Education Cannot Wait: How data-driven reforms could transform Nigeria’s future —Osita Chidoka

Opinion

Roads can wait. Buildings can wait. Airports can wait. Education cannot.

OPINION (NPA) — The road we fail to build today can still be built tomorrow. The airport that was delayed this year may still serve future generations. But the child pushed out of school by policy failure is often lost forever.

Every year, one of Nigeria’s roughly 15 million out-of-school children loses a narrow window that may never reopen. When reforms eventually come, they benefit a different cohort, not the child already left behind.

That is why yesterday’s National Stakeholders Meeting on the National Education Data Infrastructure, led by the Honourable Minister of Education, Dr Tunji Alausa, struck me as profoundly consequential. In many ways, it may become one of the most important national infrastructure projects Nigeria has undertaken in recent years.

Data from all states were available on the portal, from school enrollment to the state of physical infrastructure to the student-teacher ratio. A mind-boggling quantum of data, made easy to understand, compare, and drive policy.

The Nigeria Education Management Information System, designed by Ernst & Young, the company that developed a similar system in India, is a national treasure: robust yet simple.

Sitting in that room, I watched evidence do what argument alone often cannot. Two figures stayed with me.

The first was the gap between primary school enrolment and junior secondary enrolment. The drop is so wide that I found myself asking the obvious question: what happened to those children?

Where did they go between Primary Six and JSS One? A generation appears to thin out between those two rungs, and we owe ourselves an honest answer.

The second was the composition of JAMB candidates: fresh entrants versus repeat candidates. The ratio revealed an admission bottleneck I had not fully grasped.

Too many qualified young Nigerians are queuing behind the same narrow gate, year after year. Suddenly, the Minister’s policy direction on easing admission bottlenecks, which I had instinctively questioned, began to make sense to me.

That is the power of credible, real-time data. It does not merely inform policy; it humbles assumptions.

I am grateful to be contributing my own quota through the Nigeria Research and Education Network (NgREN). We have committed to delivering connectivity and digital services to tertiary institutions this year, and to extending similar infrastructure to secondary schools in 2027.

What is happening in education may not yet dominate the headlines, but something important is taking shape quietly beneath the surface. Evidence is beginning to replace assertion. Data is starting to shape decisions.

The question on my mind: If evidence can transform education governance, when will the rest of the government follow?

Osita Chidoka is a Nigerian public policy expert, politician and former Minister of Aviation, and an ex-Corps Marshal and Chief Executive of the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC).