Scaling up comprehensive sexuality education in Nigeria: from national policy to nationwide application

Abstract

Nigeria is one of few countries that reports having translated national policies on school-based comprehensive sexuality education (CSE) into near-nationwide implementation. We analysed data using the World Health Organization-ExpandNet framework, which provides a systematic structure for planning and managing the scaling up of health innovations. We examined how Nigeria's nationwide programme was designed and executed. Since 2002, Nigeria has developed a well thought through strategy to scale up CSE. Crucial attributes that facilitated the scaling up included technical consensus about the innovation and clarity about its components, dissection of a complex intervention into manageable components for implementation by organisations with complementary expertise, strong political leadership and championship in concert with advocacy and technical support from non-governmental organisations, proactive and energetic involvement of community stakeholders, effective programme management, and improvements to the information management system to ensure on-track implementation and mid-course corrections to keep stakeholders, including funders, informed and engaged. Challenges included programmatic values, competing priorities for available human resources and a lack of predictable funding for sustaining a rapid scale-up effort. Despite some weaknesses, implementation has largely proceeded according to plan. The lessons learned from Nigeria's experience can and should be used in other settings to achieve wide-scale coverage.

Scaling up sexuality education in Senegal: integrating family life education into the national curriculum

“…As a result, there is an absence of baseline data specifically from the two focus regions. Nevertheless, the facilitating and hindering factors identified in this analysis are in line with findings from other countries, including Nigeria (Huaynoca et al 2014), and contribute to a deeper understanding regarding how to scale-up sexuality education programmes in culturally conservative low-and middle-income countries.…”

Beyond love: a qualitative analysis of factors associated with teenage pregnancy among young women with pregnancy experience in Bolgatanga, Ghana

“…However, despite overwhelming evidence in support of more comprehensive forms of sex education, implementing such an approach in the Ghanaian context requires major change by important stakeholders such as teachers, community leaders and religious leaders). Efforts to introduce comprehensive sex education in Ghana may also benefit from lessons learned through recent nation-wide scale-up in Senegal and Nigeria (Chau et al 2016;Huaynoca et al 2014).…”

Variable Implementation of Sexuality Education in Three Nigerian States

“…Recent studies document variation in the extent of implementation of FLHE across Nigerian states, including the contents of the national curriculum taught; proportion of schools implementing the curriculum; exposure of teachers to training on classroom delivery techniques most suitable for sexuality education; in‐school versus out‐of‐school delivery of the curriculum; and quality of teaching (Lagos State AIDS Control Agency ; Huaynoca et al. ; Isiugo‐Abanihe et al. 2014; Udegbe et al.…”

“…Because many of the teachers had no previous training on FLHE and had reservations about the delivery of sexuality education (Oshi, Nakalema, and Oshi, 2004), the GF grant largely funded in-service training. Recent studies document variation in the extent of implementation of FLHE across Nigerian states, including the contents of the national curriculum taught; proportion of schools implementing the curriculum; exposure of teachers to training on classroom delivery techniques most suitable for sexuality education; in-school versus out-of-school delivery of the curriculum; and quality of teaching (Lagos State AIDS Control Agency 2012; Huaynoca et al 2013;Isiugo-Abanihe et al 2014;Udegbe et al 2015;Nwokocha et al 2015;Wood and Rogow 2015). The reason for such variation is unclear.…”