The Federal Government has unveiled the Nigeria Education Data Initiative, NEDI, a comprehensive digital education data infrastructure aimed at improving planning, governance and tracking of every learner across the country.
Minister of Education, Maruf Tunji Alausa, disclosed this during the public presentation of NEDI, describing the digital infrastructure as a “single source of truth” for the nation’s education sector.
According to the minister, the initiative is designed to end years of fragmented educational data and provide government at all levels with accurate, real-time information for evidence-based policy formulation and intervention.
“We want NEDI to become the single unified platform for our education system. Two years ago, all our educational data were fragmented. Today, we can tell the number of students in a school, the number of boys and girls, the teachers available, the facilities in that school and even the condition of classrooms, all from a central platform,” he said.
The minister said the system captures data from pre-primary to tertiary institutions, including infrastructure, staffing, student enrolment and learning outcomes, enabling authorities to monitor performance and deploy interventions more effectively.
A key component of the reform is the introduction of a National Learner Identification Number, which Alausa explained would be linked to each learner’s National Identity Number to create a unique educational identity for every child.
He said the learner ID would help government track school attendance, monitor dropouts and ensure continuity in students’ academic records regardless of relocation across states.
“Once a child enters school, the system can track that learner throughout the educational journey.
“If a student moves from one state to another, we will know where the student started from and where the student is currently enrolled. This will help us tackle the challenge of out-of-school children and eliminate opportunities for manipulation within the education system.”
The minister added that candidates sitting for this year’s West African Senior School Certificate Examination and NECO examinations would begin receiving the learner identification number as part of efforts to integrate students into the national education database.
Alausa noted that the digital infrastructure would also support labour market planning by aligning academic programmes with employment needs across different parts of the country.
According to him, the government intends to use data analytics to identify skill gaps and guide students toward disciplines with stronger employment opportunities, including nursing, software engineering, science and technical fields.
“We do not just want students going to school for the sake of going to school,” he stated. “We want to align education with labour market demands and create entrepreneurs, innovators and productive citizens.”
The minister said the platform would also strengthen transparency and accountability in education funding and development interventions by enabling government and development partners to assess outcomes more accurately.
He acknowledged the support of development partners, particularly UNICEF and Ernst & Young, for assisting the Federal Ministry of Education in advancing its digitalisation agenda.
Alausa also commended state governments, examination bodies and education agencies for collaborating on the initiative, stressing that reliable data would remain critical to improving governance and building Nigeria’s human capital development agenda.
Also speaking, UNICEF Chief of Education, Vanessa Lee, said the digitised Nigerian Education Management Information System developed with UNICEF support now provides a harmonised platform for collecting, analysing and using education data across the country.
According to her, the platform enables school-level data collection, annual school census reporting, learner registration and monitoring of safe school standards.
Lee said the learner registry would help government identify children already in school and those still out of school, while new innovations such as AI-powered search tools and daily attendance tracking would strengthen education planning and accountability.
She stressed that the success of the initiative depends on the commitment of states, local governments and schools to consistently upload accurate data into the system.
The UNICEF official praised Minister of Education for driving the reforms, saying the transformation would help more Nigerian children access learning opportunities and achieve their full potential.
Earlier, the Coordinator of NEDI, Abubakar Isah, said the newly introduced education data platform will provide Nigeria with a single, unified source of education data capable of tracking every learner from primary school to tertiary education.
Isah described education data as a “national asset,” stressing that the platform was conceived to address years of fragmented and inconsistent data management within the sector.
According to him, the initiative aligns with the vision of the Minister of Education to build a data-driven education system that supports informed policymaking, efficient resource allocation and improved educational outcomes.
He explained that before the launch of NEDI, education data in Nigeria existed across disconnected systems with weak interoperability, making it difficult for government to track enrolment, learner progression, institutional capacity and programme performance.
“For the first time, Nigeria now has a single source of truth for education data,” Isa said. “Every school will be counted, every teacher and lecturer captured, and every learner in Nigeria will become visible.”
He noted that the platform consolidates examination, finance, programme and institutional data into one national ecosystem while supporting learner tracking, dropout identification, policy planning and transparent financing across federal, state and local government levels.
