A stroll through Minna, Niger state capital, on a languid afternoon would stir a dread deep in the hearts of professional sociologists and other caring folks; the burgeoning population of out-of-school children roaming the streets and the shoulders of expressways would be a cause for such consternation.
Added to this confusing mix are discarded invitation cards and stickers on transport vehicles announcing pending weddings and celebrating the ones just concluded; more often than not these wedding notices are for plural-wedding unions. Thus, more babies would be birthed soon and, as the children of a household grows, more of them would drop out of school and go into jaywalking with “pure water,” groundwater, kola nuts, etc., for wares.
Even those who are fortunate to make it to school are a bulge in the primary and the secondary school systems, and no wonder a good chunk of them never get to learn basic literate-level things at age 18 and they get stuck there essentially as semi-illiterates. Yet, their parents keep churning out babies at alarming rates.
Sunday Adole Jonah,
Department of Physics,
Federal University of Technology, Minna
