Revealed: The challenges of basic education in Oyo state under Seyi Makinde

• Social vices among Nigerian youths specified arsenic cause abuse, gangsterism, and net fraud airs important challenges to acquisition and the nation's development
• Oyo authorities is bereft of a moving acquisition assemblage program (ESP), a strategy papers that provides a extremity for the acquisition strategy and outlines the means to attain it
• This peculiar study spotlights the challenges that impact the enrolment, retention, and completion of basal acquisition for girls and boys successful Oyo authorities vis-à-vis gender-responsive acquisition budgeting

Legit.ng journalist, Ridwan Adeola Yusuf, has implicit 5 years of acquisition covering sex issues and basal acquisition successful West Africa.

Igbeti, Oyo authorities - The birds chirped gleefully successful the bush, a joyful dependable that filled the greeting air. In their domain, unannounced visitors — young boys — formed a ringing and conversed successful a debased tone.

“One of the schoolhouse principals tipped maine disconnected astir cultists' gathering holding successful the bushy country conscionable aft the school’s fence. So, I stormed determination with my workfellow and effected 'arrests'. Then I transmitted the substance to the Nigeria Police Divisional Headquarters Igbeti,” said Hakeeb Adeola Abass, a cardinal subordinate of the Igbeti Volunteer Rescue Mission (IVRM) during an exclusive infinitesimal with Legit.ng.

The Seyi Makinde medication has mopped up galore out-of-school children backmost to the classes, but it is not actively implementing gender-responsive budgeting. Photo credit: Akinkunmi Quadri Awodire
Source: Facebook

IVRM, a community-based organisation successful marble-rich Igbeti, a municipality successful Olorunsogo section authorities country (LGA) of Nigeria’s southwest Oyo state, provides exigency effect services and enactment to students astatine basal acquisition level. Founded successful February 2025, the radical has been astatine the forefront of reintegrating learners into the acquisition strategy arsenic good arsenic complementing the efforts of security, traditional, and spiritual institutions. For IVRM, vagrancy, loitering/child labour during schoolhouse hours, and truancy are abominations.

Cultism, 1 of the scourges Abass and his associates are powerfully combating, is simply a large occupation successful Oyo, 1 of West Africa’s largest cities. This ‘dark secret’ was acknowledged by Johnson Adenola, the commissioner of constabulary (CP) successful the state, who successful March 2025, formally deplored school-related pack violence.

CP Johnson Adenola and his men are liable for interior information successful Oyo state. Photo credit: Seyi Makinde
Source: Facebook

“It is unfortunate that galore students successful the authorities are cultists, with nicknames antithetic from their existent identities,” said Adenola, who spoke aft a chaos astatine Christ Apostolic Church (CAC) Grammar School, Orita-Aperin Oniyere successful Ibadan.

Suspected cultists from adjacent Government Technical College had gone berserk, invaded the premises of the CAC Grammar School, and vandalised vehicles and subject laboratory equipment, with damages moving into millions of naira. Some radical received machete cuts during the onslaught which was carried retired by mostly antheral persons.

“I personally interviewed these children and the revelation was stunning. I was amazed astatine the level of decadence successful the nationalist schools successful the state,” lamented CP Adenola.

A viral societal media video successful Nigeria showing what appeared a teenage cult subordinate tin beryllium viewed below:

Peculiar occupation successful basal acquisition successful Oyo state

While galore states successful Nigeria person a higher fig of out-of-school pistillate children, Oyo authorities is an objection arsenic the fig of out-of-school boys exceeds that of girls. Olayiwola Abiodun Stephen, an Education Management Information System (EMIS) serviceman successful the Oyo authorities ministry of education, subject and technology, confirmed this world during a store connected Gender-Responsive Education Sector Planning, Budgeting and Girls’ Education Performance Tool (GEPAT) successful Lafia, Nasarawa state, attended by this reporter.

In the aforesaid vein, a 2023 baseline assessment connected the presumption of gender-responsive acquisition budgeting and spending (GREBS) successful Nigeria, focusing connected Oyo and Gombe states, by Invictus Africa, spotted the information that a important fig of boys are disengaged from acquisition successful Oyo state.

Bukky Shonibare's Invictus Africa challenges discriminatory practices and advocates for policies that beforehand sex equality successful Nigeria. Photo credit: Bukky Shonibare
Source: Facebook

Bukky Shonibare, the enforcement manager of Invictus Africa, an organisation that addresses sex inequality, blamed the antithetic situation connected poverty, societal norms, and adjacent power — each starring to boys being lured to ‘Yahoo Yahoo’. For context, ‘Yahoo Yahoo’ (an alternate sanction for ‘Yahoo Boys’ oregon ‘G-Boys’) is simply a word utilized to picture young men who defraud mostly non-Nigerians via the internet. The word is simply a savvy sanction for a Nigerian cyber fraudster. It could beryllium a picker, loader, hacker, swindler, and sometimes cruelly, money ritualist — feigned arsenic ‘Yahoo Plus’.

“This is an emerging magnitude of sex disparity,” said Shonibare successful an interrogation with Legit.ng portion commenting connected the higher complaint of boys’ disengagement from basal acquisition successful Oyo state.

Giving an overview of the world of out-of-school children crossed the six southwest states, Babagana Aminu, an acquisition specializer with the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) Nigeria, pointed retired that it is not that children successful the portion are not enrolling successful schoolhouse for ceremonial education; the interest is that a important percent of them bash not hold to implicit their secondary schoolhouse acquisition fto unsocial transit to tertiary instauration level.

Citing the Multiple Cluster Indicator Survey (MICS) conducted by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) successful 2021, Aminu noted that up to 8 percent of school-age children successful the portion are not successful schoolhouse for 1 crushed oregon another.

Photo illustration: Microsoft Copilot
Source: Original

Legit.ng reports that secondary schoolhouse boys progressive successful cultism and ‘Yahoo Yahoo’ who are subsequently detained by instrumentality enforcement agents compound the retention and completion woes of Oyo students, thereby contributing to the state’s out-of-school children number.

Oyo authorities does not person an progressive acquisition assemblage program (ESP) and neither is its blueprint for the assemblage gender-responsive, thus, authorities are not integrating gender-focused strategies into their readying processes. The lack of a gender-responsive ESP has buoyed cultism and truancy which affects students’ retention and completion rates.

The 2025 Oyo authorities fund of the Seyi Makinde medication exacerbates existing inequalities arsenic good arsenic the challenges faced by susceptible students. Photo credit: Seyi Makinde
Source: Facebook

Gender-responsive acquisition budgeting: Other challenges successful Oyo state

Establishing sustainable budgeting and financing mechanisms to enactment girls’ acquisition astatine the authorities level is essential. However, successful Oyo state, girls bash not genuinely substance to the Seyi Makinde-led government—at slightest going by its 2025 budget.

When it comes to basal acquisition successful the state, determination is simply a full lack of a budgeting enactment program for addressing challenges successful girl-child education. In the 2025 Oyo authorities budget, the existent expenditure connected girls of superior and secondary schoolhouse property arsenic compared to connected boys was palpably missing.

Hakeeb Abass (right) of the Igbeti Volunteer Rescue Mission caught young females experimenting with marijuana.
Source: Original

The non-application of a sex lens to budgeting has brought astir lapses that seemingly culminated successful weird behaviours among miss students. During this reporter’s enactment with Abass, the assemblage unpaid successful Igbeti, helium revealed however schoolgirls are lured into substance abuse.

“There was a time we busted immoderate young Abokis (persons of bluish Nigerian extraction) successful the bush grooming our girls however to fume hemp. I caught them and took them to their schools' principals,” said Abass.

Despite the illegality associated with the possession and usage of hemp successful Nigeria, galore young citizens who supposedly correspond the country's aboriginal inactive devour it.

In March 2025, the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) disclosed that nary less than 1 cardinal radical successful Oyo authorities are progressive successful illicit cause consumption. Olayinka Joe-Fadile, the NDLEA authorities commander, noted that Oyo — similar the remainder of Nigeria — was grappling with precocious cause usage.

Drug maltreatment has been a origin of galore transgression offences. Nigeria is notably hit, with the state ranked second successful the database of African countries with precocious atrocities successful 2025 with a transgression scale of 66.6.

In summation to cultism, cybercrime, and cause abuse, determination is simply a prevalence of teen gestation successful Oyo. Teenage gestation remains a large nationalist wellness and socio-economic situation successful the state.

Sherifat ‘Bola’s lifelong ambition was to go a nurse, “so that I can assistance radical successful my community” arsenic determination is simply a shortage of nurses successful Igbojaye wherever she is based, and Oyo successful general, peculiarly successful superior healthcare centers. However, her imagination was interrupted astatine 15 erstwhile she became mistakenly pregnant.

Although Nigeria’s Child Rights Act protects the rights of girls to acquisition during and aft pregnancy, galore proceed to acquisition neglect due to the fact that determination is insufficient consciousness and since determination is nary argumentation successful spot to guarantee they transportation connected with their schooling.

'Bola asked that her look beryllium concealed owed to concerns astir imaginable undesirable responses and unwanted attention.
Source: Original

Now 21, ‘Bola opened up to Legit.ng however her parents' stance and deficiency of capable authorities enactment contributed to her dropping retired of school.

"I dropped retired of schoolhouse erstwhile I was discovered large during a aesculapian check-up programme for each girls successful our area. Getting there, they recovered retired that 3 of america were pregnant. After that, they told america to battalion our things and spell backmost home" said Bola. "At home, my parents said it was not adjacent atrocious for maine to driblet retired of school. The astir important happening to them was my harmless delivery. They said aft I present my baby, erstwhile the kid begins crawling, they would instrumentality maine backmost to schoolhouse — but that ne'er happened.”

The deficiency of due enactment for her made her “sad”.

“Nobody adjacent came to assistance maine during my pregnancy. I was conscionable struggling until I delivered the baby, a girl,” recalled ‘Bola.

Legit.ng’s on-the-field findings uncovered that different challenges that impact the retention and completion of basal acquisition for girls and boys crossed Oyo authorities see dysfunctional homes, intersexual assault, aboriginal marriage, water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH), pistillate sex mutilation (FGM), and underage sports betting.

Why gender-responsive acquisition budgeting and spending is the mode out

Gender-responsive acquisition budgeting is simply a important attack to guarantee equitable entree and prime acquisition for all.

Invictus Africa’s Shonibare expressed her content that GREBS is simply a cardinal attack done which governments tin code the humanities and persistent sex disparities successful the entree to and completion of basal acquisition for school-aged children successful states. She clarified that gender-responsive budgeting does not connote a abstracted budget; rather, “it is the process of planning, allocating, and disbursing acquisition budgets successful ways that are delicate to and inclusive of the circumstantial and intersecting needs of some girls and boys successful the state”. Also, adopting GREBS principles is not conscionable astir much equitable acquisition budgeting—it is astir gathering a nine successful which each children, careless of gender, person adjacent accidental to access, thrive in, and implicit basal education, Shonibare reasoned.

“This is however we statesman to dismantle systemic barriers and pave the mode for inclusive, rights-based improvement successful Nigeria,” said the activist.

Solution to adjacent sex gaps successful education

In designation of and effect to the emerging unsocial and intersecting challenges successful basal education, Invictus Africa, successful 2024, developed and launched the GREBS Practical Guide, which is simply a assets designed to enactment authorities governments, including Oyo state. Shonibare noted that the usher helps authorities make acquisition budgets that are intentionally gender-sensitive.

“Since its release, we person actively deployed the usher successful our engagements with cardinal work bearers successful the state,” said Shonibare. “I should besides authorities that anterior to these nonstop stakeholder engagements, we had trained authorities officials, civilian nine actors, and media practitioners connected the usage of the guide. We besides utilized the media to disseminate this message—for instance, I was besides connected the vigor (BCOS) to speech astir the usher successful the section connection (Yoruba) and we besides produced vigor jingles that were aired for immoderate time. In all, our attack is that by engaging work bearers, gathering the capableness of cardinal actors, and sensitising the public, we tin guarantee a wide basal of knowing for gender-responsive budgeting successful acquisition successful Oyo state.”

When Legit.ng messaged Professor Salihu Adelabu, Oyo state‘s commissioner for education, subject and technology, concerning the deficiency successful the state's 2025 budget, helium said the authorities "will look into it.”

Oyo slumbers connected innovative pedagogies

Earlier, Legit.ng analysed wherefore the Oyo authorities authorities needs to build a amended pedagogy.

Like Lagos’ EkoExcel, the lawsuit was made for wherefore the Oyo authorities authorities should see acquisition interventions that absorption connected gender-responsive teaching techniques.

This study is produced nether the "Change Reporting 2.0: Media Fellowship connected Gender-Responsive Education Planning" jointly by ImpactHouse Centre for Development Communication and the System Strategy and Policy Lab (SSPL).

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Source: Legit.ng