Nigeria, May 28 -- Nigeria celebrates its children today. It has also decided, year after year, budget after budget, that they are worth exactly that fraction of their potential.

She is seven years old and has never been to school. Not because she refused. Not because her parents did not want it for her. But because the nearest school is eight kilometres away, the road turns to mud in the rainy season, and the school itself, when she and her family have made the trip, has had no teacher for most of the last year.

She lives in rural Zamfara. She is Nigerian. She is promised a free and compulsory education by her leaders, which she never had.

This is not a story about one unlucky girl. It is a story about a state that knows exactly what ...