Athena Notes

Published twice monthly, Athena Notes features op-eds by academics, journalists, and thought leaders. It provides concise briefs that distil complex issues into clear, accessible takeaways. The series highlights key findings, central ideas, and practical insights for readers seeking clarity without the detail of full-length reports.

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Education Budgeting And Learning Outcomes In Nigeria: Why Spending Increases Have Not Delivered Results

Nigeria does not have an education funding problem. It has an education accountability problem disguised as a funding problem. Over the past decade, Nigeria has expanded education spending at a scale that, under ordinary institutional conditions, should have produced visible gains in literacy, numeracy, school quality, and system equity. Federal education allocations alone rose from approximately N602 billion in 2015 to over N3.5 trillion by 2025. State education budgets increased in parallel. In nominal terms, education has become one of the largest recurrent public expenditures in the Nigerian federation. Yet the results are starkly disconnected from the scale of investment. Fewer than 3 in 10 Nigerian children meet the minimum literacy or numeracy benchmarks in the early grades. Between 18 and 20 million children remain out of school, one of the highest figures globally. School infrastructure deficits persist. Teacher effectiveness remains uneven. Regional disparities in learning outcomes have widened rather than narrowed. This is not underfunding. This is systemic failure. The core argument of this paper is that Nigeria’s education budgets are not instruments of delivery; they are instruments of continuity. The budgeting system rewards allocation, disbursement, and administrative stability, not learning improvement. It sustains institutional routines rather than educational transformation. As a result, rising expenditure has not translated into proportional gains in human capital formation. Unless Nigeria fundamentally reforms how education budgets are designed, executed, and held accountable to outcomes, additional funding, however politically appealing, will continue to generate diminishing returns. In a period of fiscal compression, demographic pressure, …

April 14,

7:32 PM

In Education

By Ahmed Abdullahi

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Governing Climate-Resilient Infrastructure for SDG 11 in Nigeria

Nigeria’s failure to realise Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 11, sustainable, resilient, and inclusive cities, is fundamentally a governance and deliver challenge rather than a deficit of policy intent or technical knowledge. Rapid urbanisation, with an urban population of over 123 million growing at 4.1 per cent annually, has intersected with intensifying climate risks to expose infrastructure systems built without enforceable standards, coordinated mandates, or predictable financing. The 2022 floods alone affected 4.4 million people, displaced up to 1.4 million, and caused widespread damage to roads, housing, and economic assets, while coastal cities such as Lagos face accelerating shoreline erosion averaging about 2.6 meters per year. This policy brief argues that binding governance reform is the decisive lever for achieving SDG 11. The core constraint is weak enforcement of resilience standards and fragmented decision authority across federal, state, and local institutions, allowing political and informal considerations to override risk-informed planning. Drawing on comparative lessons from Bangladesh, the Netherlands, the Philippines, and South Africa, this brief proposes a coherent reform package centered on statutory accountability, climate-proofed infrastructure standards, conditional and decentralised finance, coastal and nature-based defenses, and integrated data and early warning systems. If implemented, these reforms would reduce lifecycle infrastructure losses, protect vulnerable urban populations, and directly advance SDG 11 targets, particularly disaster loss reduction (11.5) and integrated resilience planning (11.b), by aligning incentives, finance, and delivery with climate-resilient urban development.

March 23,

6:57 PM

In Governance and Leadership

By Dr. Izuchukwu Anyanwu

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From Connectivity to Classroom Impact: Integrating Digital Literacy in Nigeria’s Education System

Executive Summary Nigeria’s education system faces a growing digital literacy paradox. National internet usage exceeded 103 million users (45.5% penetration) by early 2024, alongside 164.4 million active internet subscriptions, yet these macro indicators conceal deep school-level, geographic, and pedagogical deficits. Household connectivity has expanded; classroom readiness has not. Nigeria possesses a coherent policy architecture—the National Policy on ICT in Education (NPICE) 2019, National Digital Literacy Framework (NDLF), 2023, and National Digital Learning Policy (NDLP), 2023—but implementation remains fragmented. Teacher capacity deficits, unreliable power and last-mile connectivity, non-ring-fenced financing, and weak monitoring and accountability have limited scale and sustainability. Pilot programmes, including UNICEF-supported initiatives connecting 1,027 schools and training 63,000 teachers, demonstrate feasibility but not national readiness. This policy brief finds that: (1) National connectivity statistics overstate school readiness; (2) Teacher digital competence and certified training capacity remain the single largest bottleneck to classroom integration; (3) Electrification and affordable last-mile broadband are preconditions for sustained use; and (4) Targeted investments combined with strong monitoring and evaluation (M&E) can rapidly increase effective reach. This brief recommends the following: (1) Rapidly scale pre-service and in-service digital pedagogy (targeted national teacher certification programmes); (2) Ring-fence blended federal–state funding for a five-year school connectivity and electrification plan; (3) Harmonise NPICE, NITDA’s Framework and the National Digital Learning Policy into time-bound key performance indicators (KPIs) – schools connected, teachers certified, devices per learner – and (4) Establish a joint FME–NITDA–UBEC public dashboard for real-time M&E. Leveraging available development finance and UNICEF implementation expertise can accelerate scale. If adopted, these measures should measurably raise teacher certification rates, increase the share of basic schools with functional digital access, reduce urban–rural learning gaps, and improve digital-skills outcomes for learners, enabling Nigeria to translate national connectivity gains into durable education transformation. Primary stakeholders for delivery include the Federal Ministry of Education, NITDA, UBEC, State Ministries of Education, REA/energy partners, UNICEF, and multilateral financiers.

January 13,

10:09 PM

In Education

By Dr. Izuchukwu Anyanwu

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Welfare First: Retaining Nigeria’s Health Workforce in an Era of Global Competition

Executive Summary Nigeria is losing its health workforce at a pace that increasingly threatens system viability. Between 2021 and early 2024, more than 42,000 nurses emigrated, while thousands of Nigerian-trained doctors registered to practise abroad, particularly in the United Kingdom. Survey evidence suggests that outflows are likely to persist: nearly three-quarters of current medical and nursing students report an intention to work overseas, and one-third indicate no plans to return. Available evidence indicates that emigration is driven primarily by domestic welfare and governance failures rather than by professional ambition alone. Key push factors include low and irregular remuneration, unsafe and overstretched working environments, limited access to funded specialist training, and weak social protection. These conditions intersect with sustained international demand and increasingly structured recruitment practices in destination countries. In response, Nigeria adopted a National Policy on Health Workforce Migration in 2023, aimed at promoting ethical recruitment and improving retention. Early implementation reviews, however, suggest that the policy has had a limited effect on outward flows. Weak financing, uneven state-level execution, and poor translation of policy commitments into tangible welfare improvements at the facility level have constrained impact. Migration, in this context, reflects a rational response to institutional uncertainty and uneven service conditions. This policy brief argues that meaningful retention is achievable, but only if welfare reform is treated as a core economic and governance priority rather than as a subsidiary component of migration management. It proposes a Welfare-First Retention Package (WFRP) centred on guaranteed and predictable remuneration, improved workplace safety, funded career progression pathways, fair and enforceable bonding arrangements, strengthened social protection, and disciplined use of bilateral and ethical recruitment instruments. The proposed reforms are designed for implementation by the Federal and State Ministries of Health, professional regulators (including the NMCN and MDCN), teaching hospitals, and development partners such as the WHO and World Bank. The effectiveness of the reforms, however, depends on being embedded within a politically feasible, fiscally credible, and legally enforceable framework that explicitly accounts for vested interests, state-level fiscal disparities, and constitutional constraints under Nigeria’s federal system. If adequately funded and effectively governed, the package could reduce short-term attrition by approximately one-third within two years. It would also substantially improve medium-term retention over a five-year horizon, while better protecting Nigeria’s public investment in health worker training.