The Minister of Education, Dr Tunji Alausa, says the Nigerian Government has taken more than one million children off the streets and enrolled them in school over the last 24 months, leading to a decline in the number of out-of-school children in Nigeria.
Alausa disclosed this at the Education Correspondents’ Association of Nigeria (ECAN) 2026 Annual Education Summit in Abuja.
He said the estimated number of out-of-school children has reduced significantly from previous figures of between 15 and 17 million.
To sustain the progress, Alausa said the government will roll out five major social safety programmes, including a $500 million World Bank credit for community resilience and a $1.2 billion HOPE programme covering health, basic education, and economic empowerment.
He also cited the Adolescent Girls Initiative for Learning and Empowerment, which has moved over one million girls into school through conditional cash transfers and learning materials.
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The Minister said the gains in access are backed by massive infrastructure investments under the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) and the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) in the last three years.
According to him, almost 88,000 schools have been rehabilitated, more than 6,000 new classrooms have been built, and 1.7 million instructional materials have been distributed.
Alausa also charged journalists with using the government’s new education data portal to hold state governments accountable for service delivery.
He said the EMIS.education.gov.ng dashboard now provides real-time data on teacher-pupil ratios, facilities, and enrolment.
“We need you journalists to go to the website: http://EMIS.education.gov.ng. We need you to use that data to challenge the governors….This is using data for the public good. And you are the mouthpiece of the nation,” he said.
On tertiary education, he said the academic calendar has remained stable, with no ASUU strike in three years, and that students admitted in 2023 will graduate next year as scheduled.
Alausa also noted that the reforms have improved global rankings, with 24 Nigerian universities now in the top 1,000 worldwide, compared to 21 previously, and 17 of them public.
“Look at up to five years in a row before 2026. We only had 21 universities in the country that made the top 1,000 universities in the world. In 2026, we had 24 universities on that list… And of the 24 universities on that list, 17 of those universities were public universities,” he said.
The Minister further presented the 2024–2025 Annual School Census data, showing a major transition gap, with almost 25 million children in primary school but only about 5 million in junior secondary school.
He blamed the 20 million drop-off on inadequate JSS facilities and called for an end to the disarticulation policy.
Alausa also announced that teacher professional development has been moved online and that free, zero-rated lessons from Primary 1 to SSS3 are now available, while the UBEC Act is being amended to increase funding from 2 per cent to 5 per cent.
Also speaking, the Minister of State for Education, Prof. Suwaiba Sa’idu Ahmad, said the ministry is driving unprecedented reforms under the Renewed Hope Agenda and described the Honourable Minister as a mentor whose passion for change is unmatched.
She said teacher quality remains central to the reforms, with investments in professional development and the launch of EduRev to give every teacher access to continuous training, while curriculum reviews are embedding AI, digital literacy, and entrepreneurship.
