sa AbdulMumin
“Education is a human right with immense power to transform. On its foundation rest the cornerstones of freedom, democracy and sustainable human development.”-
Kofi Annan
Those are not just words. They are a blueprint for every society that hopes to grow.
In Nigeria today, and across the world, education remains the foundation upon which we build our future. It is the passport to opportunity, the light that turns ignorance into possibility, and the tool that transforms individuals into communities, and communities into nations. These resonates with Dr. Maruf Tunji Alausa’s appointment as the 31st Nigeria’s Minister of Education on October 23, 2024, following President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s cabinet reshuffle. He inherited a sector long described in superlatives of the wrong kind such as the world’s largest population of out-of-school children, decaying laboratories, fragmented data, and a workforce mismatch between what schools produce and what the economy needs. Nearly two years on, the ministry under his watch has moved with unusual speed, focusing on skills development, system reforms, and institutional partnerships by rolling out a string of reforms under the banner of the Nigeria Education Sector Renewal Initiative (NESRI).
NESRI as the Ministry’s six-point reform framework under the Renewed Hope Agenda, the goal is to transform Nigeria from a resource-based economy to a knowledge-based economy and ensure every child has access to quality education in safe environments especially in underserved areas.
Before now, precisely in 2022, the Federal Ministry of Education had focused on Data Repository, Out-of-School Children Education, Teacher Training & Development, and Skill Development & Acquisition (DOTS) a system-wide policy framework launched to drive reforms across the education sector. However, inderthe leadership of the current Minister of Education, Dr. Maruf Tunji Alausa, DOTS was expanded and refined into the Nigeria Education Sector Renewal Initiative (NESRI), providing a more comprehensive framework for the transformation of Nigeria’s education system. NESRI is structured around six key pillars, each addressing a critical area of the sector and working collectively towards improving access, quality, relevance and outcomes across all levels of education.
For instance, the Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) coined to develop and expand skills acquisition and entrepreneurship to reduce unemployment by training youths with practical, job-ready skills.
The TVET is a centerpiece, which the minister has repeatedly framed as central to breaking Nigeria’s dependence on white-collar credentials in an economy that cannot absorb them. As such, Federal technical colleges have been made tuition-free, with monthly stipends attached and biometric attendance systems used to verify participation before funds are disbursed. Officials say over 1.3 million people applied for the programme’s first cohorts, with more than 250,000 already enrolled and N2.97 billion disbursed as stipend to 160,000 youths in addition to N4.6 billion allocated to skills training centres. The Education Minister has charged the newly inaugurated Board of the National Board for Technical Education (NBTE) to drive industry 4.0 Reform on skills acquisition and global competitiveness.
Alongside TVET sits science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medical sciences (STEMM) The focus is to Strengthen STEMM curricular, expand science laboratories, and foster partnerships for advanced technology in schools for 21st century curricular. According to the Ministry, the program is already receiving fresh investment in laboratories and research infrastructure, partly through partnerships such as a transnational education agreement between the University of Lagos and the University of Birmingham, and a Student Venture Capital Grant offering qualifying undergraduates up to ₦50 million for innovation projects.
On the data and digitization front, the ministry has launched the Digital Nigeria Education Management Information System (DNEMIS), intended to replace a slow, paper-based census that once took nearly two years to produce usable figures. Built on the DHIS2 platform with support from UNICEF and the University of Oslo, DNEMIS is presented as the foundation of a broader National Education Data Infrastructure meant to give federal and subnational authorities a shared, near real-time picture of enrollment, staffing and infrastructure.
The objective is to build a comprehensive, accurate, and verifiable database for the entire education sector. Thereby building a comprehensive, accurate, and verifiable database through which performances of students, teachers, and adequacy of school facilities are tracked real time is apt. About 1500 schools have been registered in Digital platforms put in place for enrolment, retention, and performance evaluation.
Also critical in NESRI scheme is the issue of Out-of-School Children and Almajiri Education. Though the figure of over 15 million out of school children is contentious, the ministry is aggressively striving to reduce the number nationwide. Latest statistics indicate that over one million out-of-school children have been returned to classrooms through infrastructure, teacher development, and digital tracking.
Tangential to the out-of-school children, is the initiative of Girl-Child access and retention in school, the Ministry has distributed over one million sanitary pads to 370,000 girls in rural communities to reduce absenteeism.
In all these, Quality Assurance is imperative hence the Ministry of Education has device strategy to ensure Improved quality and governance across institutions by
Strengthening standards, monitoring and collaboration with states, private sector, and civil society.
Most recently, Minister Alausa announced plans to scrap the long-standing “disarticulation policy” that keeps Junior and Senior Secondary Schools as separate administrative units with different principals and facilities. The minister cited government figures showing roughly 80,000 public primary schools against only 15,000 junior secondary schools, and estimated that more than 20 million children who enroll in primary school never reach senior secondary. The proposal is to move toward an uninterrupted six-year secondary structure, which will go before the National Council on Education for formal consideration and ratification.
The initiatives are so comprehensive that children with special needs like autism are being catered for with the plan to establish six regional centres to be equipped with modern facilities for specialist training in the areas of audiology, speech and occupational therapy.
Industry voices have credited the minister with restoring a great deal prestige to technical education, and he was named Independent Newspapers’ Most Innovative Cabinet Minister of 2025, an honor he attributed to a “one-government approach” of collaboration across agencies and state governments.
What is clear is that Nigeria’s education ministry, under Alausa, who’s being ably assisted by the Minister of State, Professor Suwaiba Sa’id, has rarely been short of activity — new programmes, new data systems, and now a proposed structural overhaul have followed one another in quick succession. What remains to be seen is whether that volume of reform converts into measurable gains in enrollment, learning outcomes, and youth employability. As the JSS-SSS proposal heads to the National Council on Education, it will likely serve as the next real test of whether the ministry’s ambition and its capacity for follow-through are keeping pace with each other.
The scope of what has been attempted is massive and difficult to ignore and Nigerians are eagerly waiting to reap the fruits of the transformation.
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