Bidemi Nelson, CEO, Shield of Innocence Initiative, Benin City, Edo State: Children who have never been to school and may never see the four walls of a school continue to be a painful reality in the world and particularly in Nigeria. With over 13 million “out of school” children in Nigeria alone, alongside overcrowded classrooms in public schools and varying exorbitant school fees in private schools, primary school education is bound to elude many children in the country.

The pressures on the “Affordable Educational Institutions” in Nigeria continue to mount, particularly with the skyrocketing rise in the population. Family planning is a topic that is usually taken with kids’ gloves because of religious beliefs and the ubiquity of sex-related themes and addicts. Until every adult becomes more responsible in bedroom matters and conscious that every copulation could be a child in the making, the problem of “out of school” children remains.