Nigeria is once again talking about building a sovereign economy for its future, but that conversation is colliding sharply with a school system that is still preparing many young people for an economy that has long since changed shape and no longer matches what is being taught in classrooms.
Development Diaries reports that the debate gained renewed urgency after President Bola Tinubu used an international economic summit to restate Nigeria’s push for African resource sovereignty, arguing that the continent must stop exporting raw materials for processing elsewhere and instead build industrial capacity at home.
In that widening gap between global ambition and domestic reality lies a harder question about what Nigeria is actually preparing its young people for, and how many of them are being equipped for the economy the country claims it wants to build.
Irrelevant curriculum
Nigeria’s education system still largely operates as though its primary purpose is to produce certificates for a formal economy that can absorb graduates at scale, even though the labour market has long moved in a different direction.
The system continues to prioritise credentials such as O-Level results and university degrees, which serve as markers of social mobility but do not guarantee entry into a labour market in which more than 80 percent of workers operate in the informal economy.
In practice, many young Nigerians spend years preparing for a formal job market that is structurally too small to absorb them, only to graduate into an economy that rewards adaptability, entrepreneurship, and practical skills over certificates alone.
This disconnect is driving renewed calls for curriculum reform that embeds vocational training, financial literacy, and entrepreneurial skills as core learning areas rather than optional add-ons.
The argument being made by reform advocates is that if most young people will ultimately work in an informal, skills-driven economy, then schooling must prepare them for that reality rather than for an idealised labour market that exists mainly in policy assumptions.
18 million who not in the room
Any conversation about improving curriculum relevance immediately runs into a more urgent structural issue, which is that an estimated 18 million Nigerian children are not in school at all.
These children are not participating in debates about curriculum reform because they are outside the education system entirely. Many are in conflict-affected communities where insecurity, displacement, and the destruction of school infrastructure have made access to education either difficult or impossible.
Recent incidents of school abductions underscore how fragile access to education remains in parts of the country, particularly in areas already struggling with long-standing security challenges.
In this context, curriculum reform risks becoming a conversation that improves outcomes for those already inside the classroom while leaving those outside it untouched. A redesigned syllabus does not reach a child who cannot safely attend school, and improved learning materials cannot compensate for a school that no longer exists or is too dangerous to operate.
This is why the scale of exclusion must sit at the centre of any education reform agenda, not at its margins.
‘Africa first’ contradiction
President Tinubu’s international framing of Africa’s right to capture more value from its resources reflects a widely accepted economic argument that the continent must move beyond raw material export and build domestic industrial capacity.
However, that argument rests on a foundation that is currently uneven at home. A country advocating industrial transformation on the global stage is still grappling with large-scale food insecurity, significant numbers of out-of-school children, and an education system that is not yet fully aligned with the skills required for industrial development.
The contradiction is not in the ambition itself, but in the distance between the ambition and the institutional capacity needed to deliver it. Industrial sovereignty requires a workforce that is educated, healthy, and adequately prepared; still, those conditions remain uneven across Nigeria’s education and social systems.
Who is responsible
The Federal Ministry of Education and its agencies, including the Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council (NERDC) and the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), oversee curriculum design and funding frameworks that still prioritise examination outcomes over practical competencies.
State governments remain responsible for delivery at primary and secondary levels, where infrastructure gaps, teacher shortages, and insecurity continue to shape access and quality. At the national level, weak integration between education planning and security response has limited the system’s ability to protect learning in conflict-affected areas.
Together, these gaps produce a system that reforms content without consistently addressing access, safety, and relevance at scale.
Gender and equity lens
Girls are more likely to be affected by barriers to schooling, including insecurity, household economic pressure, and social norms that prioritise early marriage or domestic responsibilities in times of hardship.
Even where girls remain in school, the curriculum often does not provide sufficient practical skills to navigate the informal economy where most will eventually work.
In many cases, young women already participate in informal trading, food processing, and small-scale enterprise, but these realities are not formally integrated into what is taught in schools.
In northern Nigeria in particular, the intersection of insecurity and poverty continues to deepen educational exclusion for girls, reinforcing cycles of limited access to formal education and reduced economic mobility.
What needs to happen now
For citizens, the starting point is to demand clarity at the school level on what practical and vocational skills are being taught alongside formal academic subjects, and how these skills are being aligned with local economic realities. Where such integration is absent, that gap becomes a basis for structured advocacy to education authorities at state and federal levels.
For institutions, the Federal Ministry of Education is expected to publish a clear and time-bound curriculum reform roadmap that links content reform to measurable outcomes in skills development and employability.
However, that roadmap must also explicitly address access, ensuring that reforms improve learning for those already in school and expand safe and equitable access for the millions currently excluded.
Until both access and relevance are treated as inseparable parts of the same reform agenda, Nigeria’s education system will continue to produce certificates for a future economy while leaving too many of its young people outside both the classroom and the promise of that future.
