By Kwin Israel, The Sight News
The Minister of Education, Dr. Maruf Tunji Alausa, says President Bola Tinubu has delivered on almost 100 per cent of the promises he made during the 2023 presidential campaign, declaring that Nigeria is undergoing tangible change and is “back, and back in a powerful way.”
The minister made the remarks at the weekend in Abuja while receiving the findings of the 2025 Nigeria 2050: Child Foresight Analysis for Futures Literacy and Intergenerational Equity, a flagship initiative under the Anticipatory Governance and Foresight Capacity Programme of the Office of the Vice President, implemented with technical support from UNICEF.
The Child Foresight team, led by Director-General, Chris Ngwodo, and the Vice President’s Special Assistant on Special Duties, Mohammed Ahmed, presented the outcomes to the Minister in his office.
Dr. Alausa said the findings of the analysis were especially significant given Nigeria’s youthful demographic profile, with roughly 70 per cent of its estimated 220 million people under the age of 30. He described this as both a major opportunity and an urgent responsibility for the government, stressing that the country must deliberately convert its youth population into a demographic dividend through quality education, relevant skills, productive opportunities and long-term planning.
He maintained that the changes under the Tinubu administration were reflected in measurable outcomes rather than political rhetoric.
“Today we have a President who is leading the country, managing this country from the front, with the highest level of integrity, commitment, patriotism and determination to change the face of this country”. “These are not just rhetorics we are hearing now. These are things we are seeing, with a lot of tangible benefits and tangible change in the country” he said.
Three years into the administration, Dr. Alausa said, Nigeria has moved past the uncertainty that once characterised national development, with government attention now focused on consolidating gains and closing remaining gaps.
“The country is not at a crossroads again. We have a lot of catching up to do,” he said.
The Minister said education remains central to the administration’s push toward a $1 trillion economy, noting that the Nigerian Education Sector Renewal Initiative (NESRI) is driving reforms across Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET), STEM education, teacher quality, out-of-school children reduction, and education data and digitalisation.
He said renewed emphasis on TVET is reshaping perceptions of technical education and opening new pathways for young Nigerians into skilled work, entrepreneurship, employment and further study.
“Skills are the present and the future,” he said, adding that Nigeria can no longer sustain an education system that fails to prepare young people for the realities of the modern economy.
He noted that Technical education was once integral to Nigeria’s system but suffered decades of neglect and the government is now deliberately restoring it to the centre of national education planning.
Dr. Alausa linked the administration’s investment in medical education and professional training to efforts to ease the skills shortages driving migration pressures commonly known as “Japa.”
He said Nigeria has faced severe shortages of nurses and other health professionals despite strong demand from young people for training in these fields, and that the government has responded by expanding access to nursing education and increasing training capacity within existing teaching hospitals, federal medical centres and specialist hospitals, rather than relying solely on new institutions.
The goal, he said, is to enable more Nigerians to acquire high-quality professional training at home while building a globally competitive workforce.
The Minister highlighted the administration’s shift toward data-driven education planning, particularly in determining the true scale of Nigeria’s out-of-school children population. He questioned the long-cited figures of 15 to 17 million, arguing they have never been grounded in a comprehensive household-level count.
He pointed to Kaduna State, where a household survey covering more than 90 per cent of households reportedly found fewer than 190,000 out-of-school children, against an earlier estimate of about 585,000. A separate Kaduna estimate of roughly 1.2 million reportedly fell to under 100,000 following a general household survey. Jigawa State, he added, recorded similarly significant gaps between prior estimates and its own household assessment.
The Education minister said reliable data would allow the government to identify where children are out of school, understand why, target interventions more precisely, and track whether children who return to school stay enrolled. He was careful to stress that any downward revision does not diminish the urgency of the problem: “Even if there’s significant reduction, any child out of school is still too many.”
He disclosed that more than one million children have been moved from the streets into schools nationwide over the past two and a half years, with Jigawa State alone accounting for more than 180,000 of them over the last two years. The next challenge, he said, is sustaining enrollment and preventing new cases of exclusion.
Dr. Alausa pointed to progress in the 2026 Annual School Census through the Nigerian Education Management Information System (NEMIS), with more than 56 per cent of public schools and 41 per cent of private schools having entered their data on the digital platform. “Without data, you’re flying blind. Data will tell you everything,” he said, noting that the information will help the Ministry identify access gaps, monitor enrolment, plan infrastructure and evaluate interventions more accurately.
He also disclosed that the Ministry has conducted a national assessment to establish a baseline for literacy, numeracy and cognitive development among learners at the primary, junior secondary and senior secondary levels, which will help measure the effectiveness of future interventions.
Alausa said the reforms and data emerging from the education sector are directly relevant to the Child Foresight Analysis, since securing the future of Nigerian children requires more than projections. He said the initiative offers an opportunity to embed long-term thinking, systems thinking, adaptive innovation and youth participation into national planning, ensuring today’s decisions safeguard future generations.
He commended the Office of the Vice President, the Office for Strategic Preparedness and Resilience (OSPRE) and UNICEF for their support, describing the initiative as a critical step in moving Nigeria from reactive governance toward anticipatory action. He said the Ministry would work to align the findings with NESRI, particularly around future literacy, long-term education planning, skills development, data systems and intergenerational equity.
“Nigeria has changed, and it has changed for good,” Alausa said, adding that the true measure of the country’s progress will ultimately be whether its children and young people receive better education, acquire relevant skills, find productive opportunities, and contribute meaningfully to national development.
