The International literacy day is celebrated every September 8th as set aside by the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) since 1967. It is a day marked to advance the literacy agenda and to emphasise the importance of literacy for individuals, communities and societies. The goal of the Literacy day aligns with Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4 which states that by 2030 each country’s youths and a large proportion of adults achieve literacy and numeracy, achieving an all-inclusive, equitable education and promoting lifelong learning opportunities for all.
To achieve SDG 4, the expectation is that the literacy rate for youths is at 94% and the literacy rate for adults is expected to reach 90%.
As Nigeria celebrates today, the federal government of Nigeria has estimatedNigeria’s illiteracy rate as 31% of the total population which means 69% of the population is literate, lower than the expected benchmark. An Illiteracy rate of 31% is equivalent to 62 million out of Nigeria’s estimated population of 200 million are illiterate.
In the past 7 years, Nigeria’s illiteracy levels have dropped from 38% to 31%, indicating a 7% change between 2015 to 2022. However, at this rate, Nigeria would need an average of 21 years to achieve 94% youth literacy rates.
Literacy, which at its most basic refers to the ability to read and write, is really critical to national development. Socio-cultural factors such as early marriage, religious and cultural beliefs, child labour and financial incapacity are some of the factors that can deter the achievement of SDG 4 in Nigeria. Other factors include low access to education and low-quality education exemplified by poor teaching and learning facilities and environment and irrelevant curriculum.
The Nigerian government has made some efforts to improve access to education, with programs like the mass literacy programs as well as the school feeding program to improve enrollment but positive results have been slow in coming. UNESCO’s latest global education monitoring report stated that out-of-school children in Nigeria have increased to an estimated 20 million.
Literacy can be improved in several ways and Mrs Jane Odeh, a lecturer at Benue State University who shared her thoughts with Dataphyte said all stakeholders have a role to play from the government to teachers. “The government plays a vital role in improving literacy by making education more accessible to all individuals, investing more in government schools, building libraries and making them accessible to the public, extensive training of teachers and lecturers and paying more attention to adult education”. She also emphasised the importance of teachers and lecturers in influencing literacy levels, stating that teachers should help students to inculcate the habit of reading, and building vocabulary and fluency, she held that building a habit of reading would reduce the number of dropouts and increase the zeal of learning among students.