INTRODUCTION

Data at the disposal of NMEC shows that Nigeria has an adult literacy rate of 62% (2013 estimates), based on national population estimate of 165 million people. The implication is that the country has an adultiliteracy rate of 38%, representing about 62 million Nigerians. A UNICEF survey published in 2013 also estimated that Nigeria has over 1.3 million out-of-school children (10 per cent of the global total and the largest number in any single country). Similarly, over three million nomadic school-aged children have no access to any form of schooling. The 2010 ministerial report on Madarasat pducation shows that some 9.5 million of the concerned children have no access to basic education. These are in fact the factors that put Nigeria in the E-9 Group of Countries-the nine most highly populated countries in the world that represent more than 53 per cent of the world’s iliterate population with over two-thirds of the world’s illiterate adults and over half the world’s out-of-school children. The problems are further complicated by regional, gender related and socio economic disparities in access to education. The country is also facing serious challenges of poor levels of retention, low completion rates and drop-out at various points in the educational cycle.

Developed through a fully participatory process, this Policy Guidelines is an attempt to harmonize the provisions of earlier a policy drafts and other statutory documents. These include: the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (as ammended) as it relates to adult literacy; the National Policy on Education 2013, which also stresses the elimination of mass illiteracy within the shortest possible time; the provisions of Decree 17 of 25 June 1990 establishing the National Commission for Mass Literacy, Adult and Non-formal Education, the 2008 NMEC “National Blueprint for Adult and Non-formal Education in Nigeria”; the “National NFE Policy Benchmark for Integrating Basic Education into the Qur’anic Schools system in Nigeria”; “National Communication Strategies for Integration of Basic Education into Qur’anic Schools”; the 2008 National Report on The Development and State-of-the-Art of Adult Learning and Education, presented at the 6th International Conference on Adult Education (CONFINTEA VI); and the UNICEF-supported NMEC report “Non-formal Education in Nigeria: Policy Issues and Practice” of 2010.