October 24, 2025
The alarming rate of school dropouts across the country has become a subject of concern to the Federal Government as it revealed that about 24 million pupils who enrolled in primary schools did not advance to senior secondary level.
Disclosing this on Thursday in Abuja during a ministerial roundtable on zero-rated data and devices for Nigerian teachers, Minister of Education, Dr. Tunji Alausa, said data from the Nigeria Education Management Information System (NEMIS) platform showed that only six million out of 30 million pupils captured from 21 states, progressed to senior secondary school.
Alausa noted that statistics from NEMIS is a disturbing trend that poses a serious threat to Nigeria’s educational development and long-term human capital growth.
“The information we’re seeing on that digital platform is scary,” Alausa said. “From the 21 states that have uploaded their data, we have about 30 million children in primary schools.
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“From primary to Junior Secondary School (JSS 1), that number drops to 10 million—20 million children gone.
“We can’t find them. Then, from Junior Secondary to Senior Secondary, another four million disappear. It’s scary. But now that we can see the data, we can start looking at evidence-based interventions and monitor outcomes.”
According to the minister, the high dropout rate between primary and senior secondary levels underscores the need for targeted interventions to ensure children particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds are in school.
The NEMIS platform, is a digital web-based system that collects, processes, and provides reliable real-time data on education to aid decision-making at the, local government, state and national levels.
Alausa explained that the biometrics of every schoolchild are being uploaded onto the digitised NEMIS platform to enable tracking and data-driven policy implementation, emphasizing that beginning from 2026, the annual school census will be fully digital.
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“It’s not manual anymore. Paper will be taken out completely,” he stated, noting that the Ministry plans to integrate West African Examinations Council (WAEC) and Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) data into the system.
He appreciated President Bola Tinubu for providing financial and political backing for the initiative and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) for its technical support.
The Minister said over 60,000 tablets have been distributed to schoolchildren in Adamawa, Oyo, and Katsina States under the Airtech (Amazon Web Services) and BESDA programmes, with an additional 30,000 devices expected soon.
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“We’ve also launched a smartboard—two weeks ago,” he said. “Our goal is that by 2027, every school in Nigeria will have a smartboard.
“This is how we can cascade high-quality education to every child, irrespective of where they live, their background, or their parents’ social status.”
He stated that the deployment of interactive smartboards would gradually replace traditional chalkboards in public schools, to encourage a more dynamic, engaging, and technology-driven classroom experience for pupils.
Alausa, explained that the devices would allow teachers to integrate multimedia, digital textbooks, and real-time interactions into lessons.
