Education Ministry Integrates 119 Tertiary Institutions Into Transparency Portal

The Federal Ministry of Education has disclosed that 119 out of the 124 federal government-owned tertiary institutions have been integrated into the Federal Tertiary Institutions Governance Transparency Portal (FTIGTP), as part of efforts to strengthen accountability and data-driven governance in the education sector.

Data obtained through the Nigerian Education Data Infrastructure (NEDI), a centralised platform created to modernise education data management in Nigeria, showed that over 32 million students have so far been onboarded across 221,229 schools in 21 states.

Information published on the Nigeria Education Sector Renewal Initiative portal indicated that 57 out of 60 federal universities, 35 out of 36 polytechnics, and 27 out of 28 colleges of education have successfully uploaded and submitted their data to the transparency portal.

The FTIGTP, launched in 2025, was introduced as a unified platform for tracking and analysing key performance and funding metrics across federal tertiary institutions using data from the past three years.

According to the ministry, the portal is designed to promote transparency and provide interactive reports and visualisations to support evidence-based decision-making in the tertiary education system.

The federal government had in 2025 directed all federal tertiary institutions to publish key institutional information on their websites, including student enrolment figures, annual budgets, research grants and intervention funds.

As part of reforms aimed at improving accountability and efficiency, the government in May 2025 fixed a minimum student enrolment benchmark of 2,000 for tertiary institutions.

However, findings revealed that the benchmark was later reduced by 50 per cent following pressure from heads of institutions.

Speaking at the 2025 Policy Meeting in Abuja, the Minister of State for Education, Prof. Suwaiba Ahmad, said tertiary institutions with student populations below 1,000 would no longer benefit from intervention funding from the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund).

Ahmad questioned the rationale behind allocating equal resources to institutions with low student enrolment and those with significantly larger populations.

Also speaking in an exclusive interview with The Guardian, Executive Secretary of TETFund, Arc. Sonny Echono, confirmed that the policy was already being implemented using a “carrot-and-stick” approach to encourage compliance among institutions.

“Allocations are now competitive, with interventions given to institutions that can demonstrate their ability to use the funds effectively.

“Institutions must justify their funding needs by showing improvements in curriculum quality, student impact, research, and personnel quality,” Echono said.

He further explained that institutions failing to meet the required benchmarks would have their funding withheld until they provide evidence of compliance.

However, despite repeated requests, the TETFund boss declined to disclose the names of institutions affected by the policy.