_No education reform can outperform the people who deliver it. Nigeria must recruit teachers on merit, prepare them properly, support them continuously, pay them reliably and hold the entire education system accountable for whether children are actually learning._
Nigeria’s education debate is often conducted in the language of physical infrastructure. Governments announce classrooms, perimeter fences, digital centres, laboratories, boreholes, buses and renovated school blocks. These investments matter. Children should not learn under leaking roofs or sit on bare floors. Yet a newly painted classroom in the hands of an unprepared, unsupported or frequently absent teacher remains an attractive container for educational failure.
The most important infrastructure in any school walks into the classroom each morning.
A capable teacher can improvise when textbooks are scarce, identify a struggling child before that child disappears from the system, translate an abstract concept into familiar language and awaken curiosity in a pupil who has been told that intelligence belongs to other people. An ineffective teacher can stand before a fully equipped classroom for an entire year and leave children scarcely more literate or numerate than when they entered.
The international evidence is unusually clear. A World Bank synthesis found that moving a student from a low-performing teacher to a high-performing teacher can produce learning gains equivalent to multiple years of ordinary schooling. It also found that structured teaching programmes, combining appropriate materials, lesson guidance, training, mentoring and feedback, improved language and mathematics outcomes more consistently than interventions centred primarily on hardware or administrative decentralisation. In the studies reviewed, structured pedagogy increased language scores by 0.23 standard deviations and mathematics scores by 0.14 standard deviations, roughly equivalent to nine and six months of learning respectively. The largest gains came through teachers, not around them. World Bank, Successful Teachers, Successful Students
This is the central argument of Nigeria Reset Week 34: teachers are not one component of education reform. They are the human machinery through which nearly every other component becomes useful.
Nigeria’s first responsibility is therefore to rebuild the teacher pipeline. Teaching should no longer be treated as the occupation people enter merely because other opportunities have failed. Admission into teacher-training institutions must become competitive, intellectually demanding and tied to national workforce needs. Candidates should be assessed not only on certificates, but also on subject knowledge, communication, ethical judgment, motivation, emotional maturity and capacity to work with children.
The Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria already provides a regulatory foundation. Its current registration pathway identifies the Nigeria Certificate in Education, or its recognised equivalent, as the minimum qualification and requires eligible applicants to pass the Professional Qualifying Examination before registration and licensing. The qualifying examination was introduced nationally in 2017 as a prerequisite for professional registration and licensing. Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria The problem is not the absence of standards on paper. It is the inconsistent application of those standards across states, private schools, political recruitment exercises and rural communities where shortages are used to justify almost any appointment.
Nigeria must insist that nobody should be permanently employed as a teacher without recognised professional preparation and a valid licence. Emergency recruitment may occasionally be necessary, especially in communities affected by insecurity or acute shortages, but emergency appointments should be time-limited and accompanied by a compulsory pathway to qualification. Political office holders should not be allowed to fill schools with patronage appointees whose primary qualification is loyalty to a party, legislator or local power broker.
The 2022/2023 National Personnel Audit conducted by the Universal Basic Education Commission provides the most recent comprehensive official portrait of basic education institutions, personnel and enrolment across the federation. The audit covered public and private early-childhood centres, primary schools and junior secondary schools in all 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory. It documented profound disparities in the supply, qualifications and deployment of teachers. UBEC, 2022/2023 National Personnel Audit Reporting based on that audit placed the shortage in public primary schools at approximately 194,876 teachers, while some states had reportedly gone several years without significant recruitment. BusinessDay report on the UBEC audit
A national shortage, however, does not mean that every location has too few teachers. Nigeria suffers simultaneously from shortage, maldistribution and inefficient deployment. Urban schools may have clusters of teachers while remote communities struggle to maintain even a minimal staff. Some schools have relatively generous numbers of personnel but lack mathematics, science, special education or early-grade literacy teachers. National and state planning must therefore move beyond crude teacher totals to subject-specific, school-specific and location-specific workforce mapping.
Every state should maintain a digital teacher register linked to payroll, professional licensing, qualifications, subjects taught, school location, attendance, continuing professional development and retirement projections. Such a register would expose ghost workers, identify schools with excessive or insufficient staffing and permit recruitment before shortages become emergencies. Data should be updated annually and published in accessible formats by state, local government and school level, with appropriate protection for individual privacy.
Teacher education itself also requires repair. Colleges of education and university faculties should be judged partly by what their graduates can do in real classrooms. Every trainee should demonstrate competence in subject knowledge, lesson planning, classroom management, inclusive education, safeguarding, formative assessment and the teaching of foundational literacy and numeracy. Supervised teaching practice must become a serious professional apprenticeship rather than a ceremonial requirement verified through signatures and hurried visits.
No student teacher should graduate without substantial classroom exposure under an experienced and carefully selected mentor. Placement schools should receive support for hosting trainees, and mentors should be trained and compensated. Final certification should include observed teaching, a professional portfolio and evidence that the candidate can help pupils learn, not simply proof that the candidate attended lectures and passed written examinations.
Recruitment standards will achieve little if Nigeria continues to make teaching economically and socially unattractive. The country cannot demand excellence from people whose salaries arrive irregularly, whose classrooms are dangerously overcrowded and who must purchase basic teaching materials from inadequate wages. Respect for teachers cannot be confined to speeches on World Teachers’ Day. Respect must appear in payroll reliability, manageable workloads, safe accommodation, professional autonomy and credible opportunities for advancement.
The 2022 Harmonised Retirement Age for Teachers in Nigeria Act extended the retirement age for teachers in the covered education sector from 60 to 65 years and the maximum pensionable service from 35 to 40 years. The measure was intended partly to retain experienced personnel in a system facing shortages. Federal Ministry of Information report on state implementation Retaining experienced teachers may help, but keeping people longer in service is not a substitute for recruiting and developing a new generation. An ageing workforce without a functioning succession plan merely postpones the crisis.
Compensation should recognise scarcity and hardship. Teachers who accept postings in rural, riverine, conflict-affected and otherwise hard-to-reach communities should receive meaningful allowances, secure accommodation, accelerated professional-development opportunities and defined advantages when applying for promotion. Kaduna State, for example, announced a rural posting allowance alongside an extension of the retirement age and years of service for teachers. TheCable report on Kaduna’s policy Such incentives should be transparent, adequately funded and protected from arbitrary withdrawal.
Pay must also be connected to a credible professional career structure. A teacher should be able to advance without abandoning the classroom for administration. Nigeria needs pathways for accomplished teachers to become lead teachers, mentors, subject specialists and instructional coaches while continuing to teach. Promotions should reflect demonstrated competence, contribution to colleagues, professional development and sustained classroom practice, rather than seniority, political connection or the accumulation of certificates of doubtful relevance.
Performance management is necessary, but it must be intelligent. Reducing teacher evaluation to examination scores would be both unjust and counterproductive. A teacher working with overcrowded classes in a conflict-affected rural community does not begin from the same position as a teacher in a well-resourced urban school. Raw scores can punish those serving the most disadvantaged children and encourage schools to exclude weak pupils, narrow the curriculum or manipulate results.
A fair performance system should use several sources of evidence: attendance, punctuality, classroom observation, lesson preparation, professional conduct, pupil work, improvement in learning from an established baseline, participation in coaching and contributions to the school community. Persistent absenteeism, abuse, certificate fraud, examination malpractice and refusal to improve should have consequences. Equally, teachers must have access to clear expectations, constructive feedback, remediation and an impartial appeal process.
Accountability must extend upwards. A teacher cannot be held solely responsible when a state fails to pay salaries, a local education authority deploys staff irrationally, a school lacks textbooks or insecurity prevents regular attendance. Head teachers, local government education authorities, state universal basic education boards, training providers and ministries must also have measurable obligations. Performance management that penalises only the person at the bottom of the system is not accountability. It is administrative scapegoating.
The greatest weakness in Nigerian teacher development has been the assumption that occasional workshops can transform classroom practice. Teachers are transported to hotels or conference halls, exposed to crowded presentations for a few days, given materials and sometimes allowances, and then returned to their classrooms with little observation or follow-up.
UBEC’s own teacher professional-development framework acknowledges this history. It states that previous training was often infrequent, poorly organised, ineffective, based on a one-size-fits-all model and available to only a small proportion of teachers. It also records that teachers frequently received no post-training support to help them apply new knowledge in the classroom. The audit evidence cited by UBEC officials indicated that 67.5 per cent of public-school teachers and 85.3 per cent of private-school teachers had not attended in-service training during the five years from 2018 to 2022. UBEC findings reported by TheCable
UBEC’s reformed approach proposes continuing, systematic, needs-based and school-centred professional development. It also confirms that 10 per cent of the federal UBE intervention fund is allocated to teacher professional development. The framework recommends school-based training, clusters for smaller schools, follow-up support, communities of practice and School Support Officers who mentor teachers and head teachers. UBEC, Teacher Professional Development Programme Document
These proposals should be implemented as the normal architecture of teacher growth, not left as admirable paragraphs in another federal document.
Every new teacher should complete a structured induction year. Every school should have protected time for teachers to examine pupils’ work, jointly plan lessons and discuss difficult cases. Experienced teachers should observe colleagues and provide confidential, practical feedback. Subject teachers from neighbouring schools should meet in local clusters to share resources and solve common problems. Digital platforms can extend these networks, but technology should support professional relationships rather than replace them.
The distinction between coaching and discipline is crucial. Evidence reviewed by the World Bank suggests that effective professional development is tailored, practical, focused and continuous. Its guidance recommends combining initial group training with continuing individual support, including periodic classroom observation and feedback. It also warns against making the same person both a teacher’s supportive coach and formal evaluator, because teachers are less likely to reveal difficulties or attempt unfamiliar methods when every mistake may be used against them. World Bank, Structuring Effective One-to-One Support
Nigeria should therefore develop two connected but distinct systems. Coaching should be developmental, confidential and focused on improvement. Formal evaluation should be periodic, transparent and governed by published standards. Coaches should be selected for teaching expertise, interpersonal skill and credibility among peers, not merely administrative rank.
Parent and community participation is the fourth pillar of reform. Schools belong neither to ministries nor to teachers alone. Parents have a legitimate interest in whether teachers attend, whether children are safe, whether grants reach their intended purposes and whether pupils are learning.
Nigeria already has School-Based Management Committees. UBEC’s revised School-Based Management Committee and School Improvement Programme describes these committees as vehicles for meaningful community participation in school improvement. It places them within a tradition of grassroots identification of school needs, resource mobilisation and local ownership. UBEC, SBMC-SIP Implementation Manual
The committees must not become extensions of ruling parties, traditional elites or head teachers. Membership should include parents, women, persons with disabilities, youth representatives, community leaders and, where appropriate, pupils. Selection procedures, terms of office and conflicts-of-interest rules should be published. At least once each term, every public school should hold an open accountability meeting at which the head teacher presents basic information on enrolment, attendance, staffing, grants, expenditure, safeguarding incidents and learning progress.
Schools should display teacher establishment, approved grants, major expenditures and channels for reporting concerns. Parents should be able to report chronic teacher absence, illegal levies, corporal abuse, sexual exploitation or diversion of materials without exposing themselves or their children to retaliation. Complaints should be logged, investigated within defined timelines and reported in aggregate.
Community oversight, however, must not become mob supervision of professional teaching. Parents should not dictate grades, intimidate teachers or demand the promotion of children who have not met requirements. The purpose is partnership and transparent governance. Professional decisions should remain with qualified educators, subject to lawful standards and fair review.
The global context makes delay dangerous. UNESCO estimates that the world will require 44 million additional primary and secondary teachers by 2030, including about 15 million in sub-Saharan Africa. Its recommendations emphasise competitive salaries, better working conditions, professional development, career progression and stronger social recognition. UNESCO, Global Report on Teachers Nigeria will be competing for talent in a region where qualified educators are already scarce. A country that devalues teachers should not be surprised when its strongest graduates seek other professions or leave altogether.
The immediate agenda is therefore practical. Federal and state governments should enforce professional licensing, conduct transparent workforce audits, recruit against verified school and subject needs, establish funded induction programmes and make continuous coaching available in every local government area. States should guarantee timely salaries, publish rural-posting incentives, create classroom-based promotion pathways and separate supportive coaching from disciplinary evaluation. UBEC and state boards should disclose how teacher-development funds are spent and evaluate programmes by changes in classroom practice and pupil learning, not by the number of workshops held.
Within five years, Nigeria should aim for every basic-education classroom to be led by a properly qualified and licensed teacher; every new teacher to complete supervised induction; every practising teacher to receive regular school-based professional development; every school to participate in a functioning peer-learning cluster; and every community to have access to basic information about staffing, expenditure, attendance and learning.
This is not an argument against classrooms, technology, laboratories or textbooks. It is an argument about sequence and purpose. A tablet cannot notice that a child has stopped speaking because she is being abused. A renovated building cannot correct a misconception in fractions. A curriculum document cannot inspire confidence in a frightened learner. Only a human being, adequately prepared and supported, can turn those resources into education.
Nigeria has spent decades treating teachers as the least glamorous part of reform while expecting them to deliver its most ambitious promises. That contradiction must end. Recruitment without standards produces mediocrity. Training without coaching produces certificates rather than changed practice. Accountability without adequate pay produces resentment. Higher salaries without performance expectations produce little public confidence. Community oversight without professional boundaries produces interference.
The answer is a complete professional compact: select teachers carefully, educate them rigorously, license them honestly, deploy them fairly, pay them reliably, coach them continuously, evaluate them intelligently and honour those who excel.
Nigeria’s real education infrastructure is not cement, steel or computer hardware. It is the informed mind, disciplined character and daily labour of the teacher standing before the nation’s children. Until the country invests in that infrastructure with the seriousness it gives highways, airports and government buildings, every other education reform will remain structurally incomplete.
Garbs,
August 20, 2026 *Amend an Act You Refused to Implement? Nigeria’s Latest Mental Health Announcement Is No Cause for Celebration*
The Federal Government’s announcement that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has approved a proposed amendment to the National Mental Health Act to decriminalise attempted suicide would ordinarily deserve applause. Treating a person in suicidal crisis as a criminal is cruel, medically indefensible and incompatible with a modern understanding of mental illness.
But Nigeria must resist celebrating another announcement while the government continues to disregard the mental health law already in force.
The proposal approved by the Federal Executive Council is not yet law. It is an executive bill that must still be transmitted to, debated and enacted by the National Assembly. More importantly, it comes from a government that has failed, for almost four years, to activate some of the most important institutions mandated by the existing National Mental Health Act.
_This is not reform. At best, it is the renovation of a building the government has refused to open. At worst, it is another exercise in legislative theatre._
Nigeria’s journey to this point was painfully slow. The colonial Lunacy Ordinance of 1916, later incorporated as the Lunacy Act of 1958, governed mental healthcare for more than six decades. It was custodial, discriminatory and concerned principally with confinement rather than treatment, autonomy or recovery. Its deficiencies and the repeated efforts to replace it have been extensively documented in the academic literature (Ozota et al., 2024).
An initial Mental Health Bill introduced in 2003 did not become law. Further legislative efforts followed, including the Mental Health and Substance Abuse Bill introduced in the Senate in January 2020. The National Assembly eventually passed the National Mental Health Bill in 2021. It was enacted as Act No. 46, with a commencement date of December 28, 2022, and presidential assent was publicly announced on January 5, 2023 (National Mental Health Act 2021; Nigeria Health Watch, 2023).
The new law was rightly celebrated as a historic break with colonial thinking. It promised protection from discrimination, degrading treatment, arbitrary detention and abuse. It recognised informed consent, community-based care, access to treatment, confidentiality, legal representation and independent review (Akanni et al., 2024).
Most importantly, section 2 did not merely suggest the creation of an administrative body. It expressly declared:
“There is established a Department of Mental Health Services in the Federal Ministry responsible for Health.”
That Department was not an optional aspiration. It was intended to be the principal mechanism through which the Act would be administered. It was assigned responsibility for coordinating mental health services, developing national programmes, protecting the rights of people with mental health conditions, monitoring implementation and facilitating a national suicide-prevention strategy (National Mental Health Act 2021).
The Act also established a Mental Health Assessment Committee to protect people receiving care, review involuntary and long-term admissions, investigate complaints and guard against arbitrary detention. It provided for a Mental Health Fund and contemplated the integration of mental healthcare into primary, secondary and tertiary health services (Nigeria Health Watch, 2023).
Nearly three years and eight months after the Act commenced, where are these institutions?
Where is the visibly operational Department of Mental Health Services, with a director, staff, office, budget, implementation programme and publicly accessible reporting system?
Where is the Mental Health Assessment Committee hearing complaints, reviewing involuntary detention and inspecting facilities?
Where is the Mental Health Fund?
Where are the regulations, national implementation timetable, minimum standards, enforcement reports and state-level structures?
As early as May 2024, the Centre for Health Ethics Law and Development issued an urgent call for the establishment of the Department and constitution of the Mental Health Assessment Committee (CHELD, 2024).
A 2026 academic review of Nigeria’s mental health-policy implementation found that progress between 2023 and 2025 remained limited, with no operational budget, minimal state adoption, weak or non-functional state structures and no robust national implementation plan. The review contrasted Nigeria’s approach with countries that followed legislation with defined implementation roadmaps and timelines (Damul et al., 2026).
The government’s failure is not merely administrative incompetence. It is a continuing violation of its own law.
When legislation says that a department “is established,” the executive cannot treat its operationalisation as a matter of political discretion. The Federal Ministry of Health is not free to obey the sections it finds convenient and ignore the institutional obligations upon which the entire Act depends. A government that refuses to establish and operationalise a body expressly created by statute undermines the rule of law.
This is the central deception of Nigeria’s mental health reform. The country possesses a shiny law but has withheld the machinery required to make it work.
A law without an implementing institution is a press release. A right without a remedy is a slogan. An independent review mechanism that does not sit cannot protect anyone. A mental health fund that contains no identifiable resources cannot purchase medication, employ professionals or establish community services. A prohibition against degrading treatment means little if no authority regularly inspects the places where people are detained.
The consequences are not abstract.
Before the Act was enacted, Human Rights Watch documented people with mental health conditions being chained in state institutions, psychiatric facilities, rehabilitation centres and traditional and religious establishments across Nigeria. Some were reportedly restrained for weeks, months or years and subjected to forced treatment, seclusion, beatings and unsanitary conditions (Human Rights Watch, 2019).
A subsequent international investigation described people with psychosocial disabilities being locked in confined spaces, forced to eat, sleep, urinate and defecate in the same small areas, and exposed to involuntary fasting, forced medication and physical or sexual violence (Human Rights Watch, 2020).
The National Mental Health Act was supposed to end this national disgrace. Yet people with mental illness are still reportedly found in chains and shackles. Distressed prisoners remain in correctional institutions without adequate psychiatric assessment, psychologists, medication or meaningful rehabilitation. Families without accessible services continue to surrender relatives to unregulated facilities where restraint may be presented as treatment and abuse disguised as spiritual intervention.
The Lunacy Act may have been repealed from the statute book, but its philosophy survives wherever a mentally ill Nigerian is chained, hidden, beaten, abandoned or detained without independent review.
That is why the announcement on attempted suicide cannot be received as an unqualified achievement.
Decriminalisation is necessary. Section 327 of the Criminal Code and section 231 of the Penal Code retain colonial provisions under which a survivor of a suicide attempt may be arrested and prosecuted. Such punishment discourages disclosure and help-seeking, intensifies stigma and converts psychological distress into criminal liability.
Minister of Health and Social Welfare Muhammad Ali Pate is correct that a suicidal person needs care and support rather than prosecution. The Federal Executive Council’s recognition of this principle is welcome (Punch, 2026; Voice of Nigeria, 2026; News Agency of Nigeria, 2026).
But the proposed legislation must be legally precise. Amending the National Mental Health Act alone will not necessarily eliminate offences contained in the Criminal Code, Penal Code and relevant state legislation. The executive bill must expressly repeal or amend every applicable criminal provision and ensure harmonisation across federal and state jurisdictions. Otherwise, Nigeria may produce yet another contradiction in which one law promises care while another authorises arrest.
More fundamentally, what care will the government offer the person it says should no longer be prosecuted?
Where is the national crisis line?
Where is the properly staffed emergency mental health service?
Where are the community crisis teams, suicide-prevention programmes, psychological services and accessible treatment centres?
Where are the trained personnel to assess the person after a suicide attempt?
Where is the follow-up care after discharge?
Where is the national suicide surveillance system?
Decriminalisation without services may remove the police cell, but it does not create a hospital bed, psychiatric nurse, psychologist, social worker or community support programme. A suicidal Nigerian who is no longer prosecuted but is discharged into the same conditions of poverty, stigma, family exhaustion and unavailable treatment has been spared punishment but has not been provided care.
The government cannot continue manufacturing laws as substitutes for governance. It cannot announce a new amendment while refusing to explain why the Department mandated by the existing Act remains invisible or non-operational. It cannot proclaim compassion for suicidal people while mentally ill citizens remain shackled. It cannot promise treatment while failing to fund the structures that would provide it.
There should therefore be no presidential self-congratulation, ceremonial fanfare or victory parade over this proposal.
The government should immediately publish the full amendment bill and a comprehensive implementation report on the National Mental Health Act. The report should identify the leadership, staffing, office, budget and activities of the Department of Mental Health Services; the membership and proceedings of the Mental Health Assessment Committee; the amount appropriated and disbursed to the Mental Health Fund; the regulations issued under the Act; the number of facilities inspected; the complaints investigated; and the steps taken to end chaining and unlawful detention.
The National Assembly must refuse to treat the executive bill as an isolated amendment. Its public hearings should examine the government’s failure to implement the parent Act. Ministers and responsible officials should be required to account for every neglected statutory obligation. The legislature should attach definite timelines, budgetary duties, annual reporting requirements and enforceable consequences for non-compliance.
Civil-society organisations, professional associations, service-user groups, families, disability-rights advocates and public-interest lawyers should also consider coordinated legal action. The courts should be asked to determine whether the government’s prolonged failure to operationalise institutions expressly established by law constitutes an unlawful refusal to perform statutory duties.
Applications for mandamus and other public-law remedies should be considered to compel the responsible authorities to operationalise the Department, constitute the Assessment Committee, activate the Fund and publish implementation standards. Fundamental-rights actions should challenge chaining, degrading treatment, arbitrary confinement and denial of essential care. Strategic cases should seek structural orders requiring inspections, public reporting and continuing judicial supervision, not merely compensation after another person has suffered.
Nigeria does not need another beautiful mental health law displayed before the international community. It needs the government to obey the one it already has.
Decriminalising attempted suicide is morally right and long overdue. But it must not become a convenient public-relations shield for nearly four years of executive neglect. The true measure of reform is not the number of bills announced at the State House. It is whether a Nigerian in psychological crisis encounters care instead of punishment, treatment instead of abandonment and dignity instead of chains.
Until the Department exists in more than statutory language, until the Assessment Committee sits, until the Fund functions, until community services are available and until the last chain is removed from the ankle of a person with mental illness, there is no victory to celebrate.
There is only another promise resting upon an earlier promise that the government has refused to keep.
Garbs,
August 20, 2026