One Youth Global has raised fresh alarm over Nigeria’s deepening social crisis, saying more than 120 million people are living in extreme poverty while over 18 million children remain out -of-school.
The organisation called on the administration of President Bola Tinubu to adopt urgent and practical policies to expand access to education, improve school infrastructure, and reward academic excellence.
President of One Youth Global, Mr. Uchechukwu Agbo, made the remarks ahead of Spark Nation 3.0, the organisation’s flagship quiz and debate competition for secondary schools across West and Central Africa, scheduled to hold in Abakaliki, Ebonyi State, from April – June 2026.
Agbo said the country must treat the education crisis as a national emergency, saying that “currently, over 18 million children are still out- of -school in Nigeria. This is a state of emergency.
“For the nation to move forward, the federal government needs to do more to ensure that more young people enrol, stay through, and graduate from schools across Nigeria.”
He said One Youth Global had already awarded over 100 scholarships across different levels of education in about 22 states as part of efforts to reduce the number of out-of-school children, adding that the initiative would be expanded to West and Central Africa this year.
He also called for a major review of the nation’s curriculum, arguing that young people must be equipped with practical knowledge and problem-solving skills relevant to the modern world.
“As we work to promote enrolment and excellence in our school system, I think we also need to review our curricula to meet 21st-century needs,” he said.
“Our young people need to be empowered with the right knowledge. We need to promote excellence in terms of creating actionable solutions to societal problems, such that the question shifts from what would you want to be when you grow up to which problem would you want to solve when you grow up.”
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On the welfare of teachers, Agbo said poor remuneration was undermining the profession and discouraging capable people from entering it.
“There seems to be a dynamic where only people who are not able to get jobs in other places get to become teachers these days because teachers are so poorly paid,” he said.
“If we are to promote excellence, we need to pay our teachers better.”
He further urged Nigerians in the diaspora to invest in education in their home communities, insisting that the government alone could not fix the problem.
Agbo linked the education crisis to the country’s insecurity, noting that a large proportion of out-of-school children are in northern Nigeria, where violence is most prevalent.
Also, he called on governments at all levels to urgently equip schools with modern learning facilities, especially laboratories and libraries.
“Our schools are very, very under-equipped,” Agbo said. “The average science student in Nigeria knows a lot about theory.
“They know very little about practicals, and that’s basically because the schools are dilapidated. They don’t have equipment to run practicals.”
