THE Federal Government has admitted that it might not actualise the goals of Education For All (EFA) by 2015 going by the enormous challenges confronting the nation.

Minister of State for Education, Mr Nyesom Wike, said this in Abuja on Tuesday, stressing the need for enhanced public-private partnership in the eradication of illiteracy in the country.

Speaking at the workshop on Enhancing Public Private Partnership for Literacy, Mr Wike said in spite of the various efforts aimed attaining a high literacy level in Nigeria, illiteracy continued to be a significant problem in many parts of the country.

He lamented that Nigeria might be the only country in Sub-Sahara Africa that would not eradicate illiteracy by at least 50 per cent despite efforts committed to the goal in the past.

Wike said: “Nigeria is perhaps the only E-9 country in Sub-Saharan Africa with serious challenges of turning around the illiteracy rate among the youth and adults by 2015 timeline in order to achieve EFA Goals 3 and 4 and MDGs.”

He maintained that the ongoing revitalisation of adult and youth literacy in Nigeria should be utilised to ensure Nigeria quit the league of E-9 countries and ultimately improve human capital development and empowerment.

“It has been postulated that Nigeria is one of the 12 countries that may or will not achieve the EFA literacy goals by 2015. The project on revitalising adult and youth literacy in Nigeria is the country’s very first effort to fund literacy programmes and project in favour of achieving EFA goals,” he said.

He added that the public-private partnership was essential and expected to play active role in the non-formal Education sub sector, saying: “The non-formal education sector is critical for national development. Education for all may not be achieved in the country without collaborative effort of the private sector.”

While reeling out the challenges before the country in reducing the 40 million adult illiterates in Nigeria, Minister of Education, Professor Ruqayyatu Rufa’i, said the problem of providing quality education to the non-formal sector especially at the grass-roots was a huge task which requires a lot of awareness and sensitisation.

She, therefore, called for participation from civil society groups and other stakeholders in tackling this challenge.

The workshop was said to be of the three activities Nigeria had committed itself to following the Abuja Framework of Action signed between Nigeria and the United Nations Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) in June 2010.

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