In Summary:
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Claims made by SUP’s former Propaganda Chair, Polay Nyan Emmanuel, during a recent protest contain incorrect and misleading statements.
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His claim that only 32% of children are out of school understates the scale of the crisis, while his claim that 60,000 children die annually from malnutrition is unsupported by credible evidence.
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Additionally, his claim that the Joseph Nyumah Boakai administration has not exceeded 10% of its education budget under the ARREST Agenda for Inclusive Development is contradicted by official budget data.
On April 14, former Student Unification Party (SUP) Propaganda Chair, Polay Nyan Emmanuel, made multiple claims during the “March for Jobs and Justice” protest regarding education spending, school dropout rate, and child mortality in Liberia. In an interview with journalists on the main campus of the University of Liberia, Emmanuel cited these claims as reasons behind the “March for Jobs and Justice” protest.
Founded in the 1970s, the Student Unification Party is one of Liberia’s most prominent and historically influential student movements. Based at the University of Liberia, the student group is known for its pan-Africanist and activist orientation. The group considers itself as a voice for social justice, economic equality, anti-corruption, and student rights
Claim #1: Emmanuel asserted: “Today, if you look at the UNESCO Report, 32 percent of children who were in school yesterday are not in school anymore.”
Rating Justification
To verify this claim, we reviewed the website of the UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), a specialized UN agency based in Paris, established in 1945 to foster peace through international cooperation in education, science, and culture.
Our researchers found no reports on the UNESCO website indicating a recent school-going kids’ dropout rate of 32%, as claimed by Nyan Emmanuel.
Meanwhile, our fact-checkers also reviewed the 2025 UNICEF Liberia Annual Report and found that approximately 50.1% of school-aged children are out of class, including children who never enrolled and those who dropped out.
This was re-echoed in an alarm sounded by UNICEF Country Representative Andy Brooks during the commemoration of both the Day of the African Child and the World Day against Child Labour, urging the Liberian government and development partners to go beyond symbolic gestures and commit to systemic reforms that put children at the center of national development.
Conclusion
Based on these findings, we conclude that the claim made by Polay Nyan Emmanuel that 32% of school-going children are out of school is incorrect, and the figure he cited is understated.
According to the UNICEF 2025 Annual Report, about 50% of school-going children in Liberia are not in school.
Claim #2: In the second claim, Emmanuel stated: “Today, we have sixty thousand (60,000) of Liberia’s children dying from chronic malnutrition. We have a malnourished population, basically in the dominant young folks from age 0 to age 10.”
Rating Justification
According to the Ministry of Health, malnutrition is a condition that results from an imbalance between the nutrients a person’s body needs and the nutrients they consume. It can manifest as under-nutrition (insufficient intake of essential nutrients) or over-nutrition (excessive intake of certain nutrients), leading to various health problems.
To verify whether 66,000 Liberian children die from chronic malnutrition, we reviewed the 2023 Liberia Equity and Social Determinants Assessment Report by the Ministry of Health. According to the report, a total of 331 children under age 5 died of malnutrition in 2022.
Additionally, the 2025 Annual Report of UNICEF highlights a major achievement in Liberia, which was the successful treatment of 18,571 children for Severe Acute Malnutrition (SAM). According to the report, the quality of clinical care achieved exceptional results, evidenced by a death rate of 0.8%, far below the SPHERE international ceiling of 10%. This represents 149 children’s deaths out of the 18,571 treated for Severe Acute Malnutrition that year.
Conclusion
Based on available evidence, the claim by Polay Nyan Emmanuel that 66,000 Liberian children die from chronic malnutrition is misleading and not supported by credible data.
Recent figures from the Ministry of Health, Liberia, and UNICEF indicate that in 2022, 331 children under the age of five died directly from malnutrition. In addition, program data from 2025 shows that approximately 149 children died among those receiving treatment for severe acute malnutrition.
While malnutrition remains a major underlying factor in child mortality, contributing to a significant share of under-five deaths, the available data does not support claims of tens of thousands of deaths annually from chronic malnutrition alone.
Claim #3: Emmanuel also claimed: “The regime (the current Liberian government), in three years, has not even been able to exceed 10% of the budget to education, read the regime’s own agenda, the AAID. This is sad!”
Rating Justification
The AAID is a five-year national development blueprint (2025–2029) designed to guide Liberia’s economic, social, and institutional development.
In the ARREST Agenda, the Boakai administration planned to allocate US$727.4 million to the education sector over the five years.
To verify whether the administration’s allocation to the education sector has exceeded 10 percent, we reviewed national budget documents beginning with the FY2025 budget—the first year under the ARREST Agenda for Inclusive Development of Joseph Nyumah Boakai.
Our analysis shows that before the start of the AAID period, the Boakai administration allocated US$106.2 million to the sector. In FY2025 alone, the expenditure of the sector was US$118.1 million, representing 16.24% of the total US$727.4 million education envelope under the AAID framework.
For the following fiscal year (FY2026), the administration proposed an additional US$136.3 million (18.7%), bringing the combined allocation for the first two years to US$254.4 million, which is approximately 35% of the total five-year education budget.
Given that the claim is about whether the administration has exceeded 10% of the total education allocation within three years, we aggregated the initial spending, FY2025 estimated expenditure, and the proposed FY2026 figure. This results in a cumulative US$360.6 million, representing 49.59% of the total five-year commitment.
Conclusion
We conclude based on these findings that the claim is misleading.
The administration has already allocated well above 10%, approaching half of its five-year education commitment within three years.
