??By ABDULKABIR MUHAMMED

??Former presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Mr. Peter Obi, has blamed students' low educational turnouts on the federal government. He shared this in a post on his official X (formerly Twitter) handle on Thursday.

??Obi's comment emerged following a recent statement by the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC)'s Executive Secretary, Dr. Aisha Garba, lamenting the status of Nigeria's education sector. Recall that the UBEC boss had, earlier this week, lamented the high rate of Nigeria's ill-literacy and the out-of-school children syndrome (estimated at 20 million by a recent UNESCO report), arguing that "our country (Nigeria) is facing an education crisis of great magnitude."

??However, Obi claims that "These scary statistics were also mirrored by WAEC, as they confirmed that the recently released WASSCE is the worst academic performance in five years, with only 38% of students passing."

??The former Anambra governor has chided the federal government of Nigeria for expending humongous amount of money on infrastructure and abandoned projects, arguing that the government's spending on renovation is a "misplaced priority."

??In his words: "At a time when education should be our most urgent national priority and most critical investment, we as leaders continue to spend trillions on infrastructures, most of which contribute little or nothing to the measurable development index and cannot be completed and renovations that are a misplaced priority, while the foundational sectors like education remain in crisis."

??Obi has urged the Nigerian leaders to invest quality education to boost the country's human capital. According to him:

??Education is the most powerful investment we can make in the future of this nation. We must urgently redirect our focus towards building our national human capital by providing quality and functional schools and investing in access to learning for every Nigerian child.

??The former governor of Anambra State urges the federal government to focus on the youth, arguing that a nation's future is dependent on his youthful population.

??"A nation that neglects its young people has no future. We must urgently redirect our priorities, and invest in quality education. Our children deserve classrooms, not abandoned projects.

??"To build a stronger, safer, and more prosperous nation, we must invest in our children, because when we fail them, we have failed our nation," he added.