I truly believe that an educated population forms the backbone for a progressive and prosperous society… education is the key to unlocking opportunity, prosperity and progress… education can and should be this key

Nearly 70% of Nigeria's population is under 30 years old. More than 44% is below 15 years. The structure of the population is therefore such that substantial resources must channelled into the education sector for primary, secondary and tertiary education. Furthermore, there are 11million primary school pupils yearly, with a drop-out rate of over 50%. By the secondary school stage in Nigeria, and only 4 million places are available meaning that about 7 million places are lost in the system. At the tertiary level, there are 110,000 university graduates annually and about 140,000 in other tertiary institutions. This means that approximately 3.75 million secondary students cannot be fit into the system – about 1 million sit for JAMB annually so barely 10% of university applicants end up being admitted.

It is estimated that Nigeria has more than 13 million children that are out of school, which accounts for 47% of the global out-of-school population. Furthermore, Nigeria is among the four worst-performing countries in this area since 1999. These low participation rates perpetuate high illiteracy rates in Nigeria, accentuated along regional lines, with even lower participation in the impoverished rural parts of the country.

Access is not the only challenge facing the education sector: there are critical challenges with regards to quality, relevance and equity.

Nigerians presently spend in excess of $1 billion annually to acquire education outside the country. This represents a significant leakage in the economy particularly when a fraction of the amount over 5 years can make a huge improvement in the country's health care and educational systems.

It is obvious therefore that the education system in Nigeria is facing a near existential crisis. Repositioning the sector is a task that must be accomplished. Education is a basic human right and the State has the moral obligation to provide or facilitate the provision of the right type of education.

Policy Objectives

a. Improve and strengthen the education system to make it more efficient, more accessible, more qualitative and relevant to the needs of the Nigerian economy and society.

b. Work with the States to carry out far reaching reforms of the system with a view to developing a knowledge-driven economy: that is, one in which the generation and exploitation of knowledge would play a predominant part in the creation of wealth.

c. Promote a system that will endeavor to catch the recipients young at a time when they are receptive to creativity and critical thinking and equip them with the education and skills required to be competitive in the new global order driven by innovation, science, and technology and to lead healthy, productive, meaningful lives.

d. Promote an all-inclusive system which will carry along our citizens with special needs by ensuring that the rights of persons living with disabilities are protected and existing laws are implemented and encouraging states to adopt these laws.

What We Will Do

Our reforms in the education sector shall focus on four pillars.

1. Streamlining of functions and transfer of responsibilities for greater  efficiency:

The current division of responsibility between the State and federal government and a multiplicity of institutions is chaotic and often unclear with overlapping functions.

a. By 2024, responsibility for funding and control of public primary education shall be transferred to the local governments. Senior secondary and tertiary education, provided through universities, polytechnics, mono-technics, and Colleges of Education (CoEs) will be under the jurisdiction of State governments.

b. Under the proposed arrangements, the state governments will assume responsibility for all the federal unity schools, and Federal M i n i s t r y o f Education-owned and funded universities, polytechnics, technical colleges, and the CoEs located in their respective areas. 

c. States will be encouraged to set up Regional Common Services Agencies for the joint running of those institutions transferred to them by the federal government under the new arrangement.

d. The central government shall function as a regulator and shall remain responsible for policy design and harmonization. As a regulator, the central government will:

• Set certifications of quality.
• Define standards for vocational, technical and other education.
• Monitor compliance with the standards.

e. The central government shall also own and develop one university in each geo-political zone as Centres of Excellence. The universities shall be encouraged to charge user fees at market rates under a partnership between the federal, state and local governments.

f. The Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFUND), the Universal Basic Education (UBE), Intervention Fund, and the Nigeria Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) among others, will continue their coordinating roles at the Federal Level.

2. Development and promotion of Science and Technical Education for the creation of skills for the new economy. 

a. To support the country's growth into the 21st Century, the Central government will collaborate with the States to prioritize science and technical education including ICT and related IT- based programmes. 

b. Accordingly, TVET shall receive priority attention in policy and funding. The Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) systems shall be improved and capacitated to deliver quality and relevant training and assessment aligned to the Nigeria Skills Qualification Framework (NSQF).

c. The Central government shall bear responsibility over policy design, strategy as well as the management of all tertiary level technical colleges, polytechnics and universities of science and technology.

d. The private sector shall be incentivized with tax breaks, grants and  loans to increase its level of investments in science and technical education.

3. Increasing investment in social infrastructure by the federal and  state governments

The central government will collaborate with the federating units to establish a dedicated fund with a first line charge from the Federation Account to ensure a regular flow of resources for the expansion and improvement in the quality of science, engineering and technology education. Increased budgetary allocation to the sector shall be deployed specifically for the following purposes:

a.  Improve the absorptive capacity of the TVET institutions. This will have significant effect on access to TVET training.

b. The rehabilitation of decayed and construction of new education infrastructure;

c.  The provision of additional schools for girls in science and technology to stimulate interest in science courses for women.

d. Promoting compulsory computer education in all schools.

4. Improving access to qualitative as well as industry-relevant education.

To improve access and equity we shall:

a.  Invest to enhance the absorptive capacity of Technical and Vocational Schools: The vocational and technical colleges have inadequate absorptive capacity. There are less than 400 TVET colleges nationwide with total enrolment of less than 200,000 students.

b.  Guarantee access to basic education by all citizens and enhance the  quality and relevance of pre-tertiary and tertiary education.

c.  Increase primary school enrolment from 60% to 90% and the graduation rate from 63% to 82% by 2027. We shall also increase secondary school enrolment from 47% to 80% and the graduation rate from 56% to 75% by 2027.

d.  Encourage and promote more schools for girls in science and technology and generally stimulate interest in science courses for women.

e.  Incentivize the private sector to set up additional Vocational Enterprise Institutes and to partner with the public sector in skills provision.

f.  Collaborate with the States, universities and research institutions to establish and promote Science and Technology Centres of Excellence which will, among others, offer online learning programmes for specialized technologies – particularly, the opensource operating system software application.

g.  Enhance accessibility and participation, and emphasize the relevant skills of entrepreneurship, critical thinking, and innovation; especially, those that focus on the core subjects of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM).

h. Improve the functionality and relevance of formal vocational and technical education. Vocational education curricula will be redesigned to respond to local skills demand, and tailored for the specific needs of our youths. The new school curricular will emphasize acquisition of knowledge, skills and competence and will prepare the beneficiaries not only for higher education but also for earning a living to fend for themselves.

i. Award scholarships and grants to girls and young people in disadvantaged areas, for instance remote rural villages that would otherwise be unable to afford modern education.

j. In order to qualify for subsequent grants, matching funds and grants will be tied to performance and FG regulations and standards.

k. Grants, bursary and scholarships will be used to improve equity and access for women, physically challenged and special needs persons and economically disadvantaged groups.

To improve quality and relevance we shall:

a. Strengthen monitoring and evaluation units.

b. Direct the establishment of a supervisory body that will  provide quality education and in so doing be responsible for:

• Create an educational scoring system that will take into account the quality of education (using for example, the number of students that pass the West African Senior School Certificate examination in each state), level of educational facilities and other relevant criteria.
• Grade the performance of each state based on the scoring system.

c. Reward high performing states financially based on the performance of each state.  This system of rewarding educational performance is expected to significantly improve the quality of education in all states of the federation.

d. Apply this same strategy of establishing an independent scoring agency to facilitate the provision of quality social benefits across all states of the federation.

e. Strengthen an office in the presidency that will serve as a one stop shop where all donor agencies can be assured of getting all the necessary government support, approvals, protection and information as against having to go to different ministries. 

f. Consult with the business community to understand their requirements from government and, more specifically, to understand and identify the critical labour skills required to support segments of the education sector that are critical for promoting business activities in, for example, information technology, technical, services, deep sea welding for oil and gas sector, cable jointers and meter engineers' industries.