Nigeria’s education shifts and the struggle for industrial development, By Dipo Baruwa

Education – formal, informal, vocational, and professional – has always been central to a nation’s capacity to evolve structurally from a low-skilled economy to an advanced one. Achieving this transformation requires a coherent, policy-driven process anchored on long-term national objectives, shaped by domestic social values, and responsive to global structural changes. Such a policy must be flexible enough to adapt to global dynamics, yet firm enough to preserve its foundational philosophy. Unfortunately, in Nigeria, frequent shifts in the education system have consistently undermined this capacity, creating a persistent struggle to realise the country’s industrial ambitions.

Historical Roots: The Technical–Industrial Linkage

Since independence, Nigeria has consistently aspired to become a leading industrial nation. Its early prominence in the global economy was anchored on agricultural exports, cocoa, groundnuts, cotton, and other cash crops, which positioned the country as an active participant in global value chains. Although Nigeria operated largely at the lower end of these chains, it was widely expected that, with rapidly increasing human capital, capacity, and technical competence, the economy would ascend to higher-value segments: processing, manufacturing, and exporting finished industrial and agro-based goods. This expectation partly informed the Indigenisation Decree of the 1970s, which sought to strengthen domestic control and participation in industrial and commercial ventures.

The education system in this era was envisioned as the cornerstone of Nigeria’s industrial ambition. In its early years, the country’s educational framework prioritised vocational and professional training to produce a skilled and adaptable workforce capable of driving industrial expansion. Technical colleges, teacher training institutions, and polytechnics supplied the manpower needed for emerging industries and infrastructure development. Institutions such as Government Technical Colleges, Yaba Higher College (later Yaba College of Technology) and the Nigerian College of Arts, Science and Technology, with campuses in Ibadan, Enugu, and Zaria, which later laid the foundation for Nigeria’s first-generation universities, including the University of Ibadan and Ahmadu Bello University, were oriented towards producing engineers, artisans, technicians, and administrators to power the young nation’s industrial and infrastructural growth. The emphasis at the time was firmly on technical competence and practical knowledge, regarded as essential drivers of the country’s productive capacity.

Policy Instability and the Decline of Technical Competence

However, over the decades, frequent and often poorly coordinated changes in the education system have gradually undermined this foundation. The introduction and subsequent abandonment of various educational structures, from the 6-5-4 system to 6-3-3-4 and now 9-3-4, reflect not only a lack of policy continuity but also a fragile connection between education, historical social heritage, and national industrial objectives. Each reform cycle introduces a shift in curriculum priorities, institutional frameworks, and administrative focus, yet few changes were informed by empirical evidence. More importantly, the wholesome changes undermine the long-term alignment between the education and the nation’s industrial aspiration, thereby disrupting the country’s overarching developmental goals.

The consequences have been far-reaching. While these changes might have been signalled as necessary, they have never been accompanied by corresponding public expenditure. Public expenditure on education has averaged below 8 per cent of the national budget in most years since 1999, well below the UNESCO-recommended 15–20 per cent, resulting in underfunded technical colleges, outdated laboratories, and declining teacher quality. The collapse of vocational institutions, once the pride of regional governments, created a vacuum that the proliferation of private institutions could not fill.

While public spending has dwindled, the private sector has attempted to bridge the gap. In recent years, there has been an explosion of private investment in the education sector across its tiers, ranging from nursery to tertiary. Poor policy direction has, however, remained a bane on the quality of output and its alignment with national aspirations. Many private institutions operate as commercial ventures rather than innovation-driven centres of learning, producing graduates who are often ill-equipped for industrial or technical roles. This widening gap between educational output and market demand has resulted in persistent youth unemployment, estimated at over 33 per cent in 2023, and a growing mismatch between formal education and employable skills.

Moreover, the shift from technical competence to academic certification reflects a deeper socio-cultural change: an obsession with paper qualifications as the principal measure of success. Vocational and technical colleges have lost prestige, polytechnics have been downgraded in favour of universities, and the pipeline that once produced artisans and middle-level industrial manpower has become a mirage of their glorious past. Despite a growing population of Nigerians with tertiary education, the country faces a chronic skills deficit in sectors such as construction, manufacturing, and energy, with very few graduates technically equipped to drive industrial growth.

Consequences for Industrial Development

This policy inconsistency has had profound implications for national development. Despite numerous industrial strategies, import substitution in the 1970s, structural adjustment in the 1980s, and diversification and industrialisation drives in the 2000s and 2010s, the absence of a stable, skill-oriented education system has remained a critical bottleneck to productivity, innovation, and competitiveness.

A recurring feature of Nigeria’s educational reforms is the weak alignment between curriculum design and national economic priorities. These repeated changes have not only disrupted skill development but also directly constrained industrial growth, highlighting the tangible costs of education instability. Unfortunately, this disconnect persists. Recent curriculum adjustments have again shifted emphasis, this time toward international language proficiency, such as French, Arabic, or Mandarin, aiming to produce “global citizens” at the expense of mathematics and technical subjects, which have been de-emphasised in certain streams.

Making mathematics non-compulsory for arts students, though perhaps intended to ease subject load, has further illustrated a deeper systemic misalignment: a system more attuned to credential accumulation than to equipping students with analytical, quantitative, and problem-solving skills required in a knowledge-driven, globalised economy. Deprioritising STEM-related skills evidently represents a serious, sustainable development policy misalignment.

While the analysis of this policy is not the central focus of this paper, the shift in emphasis may, unfortunately, further exacerbate industries’ struggles to find technically competent local workers, increasing reliance on expatriates and the importation of semi-finished goods instead of promoting domestic manufacturing. In 2022, for instance, the National Bureau of Statistics reported that more than 70 per cent of Nigerian manufacturers cited “lack of skilled manpower” as a major constraint. The dearth of local competency has also weakened the government’s ability to effectively manage its expatriate employment policy, as gaps in technical expertise compel firms to justify expatriate hires in roles that should be filled locally. This dynamic perpetuates dependency, limits technology transfer, and hinders the development of indigenous industrial capacity.

Moreover, the absence of strong linkages between academia and industry has stifled research and innovation. University research outputs remain largely theoretical, with minimal commercialisation or adaptation to local production systems. As a result, the industrial ecosystem operates below capacity, with limited value addition, low productivity, and minimal export competitiveness.

Conclusion

To revive its industrial aspirations, Nigeria must restore coherence and purpose to its education system. This entails re-establishing a clear alignment between educational outcomes and national economic priorities, revitalising vocational and technical education, and fostering stronger collaboration between academia and industry. Equally important is the need to develop a skills forecasting framework that anticipates industrial manpower needs and informs curriculum design across all levels.

Nigeria’s future industrial success depends not on the number of graduates it produces, but on the relevance, adaptability, and competence of its workforce. Only through a stable, skill-driven, and innovation-oriented education system can the country rebuild the human capital required for genuine industrial transformation and sustainable national growth.

Dipo Baruwa is a business climate development analyst.