The overall objective of the project is to strengthen the Capacity of Civil Society Organizations in Nigeria to engage in the policy process and amplify the voices of the marginalized.

Nigeria as a country has over time battled with the issue around attaining Universal Education for the citizen’s and providing quality education that contributes to national development. These is so because the country believes and recognizes that for any nation or society to develop, the country must have good education system in place. As a result, Nigeria over time has made concerted efforts to put in place several mechanisms to support the country’s growth economically, politically, socially and cultural wise.

The policy provision in the country has always been the sole initiative of the federal government of Nigeria which are then adopted/adapted by the various states. National laws need to be rectified by the 3rd states houses of assemblies to be considered a national law, and states are expected to domesticate these laws to suit local environment to be operational in such states. This usually comes as either an implementing framework of a particular Act or law.

Nigeria as a country does not lack in policies. Since independence, Nigeria has evolved from one policy regime to the other. However as noted by research and education scholars, the problem of Nigeria policies are based on the gaps between Policy planning, policy implementation and monitoring the implementation process. Unfortunately, educational policies and goal attainment have been irreconcilable due to implementation constraints (Okoroma, 2016). Since the independence of Nigeria, the country has reviewed Her National policies form.

The Nigeria Education system has been publicly criticized with various challenges of poor funding; with all the pronouncements and being signatory to several international treaties, Nigeria education is still poorly funded. For a long time since 2015, the federal government fund on education has reduced to 5% of the total budget of the federation which stands at 19% of the 26% committed at the international level to put into education.

Again, there is the challenge of inadequate qualified teaching manpower. Nigeria school population in the Universal Basic education level from ECCDE to Junior Secondary stands at 40,237,742 million of which 7,159 million are in the Early Child Care Development Education (ECCDE), 27,889, 387million primary schools and 5,189,093million in Junior secondary. With this number, there are few qualified teachers in schools ( UBEC NPA 2018). The National personnel Audit report for 2018 shows that students-teacher ratio is 126:1.

There is also the challenge of inadequate infrastructures in basic education. This has been associated with the high rate of girls’ dropouts. These drop out also, add up to 13.2 million children aged 6-17, who are out of school (UNICEF, 2018). According to Universal Basic Education Commission “As many as thirteen million eligible children might still lack access to primary education as evident in the primary GER and NER of 87.45 (88.41 males; 86.46 females percent respectively.

Similarly, the gross and net intake analyses indicated that many children lack the opportunity to enroll in Primary 1. In fact, the net intake data revealed that over two million children lack the opportunity to enroll in Primary 1 when they become six years old. Gross intake ratio in first grade of primary education, female (% of relevant age group) in Nigeria was 80.41 as of 2010 (UIS )

The change that CSACEFA’s would like to see at the end of the project is Strengthened capacity of CSOs and Stakeholders on policy engagement at Zonal states and Community levels that will contribute to Improved access to quality, inclusive education especially for girls and the marginalized in Nigeria.

CSACEFA intends to build the capacity of civic groups to strengthen the mutual accountability of education policy dialogue and monitoring. CSACEFA will increase effective representation of civil society in institutional policy dialogue with government and community groups, improve the availability of relevant information and evidence-based data to enable the development of more informed policy responses on girl-child and marginalized.

To achieve this, CSACEFA will partner with other networks, like Federation of female lawyers, Networks of persons living with disabilities, Nigeria Union of teachers, Community leaders and Faith/Community-based organizations. Partnership will also be extended to the development agencies and organization implementing other education projects in focal states.

An earlier phase of the project was implemented in 2020-2021 with support from Education Out Loud.