ABUJA, Nigeria – Nigeria‘s Minister of Education, Dr. Tunji Alausa, stated on Thursday, May 14, 2026, that two geopolitical zones record the country’s lowest literacy and numeracy levels despite receiving nearly 80 per cent of development partners’ investments over the past decade.
During a stakeholders’ workshop on the Nigeria Education Data Infrastructure in Abuja, Okay News reports that Alausa warned poor learning outcomes in the affected regions raise questions about the effectiveness and sustainability of donor-funded interventions.
Data from the National Bureau of Statistics indicates that the North-West and North-East currently rank lowest in literacy rates nationwide.
Alausa said, “As we look at our data, the total amount of development bank financing investment and development partners’ investment, about 80 per cent of those investments in the last 10 years, has gone to two geopolitical zones in the country. And those two zones have the lowest percentage of numeracy and literacy rates in the country.”
Nigeria’s Minister of Women Affairs and Social Development, Imaan Sulaiman-Ibrahim, stated that the data initiative is a strategic intervention designed to strengthen educational planning, coordination, and service delivery through reliable statistics.
The Coordinator of the Nigeria Education Data Infrastructure, Dr. Abubakar Isah, said the workshop was organised to establish a unified, technology-driven platform capable of eliminating inconsistencies in education data reporting.
