One major that has agitated me over the last ten years is the quality of education in Nigeria’s public schools, especially at the primary level. I have watched the data worsen, watched committees form and dissolve, and watched promises made ahead of elections quietly expire afterwards. What has not changed is the underlying reality: according to UNICEF, three in four Nigerian children between the ages of seven and fourteen cannot read a simple sentence, and more than half of the working-age population lacks the literacy needed to function in a modern economy, according to the NDHS 2024.
The failure maps almost perfectly onto geography. In Lagos, where families have largely abandoned the public system and fewer than one in five children remain in it, literacy rates are relatively high. In Yobe, where nine in ten children have no alternative to public schools, literacy rates are extremely low. There is no longer any serious debate about the fact that public schools are failing their students.
For decades, the response to this crisis has followed a predictable pattern. Nigeria launched the Universal Primary Education scheme in the 1970s, rebranded and relaunched it as the Universal Basic Education programme in 1999, and backed it with a dedicated Commission, matching grants to states, and a succession of national policy revisions. There have been ministerial committees, state-level initiatives, and campaign pledges from successive governors across the country. None of it has moved the needle on what actually matters, and that’s the education of public school children.
In a new policy brief, my team and I are proposing a solution we believe can help turn things around. The central problem with Nigeria’s public school system is a lack of accountability by those directly responsible for running it, and that accountability cannot be achieved so long as these schools are managed by state and local governments. Our proposal, the Public Accountability School System, or PASS, is a governance reform aimed at embedding accountability into the system while keeping public education exactly what it must remain: free, universal, and answerable to the communities it serves.
What does PASS do differently?
There is a Yoruba expression that captures the current situation precisely: “Oga ta, oga o ta, owo alaru o pe” — whether or not a sale is made, the hired hand still collects his wage. In Nigerian public schools today, whether or not a child learns to read, the system continues as before. Teachers are paid, officials are promoted, and tenures are almost for life (teachers’ retirement age is now 65). The child, left poorly educated, is the only party with nothing to fall back on and no voice in how the system is run. The bureaucracy grinds on while public schools remain centres for illiteracy.
Under PASS, the day-to-day management of public schools would be transferred to vetted, non-profit trusts held strictly accountable for the academic performance of the children in their schools. A trust’s continued management would depend on results, not on longevity or political connections.
The trusts would be drawn from institutions that already have a genuine stake or interest in a school’s reputation and a community’s future: alumni associations of historic government schools, faith-based organisations, educational NGOs with proven track records, and community foundations. These, typically, are not strangers parachuted in from outside. They are people who probably grew up in these schools, live or worship in these communities, and who will live with the consequences of how the schools perform.
The idea of nonprofits managing state schools has precedents around the world. In England, the academy programme launched in 2002 transferred failing state schools to independent management (academies), and within a few years, 70% of those schools had been rated good or outstanding by inspectors. In New York, charter school networks serving predominantly low-income students achieved above 90% pass rate in mathematics in 2023, far ahead of the citywide average.
We need not look only abroad. Before the nationalisation wave of the 1970s, Christian and Muslim mission schools along with community schools in Nigeria, operated with exactly this kind of local accountability despite being aided by the government. These schools produced several generations of the country’s most capable people. More recently, alumni-led management at institutions such as Government College Ibadan has shown that institutional pride, when properly channelled, produces better outcomes.
An obvious objection to our proposal is whether transferring management to private trusts opens the door to exclusion of weaker pupils, fee-charging, or institutional capture by vested interests. The PASS framework addresses this directly. Trusts cannot select their pupils, charge fees, or exclude children arbitrarily. Regardless of their affiliation, they must cater to all children without religious, ethnic or cultural discrimination. An independent inspectorate, funded as a first-line charge on the education budget and shielded from political interference, will monitor every PASS school regularly. Any trust that fails to meet agreed standards will have its contract terminated. This is not a blank cheque to nonprofit trusts, but a performance contract with consequences.
Our proposal does not require a revolution. All it requires is for state governments to recognise the futility of their current system that either condemns children to a life of illiteracy or forces parents to spend money they do not have on private provision. The Nigerian state took control of independent schools five decades ago, and promised quality and inclusion in exchange. That promise has not been kept, and the children who paid the price are now adults raising children of their own inside the same broken system. It is time for a reckoning, and we are inviting anyone who agrees to join us in demanding it.
Read our policy brief here: https://eduintelng.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Proposing-the-Public-Accountability-School-System-1.pdf
EduIntel welcomes responses to this proposal at hello@eduintelng.org
