The Federal Government will begin blacklisting schools, authors, and publishing houses that use or distribute unapproved instructional materials starting this September.
This harsh sanction coincides with the resumption of the 2026/2027 academic session in two weeks, marking the official enforcement of an aggressive new national textbook ranking policy.
Under the new directive, standard licensing from the Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council (NERDC) no longer guarantees a textbook’s entry into classrooms.
Every instructional resource from primary to senior secondary school must now pass a rigorous national evaluation, securing a minimum score of 70% to qualify for the official national ranking.
Speaking recently with education stakeholders—including state commissioners, private school owners, and administrators—the Minister of Education, Dr. Tunji Alausa, emphasized that the policy is central to making Nigeria’s education sector globally competitive.
According to the policy statement obtained by Nigerian Tribune, the government is capping the final approved list to a maximum of six to 10 titles per subject to prevent an overcrowded market.
Once a textbook makes this elite list, it will remain standard for a minimum lifespan of three years to ensure educational stability.
While unranked textbooks are strictly banned in all public primary and secondary schools nationwide, the Federal Government strongly recommends that private institutions adopt these exact standards to maintain uniform educational quality.
This policy aims to transform Nigerian education by standardising textbook quality across all states, eliminating substandard schoolbooks, and giving students access to top-tier learning resources to drastically improve academic performance.
To ensure total compliance, the Federal Ministry of Education and the NERDC will deploy nationwide monitoring teams to track down violators. Any educational institution, author, or publisher caught using unapproved materials will face immediate blacklisting.
Despite the introduction of this new quality control tier, the NERDC will continue its statutory responsibility of basic textbook licensing alongside the new ranking framework.
