The United Nations Children’s Fund reported on Tuesday that sixty-seven percent of Nigerian children live in multidimensional poverty, deprived of basic education, health, and other fundamental rights.

Kitty van der Heijden, the agency’s deputy executive director, disclosed this at a breakout session on “Safeguarding Nigeria’s Future: Prioritising Child Well-being” at the ongoing Nigerian Economic Summit in Abuja, warning that the country’s ambition for economic transformation could falter unless children’s welfare is placed at the heart of national policy.

Van der Heijden quantified the crisis, stating: “Sixty-seven percent of children in Nigeria are multidimensionally poor. So if we talk about 100 children here, 67 out of 100 are deprived.”

She challenged the nation’s priorities, adding: “We talk about Nigeria’s economy and its political position in Africa and globally. But if the children of Nigeria are not getting their basic minimum rights and services, then those of us here as development partners are not doing our job,” while noting that children in the rural areas are the most deprived.

According to her, Nigeria’s children deserve better, and their well-being should not be treated as charity but as a matter of justice and rights.

She emphasized that these are not privileges but entitlements, stating: “It’s their right, not their privilege. It’s their fundamental right to be able to go to school, to learn, and to get the basic health services, both preventive and curative. Nigerian children don’t need to be child labourers. Nigerian girls don’t need to get married before they are actually women.”

The UNICEF deputy chief underscored the importance of ensuring that every child has access to clean water, proper sanitation, and social protection, all of which she noted remain scarce in many parts of Nigeria.

Oby Ezekwesili, former Minister of Education, said Nigeria must begin to treat education as a core economic priority, warning that the country cannot achieve growth while neglecting its children’s learning and welfare.

She stressed the economic significance of education, saying: “Education is profoundly an economic activity.”

She also tasked the government on creating a nationwide system to register every child as the foundation for long-term planning, arguing: “We must get a sense of the children we bring into the world so we can plan scaled transformation for them. We can’t continue to cheat our children or dump on them.”

Ezekwesili further proposed the creation of a national scorecard on child development, tracking progress in areas such as birth registration, immunization, and literacy, among other indicators.

Suwaba Saidu, Minister of State for Education, also emphasized that reliable data is crucial to tackling the problem of out-of-school children. She informed that her ministry is working to obtain accurate figures on the actual number of out-of-school children to ensure effective planning.