Akwa Ibom Government to Tackle Truancy and Street Hawking by Students

The Akwa Ibom State Government has announced plans to set up a special monitoring task force. This task force will focus on truancy, street hawking by school-age children during school hours, and children who are not enrolled in school.

The state's Commissioner for Education, Ubong Umoh, shared this news in a statement on 14 October. He mentioned that the ministry has noticed many children of basic and pre-tertiary school ages wandering the streets and hawking during school hours. This is happening even though the state has a free and compulsory education policy in place.

The task force will intercept pupils who arrive late or leave class during school hours. They will also engage with parents and guardians who do not enroll their children in school, as stated in the announcement.

School hours are set from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. on weekdays. Mr Umoh explained that the goal of this measure is to keep children in classrooms, improve their safety, reduce truancy and distractions in class, and prevent child abuse.

He added that this initiative will help support the state's free and compulsory education policy.

However, the commissioner did not mention when the task force would start, how it would be organized, or what penalties parents and guardians might face for not following the rules.

This announcement comes after the state recorded poor results in the 2026 National Examinations Council Senior School Certificate Examination.

In September, PREMIUM TIMES reported that Akwa Ibom came last among the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory. Only 37.42 percent of candidates managed to get at least five credits, including English Language and Mathematics. This was a significant drop from the state's 12th-place ranking in 2025.

The government later disputed the newspaper's report, claiming that results from 83 out of 214 public school examination centers had not been released. However, they have yet to provide the official data that backs up their claims.

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

This new directive on school attendance adds enforcement against truancy and non-enrollment to the ongoing challenges facing the state's education authorities.