3. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

PHOTO: LAURETTE ABUYA/ACTIONAID

Nigeria has a very long way to go to deliver inclusive basic education, especially to the most marginalised and excluded. Given the lack of credible official figures on children with disabilities in Nigeria, or the extent of their exclusion from education, it is hard to know the full scale of the issue.

What we do know, however, is that there is very little public provision for children with disabilities, and where there is it is either in private or segregated schools (and often both). There is little political will or funding to back a move towards inclusive education; and without substantially more of both, Nigeria’s draft federal inclusive education strategy cannot hope to be operationalised.

Teacher numbers are inadequate to provide quality and inclusive basic education for all children. The education workforce is highly unequally spread across the country and not sufficiently funded to support workforce development for inclusive education. This is manifest in a lack of teacher training and a persistent shortage of qualified teachers, both overall and in terms of specialised training, at state and federal levels.