How We Plan To Improve Educational Outcomes And School Enrolment In The Coming Years
Channel: Prof. Yemi Osinbajo
Date: 2018-10-31

SPEECH BY HIS EXCELLENCY, PROF. YEMI OSINBAJO, SAN, GCON, VICE PRESIDENT, FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA AT THE 60TH ANNIVERSARY OF GRANGE SCHOOL, HELD IN LAGOS ON 30TH OCTOBER 2018


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I am extremely honoured to have been invited to flag off the ceremonies marking the 60th Anniversary of the Grange School – this pre-eminent citadel of education. I have known Grange School practically all my life since I am only a year older than the school. I have been asked to speak on “academic excellence as a tool for nation-building” and I will speak for a very few minutes.

As you already know, Nigeria is Africa’s most populous country, and like the rest of the continent, it is a nation of young people; half the population is below the age of 20. By the year 2050, we are told that we will be the third most populous country in the world, exceeded only by India and China, in that order. 60 per cent of that population will be made up of young people, an average age of about 17.5 years.

So, we are going to have a large youth population that can be a tremendous blessing for economic growth and prosperity; it can also be a problem especially if we don’t plan well and in advance. Poverty, extreme poverty further complicates the problem for a country like ours.

In the last poverty survey which was done in 2012, which is the last cycle of household poverty survey done, we are estimated to have about 112 million Nigerians living in extreme poverty. And so poverty is both a cause and consequence of our poor educational attainments.

Currently, we have 9 million children out of school mostly in the poorest parts of the country; of those in school, only 20% of those who completed public primary education could actually read; girls constitute the majority of those out-of-school children. So, there will be a lot of arguments, some of us may be familiar with the arguments about how crucial education is to reducing extreme poverty, and some will say it may not be entirely true to say that education will always reduce poverty.

But I think the statistics especially from those who have done credible studies, the UNESCO Global Education Monitoring Report and the Education Commission’s Learning Generation Report, show that education actually has a major impact on several aspects of what will constitute good living or raising the standard of living in a society. So, there is evidence showing that an individual’s earnings will actually grow if people are well educated.

So, education, we are told, reduces poverty by almost 60%. 171 million people could be lifted out of extreme poverty if all children left school just with basic reading skills – that is equivalent to a 12% drop in the world total. Absolute poverty would be reduced by 30% just by improving basic reading and learning skills.

The other point they say is that education increases individual earnings. Education increases earnings by roughly 10% per year of schooling.  For each $1 or N360 invested in an additional year of schooling, earnings increased by $5 in low-income countries and $2.5 in lower-middle-income countries.

Another is that education reduces economic inequalities. So, if workers from poor and rich backgrounds received the same education; the disparity between the two in working poverty actually decreases by 39%.

They also found that education promotes economic growth. And there are all sorts of other statistics.

One of the critical things is that we have a huge population and that population continues to grow. Part of it is because those who live in extreme poverty have far more children than those who are better off. So, the average person who lives in extreme poverty has five children while those who are much better off will have an average of about three children. With education, you actually have a reduction in the number of children and a reduction in population which of course makes it more manageable to run a society especially when it comes to providing the required services for the people.



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Oluyemi Oluleke “Yemi” Osinbajo is a Nigerian Lawyer and politician who is the current Vice President of Nigeria, in office since 29 May 2015.

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