***** 32m students, 221,229 schools captured under NEDI platform
**** As TETFund introduces carrot-and-stick approach to enforce compliance

The Federal Ministry of Education has announced that 119 of the 124 federal government-owned tertiary institutions have already been integrated into the Federal Tertiary Institutions Governance Transparency Portal (FTIGTP).

The data was obtained through the Nigerian Education Data Infrastructure (NEDI), a centralised system established to improve and modernise data management within Nigeria’s education sector.

Information published on the Ministry’s Nigeria Education Sector Renewal Initiative portal seen by our correspondent on Sunday, also indicated that 32 million students have so far been onboarded, spanning 221,229 schools across 21 states.

A breakdown of the 119 institutions integrated into the Federal Tertiary Institutions Governance Transparency Portal (FTIGTP) revealed that 57 of the 60 federal universities, 35 of the 36 polytechnics, and 27 of the 28 colleges of education have successfully uploaded and submitted their data to the platform.

According to the website, FTIGTP is “a unified platform for tracking and analysing key performance and funding metrics across Nigerian tertiary education institutions, covering data from the past three years”, aimed at promoting transparency, provide interactive reports and visualisations for evidence-based decisions.

Launched in 2025, the Nigerian government had mandated federal institutions to publish key institutional data on their websites, including student enrolment, budgets, research grants, intervention funds among others.

Specifically, in May 2025, it set the minimum student enrollment benchmark at 2,000 per tertiary institution. However, it was gathered that due to pressure from institutional heads, the target was later reduced by 50 per cent.

Speaking during the 2025 Policy Meeting held in Abuja, the Minister of State for Education, Prof. Suwaiba Ahmad, disclosed that beginning this year, tertiary institutions with student populations below 1,000 would cease to benefit from funding provided by the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund).

She questioned the fairness of distributing the same amount of resources to schools with low enrollment as those with much larger student populations.

In an exclusive interview with The Guardian, Executive Secretary of TETFund, Arc. Sonny Echono confirmed that the policy has commenced, using ‘carrot-and-stick’ approach to encourage institutions to improve.

According to him, funding allocations are now performance-based, focusing on curriculum quality, student impact, research, and personnel quality.

“Allocations are now competitive, with interventions given to institutions that can demonstrate their ability to use the funds effectively.

“Institutions must justify their funding needs by showing improvements in curriculum quality, student impact, research, and personnel quality,” he said.

He explained that the agency withholds the release of funds to institutions that fail to meet the required benchmarks until they present evidence of compliance. However, despite repeated attempts to get him to disclose the names of the affected institutions, he declined to do so.

Meanwhile, stakeholders have continued to react to the just-concluded National Stakeholders Meeting on the National Education Data Infrastructure, convened by the Minister of Education, Dr Tunji Alausa, with many describing the initiative as a major step towards transforming data management and planning within the country’s education sector.

Among those who commended the initiative was former Minister of Aviation and Chancellor of the Athena Centre for Policy and Leadership, Osita Chidoka, who described the programme as one of the “most important national infrastructure projects Nigeria has undertaken in recent years.”

Chidoka noted that the development of a centralised education data system would not only improve transparency and accountability in the sector but also support evidence-based policymaking, efficient allocation of resources, and long-term national development planning.

He added that reliable education data is critical to addressing challenges such as out-of-school children, inadequate infrastructure, teacher shortages, and disparities in access to quality education across the country.

In a statement released at the weekend, he said: “Data from all states were available on the portal, from school enrollment to the state of physical infrastructure to the student-teacher ratio. A mind-boggling quantum of data, made easy to understand, compare, and drive policy.

“The Nigeria Education Management Information System, designed by Ernst & Young, the company that developed a similar system in India, is a national treasure: robust yet simple.

“What is happening in education may not yet dominate the headlines, but something important is taking shape quietly beneath the surface. Evidence is beginning to replace assertion. Data is starting to shape decisions”.