The hard truth about schools in Nigeria and how to fix it

Molade Adeniyi remembers the day she first stepped into a Nigerian public school. The walls were cracked, the chairs broken, and the students, bright-eyed and eager, sat huddled together, desperate to learn. But there were no books, no working fans, and barely enough teachers to go around.

“It felt like a war zone,” she recalls. “A war against ignorance. And we were losing.”

For years, Nigeria’s education system has been in freefall. Over 20 million Nigerian children are out of school, one of the highest in the world. Teachers, underpaid and undervalued, are fleeing the profession. Parents, exhausted and frustrated, are left to navigate an underfunded, broken system that seems to set children up for failure rather than success.

And yet, in the midst of this crisis, Molade Adeniyi believes there is hope.

Education in Nigeria has become a privilege, not a right. The rich send their children abroad, while the poor, millions of them, are left behind. Schools that should be nurturing young minds have become places of survival, where teachers struggle to do their jobs and students memorise facts without understanding them.

But what if we’re looking at the problem the wrong way? What if the solution is not just in policies or government interventions, but in the simple, powerful things parents and communities can do today?

The fix is closer than we think

Molade, CEO of Teach for Nigeria, has spent years working to bridge the education gap. In her conversation with Isaac Oladipupo, she breaks down three urgent steps every parent, teacher, and policymaker must take:

1. Make learning a home culture, not just a school activity

The biggest myth in education is that learning starts and ends in the classroom. But studies show that a child’s first and most important teachers are their parents.

“If your child never sees you read, they will never love books,” Molade says. “If you’re always scrolling on your phone but telling them to study, they will do what you do, not what you say.”

2. Technology is not the enemy, it’s an enabler

For years, parents have been told that screens and social media are ruining children. But Molade argues that the real danger is not technology itself, but how we use it.

“There’s more knowledge on a single smartphone today than in an entire university library,” she says. “If we teach children to use it right, to explore, to question, to build, we can give them the tools to compete globally.”

3. We must treat teachers like the Nation Builders they are

A nation that pays celebrities more than its educators is a nation in crisis.

“The moment we start paying teachers well, training them properly, and respecting their work, everything changes,” Molade insists. “The countries with the best education systems in the world, Finland, Singapore, Canada, put teachers first. Nigeria must do the same.”

A future we can build together

The problems in Nigeria’s education system are massive. But they are not impossible to fix.

Parents must engage more in their children’s learning. Schools must adopt modern teaching methods. The government must invest in teachers. And as a society, we must recognize that education is not just a personal responsibility, it is a national emergency.

This conversation is not just about schooling. It’s about the future of Nigeria.

Watch the full conversation here and here.