Nigeria’s Education System Faces Funding, Access, Technology, and Policy Challenges

• Tasks private sector to co‑invest in educational infrastructure

The President of the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI), Mr. Leye Kupoluyi, said that Nigeria’s education system faces problems with funding, access, technology and policy alignment.

He made the remarks yesterday at the chamber’s education conference, which was themed “Technology, Policy and Access: Building Inclusive Education Systems for the Future.” At the event, he called on the private sector to co‑invest in developing educational infrastructure.

According to Kupoluyi, technology, policy and access are not separate issues but “three legs of the same chair” that the chamber intends to help build.

He said: “Nigeria’s education story is, at its core, a business story: it determines the workforce we hire, the consumers we sell to, and the country we trade in. I want to make that case in five numbers.”

“Nigeria does not have an education funding problem alone; it has an access, technology and policy misalignment, and closing that gap is the single highest‑return investment available to this chamber,” he added.

He noted that Nigeria hosts one of the largest out‑of‑school populations in the world, measured in the tens of millions rather than thousands, meaning that roughly one in five of the world’s out‑of‑school children are Nigerian.

UNICEF’s 2024 data put the figure at approximately 18.3 million children out of school, comprising 10.2 million at the primary level and 8.1 million at the secondary level.

He said that federal government funding still falls well below the benchmark needed to close that gap.

The LCCI president stated that the 2026 federal budget allocated N3.52 trillion to education, which represented 6.1 percent of N58.18 trillion in total spending, against UNESCO’s 15–20 percent global benchmark and the 26 percent threshold set out in Nigeria’s National Policy on Education.

He noted that some state governments, such as Enugu, Kano and Jigawa, have chosen to fund education at scale, implying that the model already exists with substantial funding by governments that have the political will.

Kupoluyi said that “Enugu allocated 32.2 percent of its 2026 budget to education; Kano committed N405.3 billion (30 percent), and Jigawa committed N234.5 billion (26 percent),” which are “proof that the recommended benchmark is achievable within Nigeria’s existing fiscal envelope once political will aligns with policy.”

The LCCI said that financing innovation is already proving that scale is possible once the right instrument is in place.

It said: “The Nigerian Education Loan Fund has disbursed over N32 billion to students since 2024, and Nigeria’s National Artificial Intelligence Strategy now commits to equipping 70 percent of young Nigerians aged 16–35, half of them women, with AI‑relevant skills by 2029.”

“Our members in the Education Group are potential employers who will absorb that talent if the pipeline is built correctly,” he added.

He also said that connectivity, the infrastructure beneath every EdTech promise, crossed the halfway mark only in November 2025, but noted that the gap is concentrated exactly where access is worst, particularly in northern Nigeria.

“Broadband penetration rose to 50.58 percent in November 2025, up from 44.43 percent a year earlier, but that still leaves roughly half the country, disproportionately rural, northern households, without the connection a digital classroom requires,” he said.

Kupoluyi stated that the private sector’s role is not to wait for the next budget cycle but to co‑invest in the infrastructure and skills that make today’s budget work harder.

He said that going forward, educational success should be measured not only by enrolment and graduation rates but also by employability and productivity outcomes.