EFFORTS by the Federal Government to get the actual number of Nigerian children in public and private basic schools across the country may have been compromised as the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) recorded figures obtained from Enugu State as that of Ondo State in the just concluded National Personnel Audit, the ICIR can authoritatively report.

Also there is no data recorded for private schools in most states in the Southwest,  including Anambra and Imo states in the Southeast.

The errors make it difficult  for analysts to engage with the data meaningfully.

The National Personnel Audit took place in two phases − the first phase was conducted in all states of the three geo-political zones in the southern part (South East, South South and South West) of the country from April 29- May 27, 2018. The second phase was conducted in all states of the three geo-political zones in the Northern part (North East, North West and North Central) of the country from June 3 to 30, 2018.

In April 2018, Executive Secretary of UBEC, Hammid Bobboyi, explained that the exercise would be a comprehensive audit of all public and private basic education institutions in the country, noting that it would help to obtain comprehensive and reliable data of children of school-going age enrolled in basic education schools− primary and junior secondary.

But while going through the data posted on the official website of UBEC as the outcome of the audit, ICIR found out that contrary to the objective of the exercise, the figure recorded for Ondo State was the same as one computed for Enugu State.

Though, the columns bearing the names of the two states were different, what was recorded for Enugu State was exactly what came up under Ondo State when this reporter sought to find out the result for the state.

On the computed result of the audit, only five South West states− Oyo, Ogun, Osun, Ekiti and Lagos have their data computed. All the Northern states including the Federal Capital Territory were marked pending− suggesting they were still being processed. Ondo State was however marked processed.

Similarly, Abia and Bayelsa states were the only two states from the South East and South South geo-political zones that were still pending.

But contrary to claim by UBEC Executive Secretary that the exercise was going to be comprehensive to accommodate all the private basic schools in the country, only Enugu State, whose data was duplicated under Ondo among all the states whose data were already processed, had data on private schools.

Lagos, Ekiti, Ogun, Osun and Oyo as well as Anambra and Imo had no data for private basic schools.

About four years ago, the United Nations Education and Children Fund (UNICEF) revealed that over 10 million Nigerian kids are out of school, placing Nigeria among the top 12 countries accounting for the 47 per cent of the world’s out-of-school children.

The last school audit in Nigeria took place in 2010.