Opinion: Million Empty Desks by Sadiya Mukhtar & Folahan Johnson

On a dusty road in northern Nigeria, a girl balances a tray of sachet water on her head as she walks past a school compound. Laughter spills from inside the classrooms. A bell rings. Lessons begin. She does not stop. She never does.

Multiply her story by nine million.

Across Nigeria, nearly nine million girls are not in school, not because they lack intelligence, curiosity, or ambition, but because the system designed to protect and educate them has quietly stepped aside. Their absence is so widespread that it has begun to feel normal. Empty desks no longer shock us. Lost futures barely register.

But what kind of country accepts the disappearance of almost half its daughters from the classroom and calls it business as usual?

If education is the foundation of national development, what happens when that foundation excludes millions of girls?

A Crisis We Can No Longer Pretend Is Invisible

Nigeria is home to 18.3 million out-of-school children, the highest number anywhere in the world. Nearly 49% of them (about 8.97 million) are girls. That number alone should stop us in our tracks. It is larger than the population of many countries. It represents not just an education crisis, but a generational emergency.

This crisis is not evenly spread. In the North-West and North-East, girls account for up to 60% of out-of-school children, driven by insecurity, displacement, and child marriage. In the South, economic hardship, climate shocks, and urban poverty quietly push girls out of classrooms and into markets, workshops, and homes.

Yet even for the children who do make it into school, the picture remains grim. 73% of Nigerian children aged 7–10 cannot read a simple sentence, and 63% of girls never complete secondary school. School attendance does not guarantee learning, and learning does not guarantee completion, especially for girls.

These numbers are not abstract. They translate into lives narrowed too early, choices made too soon, and potential extinguished before it ever has the chance to surface. Why Girls Are the First to Be Left Behind

Girls do not drop out of school in isolation. They are pushed—slowly, systematically, and predictably—by forces that reinforce one another.

Child marriage remains one of the most powerful drivers. In several northern states, the majority of girls are married before they turn eighteen. Once married, education becomes optional at best and forbidden at worst. Pregnancy, domestic expectations, and social pressure seal the exit from the classroom. Studies show that child marriage reduces a girl’s likelihood of completing secondary education by 23%.

Insecurity and violence compound the problem. Boko Haram attacks, banditry, and mass kidnappings have destroyed over 1,500 schools, displaced thousands of teachers, and traumatized entire communities. When schools are attacked, parents make difficult choices. Boys may return. Girls are more often kept at home “for safety.” Temporary fear becomes permanent exclusion.

Then there is poverty, quieter but just as ruthless. Public education in Nigeria is labelled “free,” but families know better. Uniforms, books, transport, examination fees, and informal levies can cost a household ₦107,000 to ₦415,500 per child per year, up to half of an annual minimum wage income. When parents must choose, sons are prioritised. Daughters are withdrawn to help at home or earn income.

For adolescent girls, menstruation becomes another barrier. Over 90% of schools lack basic hygiene facilities, and more than half of girls report being unable to change sanitary materials at school. As a result, girls miss up to two months of learning every year. Many never return.

Underlying all of this are deeply entrenched gender norms, the belief that a woman’s place is in the home, that education makes girls “disobedient,” or that investing in a girl is wasted because she will marry into another family. These ideas do not just shape attitudes; they shape outcomes.

The Numbers Tell a Brutal Story About Our Priorities

Nigeria’s education crisis is not the result of ignorance. The data is clear. The needs are known. The failure is one of choice.

In the 2026 national budget, Nigeria allocated ₦15.52 trillion to debt servicing, 26.7% of total spending. Education received ₦2.43 trillion, just 4.2%. Per citizen, that means ₦67,478 goes to paying creditors, while only ₦10,565 is spent on education.

UNESCO recommends that countries invest 15–20% of their national budget in education. Nigeria is not slightly below this benchmark. It is ignoring it entirely.

The consequences are devastating. With 44 million school-age children, Nigeria currently spends about ₦55,227 per child per year, roughly $37. The World Bank estimates that at least $250 per child is required to deliver quality basic education. We are funding education at less than 15% of what is needed.

For the nine million out-of-school girls, this translates into a painful truth: as a nation, we are investing less in their education than the cost of a sachet of water per day.

When Budget Promises Vanish Before Reaching the Classroom

Even the limited funds allocated to education rarely reach the classroom intact.

Between 2021 and 2024, only 24–47% of budgeted education funds were actually spent. In 2024 alone, ₦367.6 billion promised for education never reached schools. Not necessarily stolen, just trapped in bureaucratic delays, withheld releases, and administrative bottlenecks.

That lost money could have built thousands of classrooms, hired tens of thousands of teachers, provided textbooks, or funded scholarships for girls who desperately need support.

When money fails to reach schools, the impact is immediate and visible: overcrowded classrooms, unpaid teachers, broken toilets, empty libraries. And once again, girls pay the highest price.

How Debt Is Quietly Stealing Girls’ Futures

Nigeria’s growing debt burden is often discussed in abstract fiscal terms, but its human cost is concrete.

In 2020, Nigeria spent 1.7 times more on debt than on education. By 2026, that ratio will reach 6.4 to 1. Every naira sent to creditors is a naira not spent on classrooms, teachers, sanitation, or scholarships.

A ten-year-old Nigerian girl today already carries ₦717,391 in national debt, debt accumulated before she could vote, work, or consent. If she never receives an education, her lifetime earnings will be drastically reduced, yet she will still bear the burden of repaying debts incurred in her name.

This is not just poor economic planning. It is intergenerational injustice.

What Change Would Actually Look Like

The tragedy of this crisis is not that solutions are unclear. It is that they are politically inconvenient.

Nigeria could take immediate, decisive steps:

• Create a Girls’ Education Emergency Fund to support cash transfers, free uniforms, textbooks, and school feeding.
• Enforce the Child Rights Act nationwide and prosecute child marriage as the crime it is.
• Make schools safe and girl-friendly, with water, toilets, menstrual products, and secure infrastructure.
• Recruit and support female teachers, especially in rural and conflict-affected areas.
• Fix budget execution, ensuring education funds move directly and transparently to schools.

None of these ideas are radical. They are practical. They are affordable. And they would change millions of lives.

The Question Nigeria Must Answer

Every budget is a moral document. It tells us who matters, who waits, and who is forgotten.

Right now, Nigeria’s budget tells nine million girls that their education can wait, but debt cannot.

It tells them that their dreams are negotiable, their futures optional, their absence acceptable.

But history will not be kind to this choice.

Because a country that educates its boys and abandons its girls is not just wasting talent, it is engineering inequality, poverty, and instability for generations to come.

Nine million girls are watching. Some from market stalls. Some from IDP camps. Some from homes they were never meant to be confined to.

They are waiting for an answer.

Will Nigeria continue to look away, or will it finally pull out a chair, open the classroom door, and say: you belong here?

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed here are those of the authors, Sadiya Mukhtar and Folahan Johnson, and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Legit.ng.

Source: Legit.ng