Early Childhood Care Development and Education: Impact, Challenges and Prospects in Nigeria

Early childhood care development and education is an early interventionprogramme that helps detect problems that might inhibit the growth andsurvival of the child by nurturing and providing basic skills and ingredientsneeded for over all development. This paper presents a conceptual framework of early childhood care development and education and the under lyingphilosophy asstated in the policy documents. It further examined theimpacts, challenges and future prospects of early childhood care andeducation programmes in Nigeria. It recommended that, recruitment ofprofessional care givers, adopting baseline assessment and sensitizationfor stakeholders, providing reliable statistical data and figure, creating achild friendly environment, proper funding, monitoring and evaluation amongothers, will go a long way towards actualizing the lofty dream of earlychildhood programmes as a basic component of the on-going universal basiceducation scheme in Nigeria.