Despite allocating N3.52 trillion to education in the 2025 budget, Nigeria continues to grapple with poor learning outcomes, as challenges such as weak infrastructure, overcrowded classrooms, and inadequate teacher welfare remain unresolved.
Nigeria allocated N3.52 trillion for education out of the total N47.90 trillion in the 2025 national budget, which amounts to 7.3 percent of the total budget, and a marginal increase from the 5.5 percent in 2024.
Infrastructure
Educational infrastructures such as classrooms, libraries, laboratories, and among other resources create the educational setting and impact student learning results.
Experts believe that the accessibility and standard of these facilities are regarded as crucial markers of a country’s dedication to offering high-quality education.
However, in Nigeria, these facilities in many public basic and junior secondary schools fall short of contemporary standards, which has an impact on students’ comfort, safety, and motivation, besides, to how well instruction is delivered.
The Federal Ministry of Education announced that nearly 4,900 new classrooms had been constructed and about 3,000 existing classrooms had undergone major renovations.
The ministry also disclosed that furniture had been supplied to some 2.3 million learners across public schools in federal and select state-managed institutions.
Read also: Why Nigeria’s 7% education budget fails the test
The Universal Basic Education Commission was said to has gotten over N92 billion in grants. Despite these allocations, infrastructure in Nigerian primary and junior secondary schools are generally in a poor, dilapidated state, particularly in public and rural schools.
Busayo Aderounmu, senior lecturer at Covenant University, Ota, described the increase in the education budgetary allocation as not reflective in the development of the sector for lack of structural implementation.
“An increase in funding without appropriate management and utilisation leads to mismanagement of the allocated funds which invariably will not lead to development in the sector.
“Besides, an increase in budgetary allocation without improving the welfare of teachers/lecturers in the education sector as well as providing an enabling teaching environment and infrastructure will not improve the quality of education in the country,” she said.
Aderounmu maintained that increment in funding should trickle down to providing educational facilities and improving teachers’ welfare to achieve development in the sector.
Moreover, she reiterated that proper mechanisms should be put in place to monitor the funds allocated and how they are used.
“This will help to control any misappropriation and corruption within the system,” she emphasised.
Unity schools
Quality academic activities are lacking in many unity schools as a result of security challenges, leading to temporary closures of 47 colleges in late 2025 due to kidnapping risks.
This is despite the federal government allocation of N80 billion for infrastructure upgrades across Unity Schools in 2025.
The allocation includes N40 billion for rehabilitation, N20 billion for security, fencing, and access control, as well as N20 billion for solar energy installation.
Nubi Achebo, director of academic planning at Nigerian University of Technology and Management (NUTM), emphasised that despite the huge allocation, the education sector is still under developed because the budget share remains low, and there are execution gaps, inflation and exchange rate pressure, and insecurity, among others.
“Even with the record amount, education accounts for only about seven percent of the total 2025 budget, far below UNESCO’s recommended 15 to 20 percent.
“Funds often arrive late or are not fully utilised. For example, the N300 billion university revitalisation money budgeted in 2023 had still not been released by 2025,” he said.
Learning outcomes
The federal government announced curricula review across basic, secondary and technical education, aimed at reducing overload and enhancing quality learning outcomes.
However, what was intended to improve learning standards has instead stirred tension in some primary schools, following the introduction of a reviewed curriculum.
Ahmed Lukman, a teacher in Abuja disclosed to BusinessDay that the newly introduced primary school curriculum is causing conflicts in the FCT over implementation.
“While the reform aims to modernise education and equip pupils with practical skills, it has created several conflicting issues between the old and new systems.
“These conflicts concern subject load, implementation readiness, infrastructure, teacher capacity, and policy execution,” Lukman said.
The forward
Isaiah Ogundele, an administrator, highlighted that the problem is not on how much the government allocated to education but nepotism and corruption in the system.
“As long as the government continues to put square pegs in round holes there can’t be any meaningful impact, despite the amount it injects into the sector,” he said.
Ogundele decried the fact that many Nigerians prioritise religion to education, which he said is undermining the efforts to revive the sector in some states.
“In as much as people are still placing religion as their major priority; definitely the educational standard will continue to deteriorate.
“No matter what the government is doing in order to revive educational standards it will have little or no effect for these reasons,” he noted.
Friday Erhabor, director of media and strategies at Marklenez Limited, emphasised that the entire education budget is grossly inadequate and unacceptable, and considering the crucial role of the sector in people’s life.
“Even at 7.3 percent, by the time provisions are made for leakages in our budget implementation, you will realise that the actual money deployed will be less than five percent.
“A country with such a reality will never escape from the scourge of out of school children, low development, insecurity and poverty which are consequences of lack of education,” he noted.
