A Pre-View of Government Efforts in Promoting Mass Literacy in Nigeria: Lessons from Adult Education Historical Research

Abstract

This paper examined past government efforts in promoting mass literacy in the country with a view to drawing out implications and lessons from adult education historical research that could guide future literacy attempts. A pre-view of the past revealed that despite all attempts to give illiteracy a running battle, the menace has remained intractable to the extent that Nigeria is regarded as one of the E-9 countries with the largest concentration of illiterates. This is substantiated by the 2008 Global Monitoring Report which gave the most recent literacy rate for Nigeria as 69%, meaning that 31% of the population of about 150 million are still illiterate. This indicates that none of the literacy efforts attempted in Nigeria so far have produced the desired results. This study identified ineffective education policies, lack of political and national wills, financial inadequacy, poor planning and implementation strategies, lack of reliable baseline data, and lack of commitment on the part of leaders, among others, as prime causes of the failures. As a way out of the impasse, the study calls for revision of the country’s basic education Act of 2004; enforcement of reasonable acts and policies backed with fund, determined political will and decisive action by the government, effective programme planning and execution, mobilization of National Youth Corps members, training and retraining of literacy facilitators, and popular participation of Nigerians in order to enable future literacy efforts yield desired results. With the above suggestions, it is hoped that the graph of illiteracy rate in Nigeria will drop sharply in no long time.

Key words: Government efforts, mass literacy, illiteracy and adult education