About 70 per cent of Nigerian children under the age of 10 cannot read and understand a simple sentence, highlighting the scale of the country’s learning crisis and raising concerns about the future quality of its workforce.
The disclosure was made by Rukaiya el-Rufai, National Coordinator of Human Capital Development 2.0 and Special Adviser to the President on the National Economic Council and Climate Change, during a media engagement in Abuja on Monday.
El-Rufai described the level of learning poverty as particularly worrying because being enrolled in school does not necessarily mean that children are acquiring the basic literacy and numeracy skills needed for further education and productive employment.
She said the situation extends beyond the education sector because children who do not develop strong foundational skills may later struggle to acquire the sophisticated technical abilities demanded by modern industries.
According to her, the World Bank's assessment puts the learning-poverty situation for some relevant age groups even higher, illustrating the depth of the challenge facing Nigeria's education system.
El-Rufai used the experience of the Dangote Refinery to demonstrate how weaknesses in foundational education can affect the country's ability to develop a technically skilled workforce.
She explained that some highly specialised industrial jobs require workers to possess basic mathematical and scientific knowledge before they can be trained to the required professional standard.
The implication, she said, is that Nigeria cannot focus only on getting children into classrooms while overlooking whether they are actually learning the skills needed to progress academically and eventually participate productively in the economy.
The latest disclosure comes against a backdrop of previous assessments showing that Nigeria has struggled with foundational literacy and numeracy for years.
A UNICEF situation analysis found that almost 70 per cent of primary school pupils could not read simple words, while only 27 per cent of children aged seven to 14 demonstrated core reading skills at the second- or third-grade level in the cited assessment.
More recent government statements have similarly highlighted the problem, with the Federal Government saying in June that roughly three out of every four Nigerian children at basic-education level could not read and understand an age-appropriate text by age 10.
The figures point to a persistent gap between school attendance and actual learning outcomes, making foundational education one of the major challenges facing Nigeria's human-capital development.
El-Rufai said the Human Capital Development 2.0 programme is responding by concentrating on six priority indicators covering under-five mortality, stunting, immunisation, out-of-school children, learning poverty and young people who are not in employment, education or training.
The programme has also shifted from simply monitoring activities to tracking measurable outcomes that can contribute to improvements in Nigeria's Human Capital Index.
The initiative is being implemented through the National Economic Council, bringing the Federal Government and state governments into a coordinated framework for addressing human-capital challenges.
El-Rufai stressed that the challenges differ significantly across Nigeria, making it difficult to solve the problem through a single national intervention without considering individual state circumstances.
She said states were therefore developing their own human-capital development plans based on their specific challenges and existing areas of progress.
The approach is also expected to make greater use of data to determine where government interventions and resources are most urgently required.
Doosuur Zasha, Director of Advocacy and Communications at the programme, urged the media to play a stronger role in monitoring human-capital investments and assessing whether government spending is translating into measurable improvements.
She said the broader objective is to ensure that Nigerians can access quality healthcare, children can learn effectively, young people and adults can develop useful skills and people facing barriers can participate fully in the economy.
The challenge is particularly significant for Nigeria because weak foundational learning can affect several stages of a person's development, from secondary education and vocational training to higher education and eventual employment.
When children struggle to read and understand simple texts at an early age, they may also face difficulties learning more complex subjects that require strong comprehension, reasoning and problem-solving abilities.
The consequences can therefore extend beyond individual academic performance to the wider economy, where industries require workers capable of operating increasingly sophisticated technologies and production systems.
The Human Capital Development 2.0 programme is supported by development and private-sector partners, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Aliko Dangote Foundation.
For Nigeria, the latest figures reinforce the need for interventions that focus not only on school enrolment but also on what children actually learn once they enter the classroom.
Improving foundational literacy and numeracy will require sustained attention to teachers, learning materials, early-childhood education, school infrastructure, parental involvement and the conditions that determine whether children can learn effectively.
The scale of the problem also means that progress will need to be measured through actual improvements in children's abilities rather than simply the number of programmes launched or schools attended.
As government and development partners continue to redesign human-capital interventions, the ability to ensure that Nigerian children can acquire basic reading and numeracy skills remains one of the clearest tests of the country's education and economic-development strategy.