ENUGU, Nigeria (VOICE OF NAIJA)- The Federal Government of Nigeria has announced a 70 per cent minimum benchmark for textbooks to qualify for the national ranking of instructional materials approved for use in Nigerian schools.
The Minister of Education, Tunji Alausa, announced the new standard on Friday in Abuja while receiving the first national textbook assessment and ranking report conducted by the Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council, NERDC.
The assessment revealed significant quality gaps among textbooks submitted for consideration, with some materials recording scores as low as 25 per cent.
Alausa said the findings had reinforced the need for stricter quality control in the production and selection of instructional materials for Nigerian schools.
“Some of the books being used in our schools, primary schools, junior secondary schools and senior secondary schools are trash. Some of these books are scoring 25 per cent or lower. Is this the way our children should be educated? If this happened with the government, it will not happen with this government,” he said.
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According to the minister, only books that attain the 70 per cent threshold will be included in the nationally ranked list, while publishers whose materials fall below the benchmark will have the opportunity to correct identified deficiencies and submit them for reassessment.
He said the policy was not intended to undermine the publishing industry, but to introduce a transparent system for determining whether educational materials were suitable for Nigerian learners.
“I’m giving you the olive branch,” Alausa told publishers, while commending those who participated in the assessment despite what he described as pressure and blackmail.
The minister said the exercise had become particularly important following the introduction of the revised national curriculum in September 2025, stressing that textbooks used in schools must reflect current curriculum requirements.
NERDC developed a standardised assessment toolkit for the exercise, drawing on international best practices.
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Curriculum alignment accounted for 51 per cent of the assessment, while other criteria included language and style, instructional design, technical features, social and cultural compliance, and gender sensitivity.
Alausa said the assessment would provide publishers with measurable evidence of the strengths and weaknesses of their materials instead of relying on subjective judgments about textbook quality.
He stressed that the government’s primary concern was to ensure that every instructional material placed before a Nigerian learner was accurate, relevant and fit for purpose.
“Every instructional material presented to a Nigerian learner must be accurate, curriculum-aligned and fit for purpose,” he said.
The assessment will be conducted in three cycles to cover the basic and senior secondary school curriculum.
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The first cycle covers Primary 1 and 4, JSS 1 and SS 1. The second will assess textbooks for Primary 2 and 5, JSS 2 and SS 2, while the third cycle will cover Primary 3 and 6, JSS 3 and SS 3.
The Executive Secretary of NERDC, Salisu Shehu, said the exercise was part of the council’s statutory responsibility to develop, review and promote quality educational materials.
Shehu said subject specialists, education experts and NERDC officials participated in the assessment using established criteria and a defined scoring framework.
He added that peer review was incorporated into the process to prevent the assessment from depending on the judgment of a single official.
According to him, the results represented documented professional assessments and the collective judgment of experts involved in the exercise.
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Shehu said the emergence of scores as low as 25 per cent demonstrated the importance of having a credible national mechanism for screening textbooks before they were introduced into classrooms.
Meanwhile, Alausa announced that the national curriculum would henceforth undergo review every three years to keep it responsive to developments in technology, education and society.
He said regular curriculum reviews, combined with tighter scrutiny of textbooks, would strengthen quality assurance across the education sector.
The minister assured publishers that materials meeting the 70 per cent benchmark would be expected to maintain the required standards, while those below the threshold could be revised and resubmitted for assessment.
Alausa said the measures formed part of President Bola Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda for education, stressing that the ultimate focus of the reforms was to ensure Nigerian children receive quality and relevant learning materials.