Gov Inuwa Yahaya of Gombe State has called for urgent and collective action to tackle the rising number of out-of-school children in the state.
The governor made the call on Monday at a one-day stakeholder engagement for the 2025 Enrolment Drive Campaign in Gombe, organised in partnership with the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) and UNICEF.
Represented by the Commissioner for Education, Prof. Aishatu Maigari, Yahaya said Gombe had harmonised its data on out-of-school children, disaggregated by age, gender and disability, and was the only state with two UNICEF-backed frameworks — one for out-of-school children and another for Almajiri education.
He said the state had adopted the Retention, Transition and Completion (RTC) model, introduced vocational training for Almajiri and older learners, and launched accelerated programmes to prepare them for senior school exams.
Yahaya also announced the increase of the state’s 2025/2026 enrolment target from 10,000 to 20,000 pupils per local government area, bringing the total to 220,000, alongside the establishment of model Tsangaya and bilingual schools across the LGAs.
Chairman of SUBEB, Mr Babaji Babadidi, described the campaign as a holistic push against poverty, low awareness and socio-economic barriers to education. UNICEF’s Mohammed Kudi warned that Gombe’s out-of-school population had grown to 737,000, or 13% of the state’s population, but expressed optimism that with political will and community involvement, the challenge could be overcome.
