The Federal Government is set to roll out a National Textbook Ranking System for primary, junior and senior secondary schools nationwide next month in a bid to significantly reduce textbook glut, deepen standards, and strengthen quality assurance in the education sector. The noble objectives notwithstanding, stakeholders have welcomed the reform with pessimism. ADELOWO ADEBUMITI reports.

The ongoing efforts by the Federal Government to strengthen quality assurance and standardisation in the education sector, with the introduction of the National Textbook Ranking System for primary, junior and senior secondary schools across the country, are set to significantly reshape the country’s education ecosystem.

The system, slated to kick off in September 2026, aims to address the proliferation of textbooks in schools and ensure that only high-quality, curriculum-compliant learning materials are approved for use. 

Before the proposed ranking, textbook approval in Nigeria was handled by NERDC through an existing assessment and vetting framework. Under that system, publishers align manuscripts with the NERDC curriculum and submit them to the council, which vets them for compliance before granting final approval for publication.

The process was described by publishers as “transparent and objective,” and as providing a level playing field. Approval by NERDC alone was previously enough to qualify a textbook for classroom use. States also had a role because, under the 1999 constitution, education is on the concurrent legislative list, and state ministries of education have the right to select instructional materials for their jurisdictions. Sadly, this development led to an unregulated proliferation of instructional materials, which vary from school to school.

Despite these procedures, unapproved textbooks without ISBNs often found their way into schools through corruption and other unethical practices.

This problem came to the fore recently when a young mother of two went viral after what she termed an alleged threat to her life for criticising a nursery school English Language textbook for her five-year-old son, which contained graphic cruelty. She alleged that she was invited by the police and threatened by the publishers’ lawyers.

In her video, the young mum read a story from the book about an elderly man who punished a dog by burning its nose with a hot iron for failing to guard the meat. She said that finding the graphic story disturbing made her question how appropriate the material was for young, impressionable readers.

The incident, which led to an online debate about content regulation in children’s educational materials and parental rights, also drew the support of the senator representing Kogi Central, Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan, who insisted that content intended for children must never be distressing, confusing, or inadvertently normalise violence.

The senator said that parents have every right to question and vet materials that their wards were exposed to, while publishers must remain open to feedback. She also charged the Federal Ministry of Education and its agencies to be proactive in ensuring that all educational materials meet appropriate standards.

Beyond stakeholders questioning the regulation of school materials, there are growing concerns about how publishers, backed by many proprietors and schools over the past 15 years, have created systems that compel parents to spend more on textbooks.

Previously, siblings could reuse the same books, with older children passing them down to younger ones. Today, however, textbooks are deliberately designed to be non-reusable, forcing parents to purchase identical copies for each child at different times.

However, due to concerns about inconsistent quality, inflated prices, and confusion from too many books in the system, the Federal Ministry of Education announced a National Textbook Ranking System.

Under the updated framework, the NERDC will still approve textbooks, but Standing Subject Committees, comprising experts, will evaluate and strictly rank the books based on academic rigour and teaching effectiveness. Through this process, only a limited number of top-tier textbooks will be selected per

subject, while unranked books are barred from schools.
The ranking system is expected to significantly reduce the excessive number of textbooks currently in circulation in many schools, something that has often created confusion for teachers, students and parents.

The reform also aims to bring greater transparency, order and quality assurance into the textbook approval process, while aligning Nigeria’s education system with international best practices in instructional material standardisation.

Addressing some of the challenges of the previous system, the framework also aims to reduce expenses for parents by promoting high-quality, reusable textbooks (built to last between four and six years) and restricting the use of disposable workbooks bundled with textbooks.

The development has polarised stakeholders in the country, with some arguing that the policy will help curb the proliferation of substandard books and improve learning outcomes by prioritising content quality.

However, critics such as the Nigeria Publishers Association (NPA) argued that duplicating the approval process renders the NERDC redundant, since the council has rigorously vetted and approved textbooks for curriculum compliance.

The NPA National President, Mr Lukman Dauda, said the proposed ranking system would distort fair competition in the education sector and undermine existing evaluation processes.

According to him, the current textbook assessment framework already provides a transparent and objective system that ensures a level playing field for publishers, adding that rather than introducing ranking, the government should strengthen the existing mechanism.

Dauda warned that implementing such a policy in Nigeria, with over 60 million learners and more than 200 publishing houses, would be impractical and disruptive.

He noted that publishers were still adjusting to a recently introduced curriculum, adding that the absence of a proper transition period had already placed pressure on the sector.

The association also criticised what it described as the financial burden of the new policy, alleging that the combined cost of assessment and ranking would amount to about N135.57 million for a publisher covering all subjects across basic and senior secondary levels.

The NPA further argued that such charges contradict the government’s stated goal of making educational materials more affordable, warning that the policy could increase textbook costs and reduce students’ access.

While many believe that the move represents a bold attempt to streamline textbook approval and elevate educational quality, some others feel that its success will hinge on transparent implementation and stakeholders’ buy-in.

The Chairman of the Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT) Lagos State chapter, Akintoye Hassan, said that the setting up of committees to streamline the book approval process is not strange since there has always been a process in place from time immemorial.

Rather, he said the issue in contention is how altruistic or sincere the policy is. “Will it not be an avenue to position the committee members to enrich themselves through extortion of the publishers? Will the best intellectual material sail through, especially when the publisher can’t or is unwilling to gratify the committee? According to the statement, the layer in the book assessment and approval process will ensure the relevance, accuracy, affordability, and availability of the books.

“It is good that we ensure quality and standard in anything that has to do with education; every stakeholder in the sector should support that. The fear is about sincere implementation and due diligence in carrying out the task at hand,” Hassan said.

The immediate past chairman of the Academic Staff Union of Secondary Schools (ASUSS), Lagos State Chapter, Kazeem Labaika, said that, as a teacher and labour leader in the teaching profession, the ranking of textbooks to be used in our various schools needs input from those who would use them. And that’s the teacher in the classroom.

Labaika, however, believes that to reform the whole process, the Federal Government should first declare a state of emergency in education and bring all stakeholders in the sector to a roundtable to discuss the way forward to salvage the falling standard of education in the country.

“The ticking time bomb should be averted (that’s the standard of education that is falling) before thinking of streamlining the resources to be used by the students and the teachers who would supervise them. Our system should stop chasing shadows. We should take action in the right direction,” he said.

The Administrative Manager and Public Relations Officer, Jextoban Secondary School, Lagos and Ogun States, Dr Solesi Abayomi, described the decision as a duplication of functions and a waste of time and resources. He said it would also increase the time frame for submitting the report.

Reacting to the condemnation by the NPA, Abayomi expressed the hope that the association is not just being self-serving, noting that there is a need to upgrade the textbook status to reflect new developments that have been injected into the new curriculum.

While admitting that there may be lapses in some areas in the old process of assessing textbooks, making it imperative to seek improvement periodically, Abayomi said the new policy would only contribute to its improvement in identified areas.

For instance, he pointed out that there are so many trade subjects with inadequate materials sufficient to treat the topic comprehensively, adding that the new policy can mitigate these challenges.

“I would have loved the Ministry of Education to saddle the NERDC with this responsibility for faster deliverables,” Abayomi said.

An education consultant and chartered administrator, Julius Opara, said the decision has broader implications for schools, teachers, learners, publishers, and the wider Nigerian education system.

He said that while it is expected to eliminate substandard textbooks, reduce the excessive number of competing books, and strengthen the curriculum, the bigger question is whether that alone can improve the overall standard of education in Nigeria.

Asking whether the new policy direction can actually solve Nigeria’s educational problems, Opara said that, most times, policymakers tend to shy away from making decisions that will address the root causes of the problems confronting the sector. He pointed out that the textbook ranking issue, as important as it is, is not central to the crisis in the sector.

He listed some of the challenges confronting the sector, including poor infrastructure, overcrowded classrooms, a shortage of teachers, a lack of access to digital learning, examination malpractice, kidnapping, and other forms of insecurity in schools, and wondered why the federal government would focus only on the ranking of textbooks.

Opara, however, expressed hope that the policy will not suffer from poor monitoring and implementation, as previous ones did, noting that a quality textbook alone cannot compensate for a classroom without teachers.

“It cannot compensate for schools without electricity; it cannot also compensate for children learning under trees because we do not have proper classroom structures. It cannot compensate for unpaid teachers. Neither will it correct the weak educational governance that we have.

“Reforms majorly focus on structure, instead of addressing foundational problems. Will the ranking policy improve instructional quality? Does it, in itself, solve the systemic crisis of education in Nigeria? It doesn’t at all,” he said.

Opara said our problem as a nation is that we do not look critically at our local environment to determine which policies we can formulate to best solve our foundational problems. Instead, he said what we do is to copy others.

He said that if the evaluation is transparent and the committees are formed on merit, the policy will be successful.

The consultant, however, warned that the ministry must take a stand to minimise corruption, because once it’s allowed to be politicised, it’s dead on arrival.

Opara also tasked the Federal Ministry of Education with ensuring compliance, stressing that the books to be ranked and approved must align with curriculum standards and have stronger academic reviewers.

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