Richer states, poorer public schools

In many communities across the country, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find public primary and secondary schools. Before coming across one public school, you may have passed five or more private schools. In such communities, governments appear to have increasingly left the responsibility of providing education to the private sector.

For communities that are still lucky enough to point to one or two public schools, what confronts you in some cases is a pitiful sight. There are classrooms with broken windows and leaking roofs, with too many pupils crammed into inadequate spaces. Where there are not enough classrooms, one can hardly begin to talk about functional libraries and laboratories. In some schools, there are toilets that children would rather avoid. Pupils are learning under conditions that are anything but conducive.

The irony is that government revenues have risen significantly. The states are getting richer. Why don’t their schools look richer? If government revenue rises dramatically but the condition of the public school attended by the child of a petty trader remains unchanged, where exactly is the additional money going?

The World Bank’s latest Nigeria Development Update says aggregate state revenues increased by about 93 per cent in real terms between 2023 and 2025, meaning that the increase was not merely the result of inflation. State expenditure also rose by about 92 per cent in real terms. The removal of petrol subsidy, foreign-exchange reforms, increased Federation Account allocations, stronger Value Added Tax collections and other inflows contributed to the improvement in states’ finances.

Education spending itself increased, but not as quickly as spending in some other areas. Consequently, education’s share of total state expenditure fell from 14.9 per cent in 2021 to 12.1 per cent in 2025. Capital expenditure, on the other hand, rose from 46 per cent to 61 per cent of state spending, with transport infrastructure recording the largest increase.

The same economic reforms that have imposed painful adjustments on ordinary Nigerians have, therefore, given governments considerably more resources. The question is whether enough of those additional resources are reaching the classrooms where Nigeria’s future is being prepared.

President Bola Tinubu’s administration removed petrol subsidy in May 2023. Since then, Nigerians have been enduring higher petrol and food prices, increased transport fares and severe cost-of-living pressures. The government has consistently argued that subsidy removal would free resources for development. If Nigerians accepted, or were compelled to bear, the pain because the government said resources would be freed for development, citizens have every right to ask what happened to the additional resources. If state revenues rose by 93 per cent in real terms, can citizens point to anything approaching a corresponding improvement in schools and other basic amenities?

As far as I am concerned, education should have been one of the biggest beneficiaries. Nigeria has one of the world’s largest populations of children and young people. That means education isn’t merely another sector competing for government money. It is arguably one of Nigeria’s most important investments.

A road can be reconstructed. A bridge can be repaired. But a child who passes through years of poor education may never fully recover those lost years. Every year a child spends in a dysfunctional school system can have consequences that last decades. So, when additional government revenue becomes available, education should logically rank among the first beneficiaries.

Many Nigerian parents who themselves attended public primary and secondary schools now refuse to send their own children there. Even many public-school teachers send their children to private schools where they can afford to do so.

This creates a vicious cycle. When influential citizens no longer use a public service, they have less personal incentive to demand its improvement. How many governors, commissioners for education, lawmakers and senior civil servants have children in the public schools they administer?

Every month, allocations from the Federation Account Allocation Committee are announced and states receive billions of naira. But ordinary citizens often cannot easily see the difference those additional billions make to their children’s schools.

What exactly are states spending their education money on? Education budgets often contain provisions for school construction and renovation, teachers’ salaries, training and capital projects. But citizens need to know what outcomes follow those expenditures.

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States can also access federal intervention funding through the Universal Basic Education Commission, but historically, some have at different times failed to access available funds because they did not provide the required counterpart funding or complete the necessary processes. It is difficult to justify deteriorating classrooms while money intended for improving basic education remains inaccessible or unused. If states now have substantially higher revenues, should counterpart funding still be an excuse?

The government can construct beautiful classrooms and still deliver poor education. Teachers are just as important as buildings. They need reasonable remuneration, training and retraining, modern teaching materials and motivation. What is the point of commissioning a beautiful block of classrooms if there aren’t enough qualified teachers inside them? Education spending should therefore be judged by investment in both infrastructure and human capital.

Education is also a security investment. Poor education isn’t only an education problem. A huge population of young people who are poorly educated, unskilled and unemployed creates serious social and economic vulnerabilities. Poor education can increase vulnerability to poverty and exploitation and, when combined with unemployment, deprivation and other factors, can make some young people more susceptible to recruitment by criminal and extremist groups. Every naira properly invested in education, therefore, has potential long-term benefits for security, productivity and economic growth.

We also cannot keep celebrating budgets. Every year, governors present budgets with attractive names and billions of naira are allocated to education. But budget allocation isn’t the same as actual expenditure. Actual expenditure isn’t necessarily the same as effective expenditure. And effective expenditure must ultimately produce better educational outcomes.

I admit that states have enormous responsibilities. They face higher wage bills, minimum-wage adjustments, inflation, rising construction costs, security spending, healthcare demands, road infrastructure and other competing needs. Some states have also invested significantly in school construction, teacher recruitment and education reforms.

The issue, therefore, is not that states are spending nothing on education. Neither is it that every additional naira available to them should go into schools. The question is much simpler: with revenues rising so substantially, why should education’s share of spending be falling?

I suggest that every state government should publish an annual Education Performance Dashboard showing the percentage of total expenditure devoted to education, budgeted versus actually released funds, number of teachers recruited, teacher-to-pupil ratios, schools renovated and other measurable outcomes.

Nigerians could then compare Lagos with Ogun, Kano with Kaduna, Rivers with Akwa Ibom and Enugu with Anambra, among others. Let governors compete on educational outcomes, not merely on flyovers.

I know that politicians prefer projects people can see. A flyover can be commissioned. A road can carry the governor’s photograph on a billboard. A new government building can be unveiled. Education is different. The return on recruiting and properly training 5,000 teachers may take years to become visible. A child who learns to read properly at age eight won’t provide an immediate ribbon-cutting ceremony. Yet, that investment may ultimately be more transformational than some highly visible infrastructure projects.

I see subsidy removal as creating something of a social contract. Nigerians were told that removing the subsidy was necessary partly because the government needed to free resources for development. Citizens have paid their side of the bargain by paying more for virtually everything as a consequence of higher fuel prices and other economic adjustments.

Now, governments must demonstrate their side of the bargain. The additional revenue should become visible in ordinary people’s lives. For a parent, one of the clearest signs would be a public school good enough that sending a child there doesn’t feel like punishment for being poor.

The 2027 elections are approaching. Governors and political parties will soon tell voters about roads, bridges, revenue growth and other achievements. Citizens should add another question: What happened to our schools while your government’s revenue increased?

The child sitting on a broken desk today will become the worker, voter, parent and perhaps leader of tomorrow. We cannot continue enriching government accounts while impoverishing the institutions responsible for preparing that child for the future. If the states are getting richer, their public schools have no excuse to remain poor.