Time for Sustainable Education System in Nigeria

The era of free education in the Nigerian Western Region produced global figures such as Wole Soyinka and Ladipo Akinkugbe.

As Premier of the Western Region between 1954 and 1959, Obafemi Awolowo allocated between 28.9 per cent and 41.2 per cent of the regional budget to education. The Eastern Region devoted between 26.9 per cent and 43 per cent to the sector.

That strong political will built solid institutions, a sound curriculum, merit-based admissions, and a dedicated teaching workforce that produced graduates who competed globally.

Regrettably, the military interregnum and decades of democratic decay from the Second to the Fourth Republic debased standards. They replaced excellence with a deplorable alternative that is now dragging the country towards the precipice.

This marked the beginning of the “heavy price” Nigeria now pays for neglecting education and presiding over the “broken” and “underfunded” system Osinbajo described. Education, the mother of all sectors, was treated like an orphan.

While European Union countries devote about 12 per cent of their budgets to education and UNESCO recommends 15–20 per cent, Nigeria’s Federal Government struggles to allocate about 5.0 per cent, with states averaging 10.8 per cent.

The results are everywhere: dilapidated buildings, overcrowded classrooms, libraries reduced to reading rooms stocked with archaic books, and laboratories without equipment.

The Governor of Kano State, Abba Yusuf, stated in June 2024 that more than 4.7 million pupils across the country sit on bare floors to learn.

That same year, the Nigerian Union of Teachers reported that 16 of the 36 states failed to recruit teachers between 2018 and 2022, with some states neglecting recruitment for more than a decade. The few remaining teachers are overworked, exhausted, and poorly paid.

Shockingly, even as basic schools suffer severe resource shortages, some governors refuse to access counterpart funding from the Universal Basic Education Commission.

Its Executive Secretary, Hamid Bobboyi, lamented in 2024 that some states declined to deploy just 10 per cent of the 2.0 per cent Consolidated Revenue Fund earmarked for teachers’ professional development.

As of August 2024, nine states had yet to implement the N70,000 minimum wage signed into law a month earlier.

Conditions are even worse in private schools, where some PTA teachers earn as little as N15,000 monthly while doing the work of three teachers.

UBEC data show that only 915,913 teachers serve 31,771,916 pupils nationwide, a ratio of 1:35, far below UNESCO’s recommended 1:25 for lower and middle basic education.

Nigeria’s universities fare no better. Chronic underfunding has driven lecturers abroad in droves, fuelling the brain drain to the UK, UAE, the US, and Japan.

The consequences are severe. UNICEF estimates that 18.3 million Nigerian children are out of school, an army of idle youths that extremist groups like Boko Haram readily exploit.

Research output is weak, patenting is rare, and many graduates are unemployable, swelling unemployment figures annually.

The 2025 State of the Nigerian Youth Report by Plan International Nigeria, in collaboration with ActionAid Nigeria, puts youth unemployment at 53 per cent or about 80 million people.

Strikes cripple universities, undermining competitiveness, partnerships, and internationalisation.

Until recently, Nigerian institutions were conspicuously absent from the top 1,000 in Webometrics rankings.

At CSR Reporters, when we speak about a sustainable education system in Nigeria, we are not merely talking about classrooms, chalkboards, or examination scores. We are speaking about nation-building. We are speaking about the kind of intellectual soil that once produced minds like Wole Soyinka, a product of a time when public education in the Western Region was visionary, structured, well-funded, and socially anchored. That system was not accidental; it was deliberate policy backed by political will and social commitment. Sustainability today must be equally deliberate but this time powered not just by government, but by CSR, ESG, and private sector innovation.

First, Nigeria needs an Education Sustainability Compact, a formal coalition where corporations adopt public schools the way they adopt communities for CSR. But this must go beyond painting classrooms. Companies should embed long-term value chains into schools. For example, telecom companies can provide broadband and digital literacy labs powered by solar energy; manufacturing companies can sponsor technical workshops aligned with their industry needs; banks can embed financial literacy into secondary school curricula. The goal is alignment between education output and economic demand. CSR must shift from donation to co-creation. When companies see schools as future talent pipelines rather than charity cases, sustainability becomes self-reinforcing.

Second, we must introduce an “Infrastructure-to-Endowment” model. Instead of one-off building projects, corporations should create education endowment funds for specific schools or regions, professionally managed and transparently reported under ESG frameworks. The annual returns would fund teacher training, maintenance, digital tools, and scholarships. This prevents the familiar decay of newly commissioned buildings. Sustainability is not about ribbon-cutting ceremonies; it is about lifecycle thinking. A school built today must still function efficiently in 30 years. That requires financial architecture, not episodic philanthropy.

Third, teacher dignity must become a CSR priority. The old Western Region model worked partly because teachers were respected and well-trained. Today, we must reposition teachers as “nation-builders” through corporate-backed continuous professional development academies. Imagine an annual Teacher Innovation Fellowship funded by major Nigerian brands, where outstanding public school teachers receive grants, training in modern pedagogy, technology integration, and leadership exposure. Recognition should be as prestigious as corporate awards. If sustainability is about human capital, then teacher quality is its foundation. No education reform survives without empowered teachers.

Fourth, we need Green & Smart Schools as sustainability laboratories. Corporations serious about ESG can transform selected public schools into demonstrative models of climate-conscious infrastructure, solar-powered classrooms, rainwater harvesting systems, waste recycling programs, and school gardens integrated into science learning. Students would not just read about sustainability; they would live it daily. Companies in energy, FMCG, construction, and waste management sectors can collaborate on this. It becomes a living CSR showcase while embedding environmental literacy into young Nigerians. In a country already battling climate risks, sustainability education must start early.

Fifth, digital equity must become the new “free education.” In the 1950s and 60s, access meant physical classrooms. Today, access means connectivity. A sustainable education system must guarantee low-cost or free data access to approved educational platforms. Public-private partnerships can create a zero-rated national learning portal containing curriculum-aligned content, recorded lessons, vocational training modules, and entrepreneurship toolkits. Telecom operators, edtech startups, and content creators can co-own this ecosystem. If done properly, a child in rural Akwa Ibom or Kebbi would have the same learning opportunity as one in Lagos. Sustainability here means removing geography as destiny.

Underlying these five solutions is one central shift: CSR must move from charity to systems engineering. Education cannot survive on sporadic donations of desks and exercise books. It requires governance integration, measurable impact metrics, transparency dashboards, and stakeholder reporting, the same rigor companies apply to financial reporting. ESG reporting should include measurable educational impact indicators: number of teachers trained, digital hours delivered, renewable energy capacity installed in schools, student progression rates.

Nigeria once proved that visionary education policy could produce global intellectual giants. The lesson from that era is not nostalgia, but intentionality. If corporations, government, and civil society align education reform with sustainability principles, long-term financing, environmental consciousness, human capital development, and technological inclusion, the country can once again build a system that consistently produces thinkers, innovators, and leaders.

And perhaps, decades from now, another generation will look back and say that this was the moment Nigeria chose to design education not for applause, but for permanence.