownership of programmes.

This development has provided a vitality and invigoration which explains the sustainability of the project now the embracing health issues, democracy and good governance, economic ventures, functional literacy for adults and youths in especially difficult circumstances women and minority groups. Not unexpectedly, UNIVA became the first and at the moment the only NGO in Nigeria to be commended for its intervention in literacy promotion in Nigeria by UNESCO when in 1997, it received UNESCO’s Special Recognition for the "excellent work" that it has done. Again, in 1999, UNIVA received the Honourable mention of UNESCO, Malcolm Adisashiah International Literacy Prize.

UNIVA, founded in 1989 with the support of the International Foundation for Education and Self-help (IFESH) shares the burden of development with government following its conviction that illiteracy limits the capacity and full potentials of the individual in the performance of most skills and is having access to useful information which can facilitate the making of important choices.

In ten years, UNIVA has produced over 5,000 literacy learners, over one thousand of whom have undertaken post-literacy work. All the learners have had a heavy dose of functional literacy. UNIVA has extended its work to urban areas among the mechanics, market women and the street children.

It has also produced materials and strategies that have proved capable of attracting learners to the classroom. With community participation, multi-purpose centres have been built in villages and with income generating promotion and health talks. UNIVA has succeeded in mobilizing learners by adopting a dignified recruitment and retention strategy. Within its meagre resources, UNIVA has succeeded in assisting both rural and urban people of Oyo and Osun states in overcoming their illiteracy, health and economic problems. The income-generating programme has helped to improve the economic status of the participating men and women. In the process, UNIVA has confirmed the familiar conviction important contribution to literacy promotion and enhancement in partnership with stakeholders, academics, students, government NGOs, communities and the civil society.

12.2.9 Rescuing, Rehabilitation and Returning Street Children

The Street Children phenomenon in Nigeria is gradually assuming alarming proportions, particularly in urban areas. The immediate cause of this phenomenon appears to be deeply entrenched poverty which defines lives of the vast majority of Nigerians as well as family broken homes. The situation of the Street Children is indeed pitiable but, several Non-governmental Organisations are involved in rescuing rehabilitating and

returning Street Children. The NGOs that have shown considerable interest include the Child Life-Line, Child Project, Galilee Foundation, Kingi Kids, The Friends of the Disabled and the Samaritans. Some of the NGOs are more concerned with the handicapped, others with education, but all have one goal; to rescue the children and give them the chance for a better life.

One of such NGOs is the Child Life-Line [CLL], a voluntary, charitable organisation working for the care for education and rehabilitation of street in Lagos.

CLL was founded in 1994 following a World Bank survey of Out-of School Children, which opened the eyes of some of the researchers to the fact that thousands of children were living and subsisting on the streets of Lagos in appalling squalor.

In 1995, a CLL Survey, assisted by UNESCO funding interviews 608 of these children, including 62 girls. It found that almost all of the children worked for a living-scavenging on the refuse dumps, head-loading and bus conducting, washing-up in bukas (local restaurants) or selling "pure water" on the street. They sleep under bridges, or on market stalls, without access to clean drinking water or soap to wash with without clean and secure place to sleep, without school and without any adult to protect or guild them. Their life is hazardous and there is no way they could escape from the streets. As the Director General of UNESCO Mr. Federico Major, said, "Their only hope is education".

In November 1995 CLL opened its first residential rehabilitation centre for street children in premises loaned to it by the Lagos State Government. Today there are 26 boys aged 8-18 years at any one time resident in the centre. Since its inception fifty-seven boys have passed through the Centre. Of these seventeen have been reunited with their families, fourteen have returned to the street and twenty-six are still in the centre.

Of the boys that are resident at the CLL centre at present, seven are attending school while ten are receiving Basic education in the centre. Two had just finished courses in catering and graphic arts [June 1999].

The considerable success that CLL has achieved in running its own centre, no doubt, emboldened the Organisation to organise in February 1999 a training workshop for NGOs on the management and administration of centres for street children. The workshops was conducted with UNESCO support and hosted by the Van Leer Nigeria Education Trust. The workshop communique` recognised the need for;

• Greater public enlightenment on the centres of the street children phenomenon;
• Counselling on parenting;
• Encouragement for NGOs and community-based organisations to initiate and sustain action to help families in distress whose children are potential victims of destitution;
• Government to resuscitate the almost moribund structures required to meet child welfare needs; to renovate and expand existing institutions and staff them with fully trained child welfare officers;
• Government and NGOs should set up Drop-in Centres, Reception Centres in urban areas to cater for the street children and provide them with nurturing, education and healthcare.

12.2.9 The Kano Neighbourhood NGO

The declining quality of the Educational System has prompted the establishment of many NGOs to address the situation. In Kano State, an NGO has been formed under the umbrella of Kano Education Forum. The name of the NGO is Kano Neighbourhood Group. It was created essentially to address the problem of neighbourhood primary schools, however the NGOs has expanded its operations to cater for other institutions.

The present administration is concerned about the state of the nation’s education system and it is determined to confront these challenges headlong. It is the belief of government that the problem is best addressed from the foundation level. The University Basic Education Programme (UBE) launched recently marks the beginning of carefully thought out programme of restoration in the education sector.

Basic Education is the foundation for sustainable life-long learning. It provides reading, writing and numeracy skills. It comprises a wide variety of formal and non-formal educational activities and programmes designed to enable learners acquire functional literacy. In Nigerian context, Basic Education includes primary, junior secondary and nomadic education as well as adult literacy.

Basic Education is aimed at equipping individuals with such knowledge, skills and attitudes that will enable them;

1. live meaningful and fulfilling lives;
2. contribute to the development of the society
3. derive maximum social, economic and cultural benefits from the society; and
4. discharge their civic obligations competently

Nigeria is a signatory to the 1990 Jomtiem Declaration of Education for All by the year 2000 and also a member of the group of E-9 Nations committed to the total eradication of illiteracy. In spite of this, the nation’s literacy rate at presently estimated to be 52%. Education statistics for 1996 shows that only 14.1 million children are enrolled in primary schools out of the 21 million children of school-going age. The completion rate was 64% while the rate of transition to junior secondary school was 43.5%. There is overwhelming evidence that these vital literacy indicators have not improve.

There are substantial shortcomings in Nigeria’s institutional and personnel capacities for the delivery of a sound basic education for all citizens. There are also wide spread disparities both in quality and access across the nation. Available infrastructural facilities, teaching and learning materials as well as qualified teachers are grossly inadequate. For Nigeria to attain the desired 100% national literacy rate soon, it is imperative that provisions be made and actions taken to universalise basic education, enthrone a conducive learning environment and improve quality and standards. The Universal Basic Education (UBE) Scheme is designed to address these challenges.

The goals of the UBE Scheme are to universalise access to basic education, engender a conducive learning environment and eradicate illiteracy in Nigeria within the shortest possible time. The specific objectives of the scheme are to:

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