The Federal Government’s recent roadmap to connect all schools in the country to internet services is, no doubt, ambitious. The quest for universal school connectivity, however, remains a high-stakes race between government policy and deep-rooted systemic hurdles. The plan, as unveiled, aims to bridge the country’s cavernous educational divide by connecting all schools, from foundational primary levels to tertiary institutions, to reliable internet services. 
   
Announced earlier in March 2026 by the Minister of Education, Dr Tunji Alausa, the plan leverages a massive infrastructure rollout, including 90,000 kilometres of fibre optic broadband and the installation of 3,700 telecommunications towers targeted at rural and underserved communities.
  
While the rhetoric of ‘AI-driven education’ and ‘global competitiveness’ sounds promising, the Nigerian public is understandably cautious. History is littered with flag-off ceremonies for projects that eventually stalled in the face of logistical, financial, and political headwinds. To determine if this initiative will be a transformative digital bridge or another mirage, there is a need to look at the data behind the challenges.
   
Nigeria’s Internet capacity is paradoxical. While the country boasts eight international subsea cables, the highest in Africa, most of that bandwidth remains at the shores of Lagos. The challenge is middle-mile and last-mile distribution.
  
While the Federal Government targeted 70 per cent broadband penetration as of December 2025 as enshrined in the second National Broadband Plan 2020-2025, Nigeria missed the target and ended last year with 51.9 per cent penetration. This is far from the 70 per cent target of the Federal Government. Nigeria has mulled a third National Broadband Plan, going by feelers from the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC).
 
The plan to lay 90,000 km of fibre is a logistical behemoth. For context, this infrastructure is meant to bypass the current reliance on expensive satellite systems for inland areas.
  
It must also be emphasised that Internet connectivity is useless without electricity. With many rural schools operating completely off-grid and national grid reliability remaining volatile, the federal government must account for the $10,000 to $15,000 average cost of solar-powering a single school’s ICT lab. 
  
Scepticism is the default setting for the Nigerian electorate. Previous iterations, such as the Nigerian Research and Education Network (NgREN) and various Universal Service Provision Fund (USPF) projects, provided temporary flickers of connectivity that often faded once World Bank grants or federal subsidies dried up.
  
However, the 2026 plan differs in its integrated approach. Rather than a standalone ‘Education Project,’ it is attached to the broader ‘Project 774 LG Connectivity,’ which seeks to link all local government secretariats. By making schools ‘deliberate nodes’ in a national infrastructure backbone, the government is attempting to ensure that when a tower goes up for a local government office, the nearby school is automatically plugged in.
  
One of the most significant pivots in this new plan is the governance structure. The Federal Government has established two Technical Working Groups (TWGs). One is the Tertiary TWG, which focuses on universities and polytechnics. There is the Foundational/Secondary TWG, which focuses on the often-neglected primary and Junior Secondary Student levels.
   
In terms of supervision, the NgREN Governing Council has been expanded to include representatives from foundational education, ensuring a top-down and bottom-up flow of data.
  
Since the project uses NIGCOMSAT and Galaxy Backbone infrastructure, there is a centralised digital dashboard to monitor uptime. Supervision must move beyond hardware checks to ‘usage audits.’ Data shows that many existing school knowledge centres are locked up due to a lack of staff or fear of theft.
  
Connecting a school is a one-time event; keeping it connected is a perpetual struggle. It must be stressed that weak monitoring and evaluation systems make it hard for the government to track which schools are actually online and which ones have abandoned their equipment.
  
Another major question is who maintains the routers? Nigeria faces a severe shortage of IT-literate teachers. Statistics suggest that in many rural schools, especially in the up north, there is a 0:100 ratio of IT professionals to students.
  
It must be emphasised that connectivity does not equal literacy. A significant portion of the teaching workforce, estimated at less than 50 per cent, having basic ICT skills in recent reports, struggles to integrate digital tools into the curriculum.
  
Security of the equipment (solar panels, batteries, and routers) in high-risk areas remains a nightmare. Without community ‘buy-in’ and localised security, these investments often vanish into the black market within months.
  
In parts of the North-East and North-West, schools have faced attacks and mass abductions. The menace is fast spreading to the South-West, as depicted in recent attacks in Oyo State. Ekiti and Ondo States are evidently not safe. This makes it difficult to maintain physical hardware, including towers, cables, and tablets, in areas where the infrastructure is most needed.
  
With the 2025 hike in mobile data tariffs (averaging N587 per GB), the FG should provide a ‘Zero-Rated’ educational network. If schools are expected to pay commercial rates for bandwidth, the project will be bankrupt by its second anniversary. The Chairman of the NCC, Idris Ibikunle Olorunnimbe, recently urged telcos, under the aegis of Association of Licensed Telecom Operators of Nigeria (ALTON), chaired by Gbenga Adebayo, to urgently prioritise the zero-rating of educational websites.
  
This initiative aims to remove data cost barriers for students and teachers, enabling free access to educational content, which is considered a critical intervention to expand digital learning to millions of Nigerians.  
 
The Minister of Education has promised ‘visible improvements within three months.’ This is a bold timeline. For the dream to materialise, the government must move beyond the fibre and towers phase and address the human and power factors.
  
If this plan succeeds, it will democratise Artificial Intelligence and digital research for the son of a farmer in Kaura Namoda just as much as for the daughter of a banker in Ikoyi. If it fails, it will be remembered as a 90,000-kilometre monument of wasted potential.

The technical framework is the most robust we have seen in a decade. However, until the first thousand rural schools are browsing at high speeds without a generator humming in the background, Nigerians will keep their excitement and their data subscriptions on standby.