Despite increased spending for the education sector in 2024, much of the sector’s challenges remain, with some of them becoming more pronounced.
As the government moves to address some of the challenges, new ones have reared their heads.
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The major events that shaped the sector during the year include continuous fee hikes in Nigerian tertiary institutions, hike in electricity tariffs, introduction of student loans, and the lingering disputes between the government and university-based unions.
Meanwhile, the basic and secondary education sub-sectors attracted lesser attention.
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Low budget
In his first budget as president, Bola Tinubu allocated N1.59 trillion of the N28.77 trillion budget to education, representing 5.5 per cent of the total budget. The allocation is higher than the N1.08 trillion the education ministry received in the 2023 budget. But when measured in percentage, it is lower than the 2023 allocation which was 8.8 per cent.
However, a review of the proposed budget for 2025 revealed that the government plans to spend around seven per cent of the budget on education, higher than 2024’s 5.5 per cent. The proposed education budget for 2025, N3.5 trillion, is more than double the allocation for the sector in 2024.
While Nigeria’s allocation to the sector has grown over the years, it has remained short of the 15 per cent threshold recommended by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO).
Fee hike continues
Meanwhile, a trend among Nigerian universities that began in 2023 as a result of the need for more funding continued in 2024 and became a new normal.
Almost all public universities increased their fees in 2023. More universities hiked their fees this year, ignoring protests by students.
The fees now cost three times what they were two years ago.
Institutions like the University of Ibadan increased their fees from between N20,000 and N30,000 to about N200,000 and N400,000 in 2024, sparking protests among its students.
The Ladoke Akintola University of Technology (LAUTECH), an Oyo state-owned institution, also increased fees to N168,000 for indigenes and N204,000 for non-indigenes. The old fees were said to be N105,000 for indigenes and N127,000 for non-indigenes.
Students loan
In reaction to the fee hike, the federal government launched the student loan scheme, one of President Bola Tinubu’s flagship education policies, in February –after shifting the launch date multiple times.
When he assumed office, Mr Tinubu provided a swift assent to the Access to Higher Education Act, 2023, popularly known as the Students Loan Bill. The law provided the legal framework for the establishment of the Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NEFLUND), which manages and administers education loans to Nigerian students in public tertiary institutions.
The bill faced criticisms from stakeholders in the education sector, most of whom accused the government of using the scheme to introduce tuition fees and raise costs in public tertiary institutions. The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), which has always opposed the law since it was first introduced to the National Assembly in 2016, persisted in its opposition, insisting that the government was trying to take higher education out of the reach of poor Nigerians.
Shortly after Mr Tinubu signed the bill into law in 2023, the then Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Education, David Adejoh, said the scheme was scheduled to take off in September 2023, but it did not. Later, Mr Tinubu announced at the National Economic Summit Group (NESG) conference that the implementation ‘must begin’ in January. Still it did not.
In March, the Managing Director of NELFUND, Akintunde Sawyerr, announced the postponement of the take-off “because of the need to have all stakeholders fully aligned before the formal flag-off by President Bola Tinubu.”
The scheme, which finally took off in May, has disbursed over N110 billion in student loans across 281 public tertiary institutions.
Blackout on campuses
However, despite the increased fees payable by students, the universities still struggle with rising costs of managing their facilities as a result of low funds.
This year, universities and teaching hospitals experienced days of blackout after electricity distribution companies (Discos) disconnected them from the electricity grid over their failure to pay the bills for the electricity they consumed.
Some of the institutions affected include: Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), University of Ibadan (UI), University of Lagos (UNILAG), College of Medicine of the University of Lagos (CMUL), Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH), and University of Benin (UNIBEN).
Their woes began after the Discos operating in their domain migrated them to ‘Band A,’ where the tariff is three times higher than for other electricity Bands.
The Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) increased the tariff for Band A customers from N68 per kilowatt-hour to N225 in April.
Meanwhile, the electricity distribution companies serially moved the institutions to Band A, ignoring their protests. This has left them struggling to pay.
UNILAG, for instance, said its electricity bill rose from between N150 million and N180 million monthly to almost N300 million monthly since the migration to Band A.
ASUU, SSANU other workers’ unions’ issues linger
Though Nigerian universities experienced a peaceful industrial atmosphere, it was not all calm. The Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities (SSANU) embarked on multiple protests and a strike action, insisting on payment of salaries withheld since 2022.
The administration of former President Muhammadu Buhari had invoked a ‘No Work, No Pay’ policy in 2022 when three university-based workers’ unions downed tools over the non-implementation of previous agreements with the government. The unions are the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), National Association of Academic Technologists (NAAT), Non-Academic Staff Union of Educational and Associated Institutions (NASU), and SSANU.
While ASUU’s strike extended through eight months from February to October 2022, the strike by the other unions lasted only four months.
As a result of the ‘No Work, No Pay’ policy, none of them received salaries for the period they were on strike.
However, in October 2023, Mr Tinubu directed that four of the eight months withheld salaries be paid to the academic staff (ASUU). It was finally paid in February but the other unions –SSANU and NASU— were left out of this, sparking protests.
SSANU and NASU’s Joint Action Committee (JAC) wrote multiple letters to the Minister of Education, the presidency and the chief of staff to the president but received no satisfactory response for months.
Both unions embarked on a nationwide protest in March and again in June when their demands were still not met.
In October, they embarked on an indefinite strike and suspended the strike a week later after their members started receiving parts of the withheld salaries.
Meanwhile, ASUU also threatened to embark on industrial action on multiple occasions. The union is protesting the non-implementation of the 2009 agreement between it and the Nigerian government. The agreement has been the major source of dispute between both parties for over a decade.
In October, the government inaugurated a seven-man committee led by Yayale Ahmed, the Pro-Chancellor of Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, to renegotiate the contentious agreement. The committee has yet to complete negotiations with the unions, including ASUU, SSANU, NASU, and NAAT.
Governing councils
For 11 months, Nigerian tertiary institutions operated without governing councils, after Mr Tinubu dissolved the councils in June 2023.
This threw the University of Abuja into a crisis in May as the tenure of the then vice-chancellor, Abdulrashee Na’Allah, a professor, neared its end. In the absence of a council to recruit a vice-chancellor, the university, alongside the education ministry, rolled out a call for applications for the position of the vice-chancellor.
But the institution’s chapter of ASUU opposed the move as well as all recruitments and promotions done within the period when there was no council. The union also declared an indefinite strike over the matter.
As this was going on, the national leadership of ASUU also issued a two-week ultimatum for the government to reinstate the dissolved university councils, describing their dissolution as illegal.
Days after ASUU’s threat, Mr Tinubu directed the reconstitution of the councils. However, the first list of members of governing councils was met with widespread criticism by stakeholders in the education sector. They accused the then Minister of Education, Tahir Mamman, a professor, of populating the list with his associates.
The list was reversed and another was released in June. The new list contained the names of politicians and prominent leaders and members of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), including its pioneer National Chairman and former Governor of Osun State, Adebisi Akande; its 2023 governorship candidate in Kano State, Nasir Gawuna, among others.
Mr Mamman, then the education minister, inaugurated members of the governing council in July, warning them against extravagant spendings.
Minimum age for admission
At a policy meeting on admission into tertiary institutions organised by the Joint Admissions and Matriculations Board (JAMB), the immediate past Minister of Education, Mr Mamman, directed tertiary institutions not to admit candidates below the age of 18 years. Mr Mamman said the directive was a matter of law and policy and not a directive he made up.
“Our laws require students to be in school from six years —Yes, there are those who do that from five—, and remain in primary school for six years, basic education for three years, and secondary school for three years… It doesn’t require a statement of the minister… we are only restating what is in the law,” he had said.
But the directive was met by ominous grumbling by university vice-chancellors, rectors of polytechnics and provosts of colleges of education present at the meeting. They argued that candidates had registered without the knowledge of the restriction.
After a heated debate on the age limit, the meeting agreed to adopt 16 years as the minimum age for admissions for the admission year.
The directive was, however, reversed in November after a new minister of education, Olatunji Alausa, assumed office in November.
Mamman out, Alausa in
In a cabinet reshuffle in October, President Tinubu removed Mr Mamman as education minister and reassigned the Minister of State for Education, Yusuf Sununu, to the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation.
The president appointed Tunji Alausa as the new Minister of Education and Suwaiba Ahmad as the Minister of State for Education.
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The presidency did not give any reason for the removal of Mr Mamman or reassignment of Mr Sununu.
Mr Alausa, the new education minister, is a successful medical doctor. Mr Alausa earned his Bachelor’s degree in Medicine and Surgery from the University of Lagos in 1993. He practised as a Nephrologist in the United States for many years. He served as Chief Medical Resident at Cook County Hospital, Chicago, Illinois. He was also an Assistant Professor at the Rush University Medical School.
Mr Alausa was named one of America’s Best Physicians in 2007, 2012 and 2020. Before his latest appointment as education minister, he served as the Minister of State for Health and Social Welfare.
Mr Alausa, from Epe, Lagos State, is a personal physician to President Tinubu and has been involved in the decisions around the education sector behind the scenes since the new administration appointed him as the Minister of State for Health.
Meanwhile, the new Minister of State for Education, Suwaiba Ahmad, is an associate professor of education, with extensive experience in the education sector.
She earned her Bachelor’s degree in Education and Chemistry from Bayero University, Kano (BUK), in 2003 and her Master of Education in Curriculum Studies from the same university in 2009. Ms Ahmad also obtained her doctorate in Science Education from Ahmadu Bello University in 2014.
She has worked as an academic staffer at the Bayero University Kano since 2004. She is also an associate of the Policy Practice, an organisation working on political economy analysis on governance, conflict and fragility, economic development and social development. She was the consultant for the state-level situation report for Jigawa State and part of Kano State on the Partnership for Learning for All in Nigeria (PLANE), a seven-year education programme funded by the U.K. Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO). Ms Ahmad was also the consultant for Jigawa State for Partnership to Engage, Reform and Learn (PERL) flagship, another FCDO-sponsored programme on core governance reforms and service delivery improvements in Nigeria.
Basic education
However, the nation’s basic education, regarded as the most important level of education, remained the weakest link of the education sector in 2024. Despite the provisions of free and compulsory education in the UBE Act of 2004, the government has made no progress in enforcing this.
For close to a month, teachers in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) downed tools over unresolved welfare issues with the chairpersons of the six area councils. The strike was only suspended after Minister of the FCT, Nyseom Wike, waded into the matter.
Though there are projects like the World Bank-assisted Adolescent Girls Initiative for Learning and Empowerment, (AGILE), aimed at ensuring access to basic education and re-enrollment of children of school age, Nigeria still has a high number of out-of-school children and the actual figure remains unknown.
The United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), however, estimates the figure to be at 20 million.
A recent PREMIUM TIMES investigation reveals how over 60 basic education schools are now shut in Zamfara State as a result of insecurity, worsening access to education and throwing thousands more children out of school.
The challenges of the sub-sector range from poor funding, dilapidated infrastructure, low quality assurance, lack of teachers among others.
