Pamela Okoroigwe, Education Champion

Educating the public about education laws and advocating for policy to promote girls' education

The Issue

The issue

Nigeria’s Universal Basic Education (UBE) Act requires the federal and state governments to fund nine years of education for every student. However, many states have not accessed the available UBE matching grant funds for education because they don’t have the capacity to meet the guidelines or they haven’t committed the necessary 50% of their own budgets to education. Even in states that have received the UBE money, education is still not free because schools have hidden fees for uniforms, transportation and tuition.

Pamela’s approach

Policy Reform

Growing up in Nigeria, Pamela witnessed gender-based violence and discrimination against women. At the age of 14, she decided to become an advocate for others and pursued a career in law. Today, she works as a program manager and senior legal officer at the Legal Defence and Assistance Project (LEDAP), where she advocates for women’s rights and conducts pro bono work for domestic violence survivors and victims of human rights violations.

With her Malala Fund grant, Pamela and LEDAP work to ensure that the state government fully implements the UBE Act and train state officials how to implement the law and access the funds for education. Pamela also runs campaigns to raise awareness about the UBE Act for relevant stakeholders — including education officials and paralegals — to educate girls and parents about their constitutional right to free, basic primary education. Pamela and her fellow Nigerian Education Champions also meet with government officials to encourage them to pass an amendment to the UBE Act that would extend the free, compulsory education provision from nine years to 12 years and improve states’ access to UBE funds.

The chapter is also researching the effects of hidden education fees — for books, school meals, transportation, security and other costs — on families and how much additional funding is needed for schools to function without collecting fees from students. The Nigerian Education Champions plan to use their research to convince the governors of Kaduna and Borno states to provide sufficient education funding, eliminating all hidden fees by 2023.

Pamela’s impact

Pamela and LEDAP drafted implementation guidelines for state officials on the Universal Basic Education (UBE) Act 2004. As of February 2020, Pamela and LEDAP have identified over 5,000 children in Adamawa, Bauchi, Kaduna and Kano states who couldn’t go to school because they weren’t able to pay the school fees. They then trained 80 paralegals across these states to raise awareness about the UBE Act and help fight for the rights of these out-of-school children.

In March 2020, the attorney general and commissioner of education of Adamawa state signed a memorandum of understanding with LEDAP to fully implement the UBE Act in the state.