From: Femi Mustapha
Kaduna State was recently recognized for excellence as education stakeholders gathered in Abuja to unveil Nigeria’s new Digital National Education Management Information System (DNEMIS), with the President of the Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT), Comrade Audu Titus Amba, calling the state a model for data-driven governance.
“Please, permit me to specifically appreciate Kaduna State, where I am from,” Amba told the gathering.
“The information we’ve received, my state is making progress. My SUBEB chairman is one of the youngest in the Federal Republic of Nigeria, under 40.
He is a digital SUBEB chairman, which is why we are number one in Kaduna State, and we’ll continue to be number one. This challenge goes to all our state SUBEB chairmen and Commissioners of Education: partner with your state NUT chairman. They are ready to work with you.”
The applause for Kaduna opened a high-level session that brought together the Honorable Minister of Education, Dr. Maroof Tunji Alausa, CON, commissioners of education, SUBEB chairmen, development partners, teachers, and civil society. The event marked the official launch of the DNEMIS platform and the inauguration of state NEMIS coordination teams, a move officials say will end years of fragmented, outdated, and manual education data collection.
Minister Alausa emphasized that policy must be based on evidence, not assumptions. “The future of education is not guesswork. It is data, it is evidence, it is action,” he said.
He urged subnational governments to adopt the new system, enter accurate school-level data, and use it for planning, resource allocation, and monitoring.
The Minister emphasized the urgency of addressing Nigeria’s education data gap. He pointed out that while about 38 million learners have been entered into D-NEMIS, the data show a sharp decline at transition points: roughly 24 million children in primary and Islamiyya schools drop to about 5 million in JSS 1, and to approximately 4.2 million in senior secondary. He traced the bottleneck to infrastructure and structural issues, noting that Nigeria has approximately 90,000 public primary schools but only 15,000 junior secondary schools, resulting in a 1:8 ratio. He also highlighted “disarticulation,” where separate principals for JSS and SSS lead to overcrowded JSS classrooms and underutilized SSS classrooms. “From data available to us, disarticulation has failed our education system,” he said, adding that this issue will be discussed at the next National Council of Education.
Alausa stated that the new platform replaces manual, three-year-lagged annual school censuses with near real-time, school-level data entry by head teachers. Six modules are already operational or in development: a learner transition module to track out-of-school children; an infrastructure module to map classroom and facility needs; a safe school module; a teacher module on ratios and qualifications; an out-of-school children module; and a national learning assessment module. He announced that Nigeria’s first national learning assessment in five years began two days ago and will now be conducted every three years, with UBEC responsible for funding. UNICEF has also pledged an education financing module.
Development partners played a key role in the rollout. Alausa thanked UNICEF’s Vanessa for reducing the 24-month rollout plan by 14 months and acknowledged the contributions of the World Bank, EU, Norway, and FCDO. He also praised HISP/University of Oslo for supporting data sovereignty, noting that 15 staff are now working full-time in Nigeria. UNICEF Country Representative Wafaa Saeed Abdelatef stated the platform makes “every child visible,” enabling early warning on dropouts and connecting excluded children to schools. She added that Nigeria’s education data transformation was showcased in Oslo as one of Africa’s leading digital innovations.
Data quality and privacy were key concerns. Alausa mentioned that the National Bureau of Statistics has deployed nine statisticians to help with data aggregation and validation. At the same time, the National Data Protection Commission will work with the D-NEMIS team to establish safeguards, given that the system will hold 65–70 million individual pupil records. The NBS Director-General was praised for his support.
Teachers’ leaders welcomed the reform but emphasized the importance of implementation. NUT President Amba said a credible EMIS is “indispensable to achieving quality education” and pledged the union’s support for data collection, validation, and use. He urged state coordination teams to operate with “diligence, professionalism, transparency, and dedication,” and called on SUBEBs and commissioners to closely collaborate with NUT chapters.
The Director of Basic Education at the Federal Ministry of Education, Mrs. Folake Olatunji-David, described the launch as “the institutionalization of a single interoperable platform for all basic and secondary education data” and stated that states are now central to data governance. She told coordination teams, “You are the custodians of truth in our sector… The days of estimate and guesswork must end, and it must end with you.”
With political and financial backing from President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, a dedicated budget line for the NEMIS office, and states like Kaduna and Borno already submitting nearly complete 2026 census returns, officials believe the toughest year will be 2026.
“Next year, we’ll be flying without problem,” Alausa said, encouraging private schools, which now make up about 19.5% of all schools nationally, to upload data without fear of taxation.
The message was clear: Nigeria is transitioning from manual compliance to digital accountability, with Kaduna cited as the first example showing it can work.
