TITLE:
Some Challenges Militating against Developing Countries Achieving SDG 4 on Targets: Nigeria as Case Study
AUTHORS:
Anthony Wakwe Lawrence, Noel Ihebuzor, Damiete Onyema Lawrence
KEYWORDS:
Poor-Funding, Out-of-School-Children, Sustainable-Development-Goals, Goal-Targets, Descriptive-Assessment, Quality-Education, eLearning
JOURNAL NAME:
Modern Economy,
Vol.11 No.7,
July
21,
2020
ABSTRACT: The Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4, which is
“ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education and promoting lifelong
learning opportunities for all”, is a critical goal that is needed to be
achieved for improved quality of life and the developmental advancement of any
nation. The United Nations Sustainable Development reports identified some
major challenges that can hinder Nigeria from achieving this goal: they include
poor funding of education in the budgets, out-of-school-children, prolonged
neglect of learning environments and facilities, among many others. We
evaluated those identified critical factors
of poor funding, poor school enrolment/out-of-school-children and poor
school infrastructure using fishbone and problem tree analysis and also applied
qualitative descriptive assessment of the 7 SDG 4 targets and the 3 enabling
targets. Funding was identified as the key issue and it is also an underlying factor militating against the
achievement of many other challenges. The other key challenge of poor
school enrolment cannot be resolved with persisting insecurity and Almajiri
problems in the northern parts of Nigeria. Without concerted effort to increase
the budget for education and ensuring that allocated funds are not
misappropriated, it will not be possible to achieve the SDG 4. This position is
reinforced by the fact that Nigeria is currently ranked 159 out of 162 nations
in our performance towards achieving the SDGs and also our not too good performance
during the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) era.