Truancy: Akwa Ibom warns parents, plans to ‘intercept’ loitering students

The Akwa Ibom State Government says it will deploy a special monitoring task force to tackle truancy, street hawking by school-age children during school hours, and children not enrolled in school.

The state’s Commissioner for Education, Ubong Umoh, announced the measure in a statement dated 14 October, saying the ministry had observed children of basic and pre-tertiary school ages roaming the streets and hawking during school hours despite the state’s free and compulsory education policy.

Under the proposed enforcement measure, the task force will intercept pupils who arrive late to school or leave class during school hours. It will also confront parents and guardians who fail to enrol their children or wards in school, according to the statement.

The ministry identified school hours as 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. on weekdays.

Mr Umoh said the measure was intended to keep children in classrooms, improve their safety, curb truancy and classroom distractions, and prevent child abuse.

He said the initiative would also support the implementation of the state’s free and compulsory education policy.

The commissioner, however, did not specify when the task force would begin operations, how it would be constituted, or the penalties that would apply to parents and guardians who fail to comply with the directive.

The directive follows the state’s poor performance in the 2026 National Examinations Council Senior School Certificate Examination.

PREMIUM TIMES reported in September that Akwa Ibom ranked 36th among the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory, with only 37.42 per cent of candidates obtaining at least five credits, including in English Language and Mathematics. The performance represented a major decline from the state’s 12th-place ranking in 2025.

The state government later disputed the newspaper’s report, claiming results from 83 of 214 public-school examination centres had not been released. However, it had not yet provided the official data it said supported its position.

On 7 October, Governor Umo Eno declared a state of emergency in the education sector and approved recruiting an additional 2,000 teachers.

The new directive on school attendance adds enforcement against truancy and non-enrolment to the challenges facing the state’s education authorities.