As Nigeria continues to grapple with challenges in its education sector, the legacy of former President Muhammadu Buhari (2015 to 2023) presents a mixed but significant narrative, especially in the area of basic education reform and intervention. While his administration faced recurring criticisms over prolonged university strikes and funding bottlenecks in higher education, Buhari’s most enduring contribution to education lies at the foundation level where millions of Nigerian children attend primary and junior secondary schools.
At the heart of Buhari’s educational legacy is his administration’s sustained investment in basic education, largely implemented through the Universal Basic Education Commission UBEC. From 2015 to 2022, the Federal Government under Buhari disbursed more than ₦553 billion in matching grants to state governments to fund basic education projects. These funds were used to build classrooms, renovate schools, provide teaching materials, and train teachers in both urban and rural communities. It marked one of the largest and most consistent allocations to UBEC in Nigeria’s history, signaling a strategic focus on rebuilding the country’s educational foundation.
Before the Buhari administration, UBEC grants were often delayed or underutilized by states. But from 2015, there was a clear shift. The funds were not just released more consistently but also monitored more closely for implementation, says Dr. Adebayo Yusuf, an education policy analyst.
Another key initiative that defined Buhari’s educational stride was the launch and expansion of the National Home Grown School Feeding Programme. Rolled out in 2016 under the National Social Investment Programme, the initiative provided one free nutritious meal daily to over 9 million public primary school pupils across 35 states. The programme was aimed at increasing school enrolment, reducing dropout rates, and improving nutritional outcomes for children in low-income households.
The school feeding programme had a ripple effect. Beyond boosting classroom attendance, it created jobs for over 100,000 local cooks and invigorated smallholder farming communities that supplied the food. In many rural areas, the assurance of a daily meal became a major incentive for parents to send their children to school and for pupils to stay through the school day.
This was the first time in decades that we saw a social programme so directly tied to both education and poverty reduction, notes Mrs. Zainab Bello, a headteacher in Kano State. We noticed the change almost immediately. Enrolment shot up, especially among girls.
Buhari’s government also expanded the reach of the Tertiary Education Trust Fund TETFUND, leading to improved infrastructure and research grants in tertiary institutions. New federal universities, polytechnics, and colleges of education were established to serve underrepresented regions, while the Federal Teachers’ Scheme and UBEC’s initiatives trained and deployed thousands of teachers nationwide.
Despite these efforts, Buhari’s time in office was marked by frequent and prolonged strikes by the Academic Staff Union of Universities ASUU, often triggered by disputes over funding, unpaid allowances, and unmet agreements. These disruptions exposed ongoing structural issues in Nigeria’s tertiary education system and at times overshadowed the progress made at the basic level.
However, it would be unfair to overlook the efforts made by the administration to resolve the crisis. In response to the repeated strikes, the Buhari government initiated several negotiation rounds with ASUU leadership. It constituted committees to review the union’s demands, approved part payments of Earned Academic Allowances, and released billions in revitalization funds to selected public universities. The administration also introduced the Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System IPPIS to standardize salary payments in federal universities, though it remained a controversial issue with the union.
In 2022, following one of the longest strikes in Nigerian history, the administration secured a temporary truce by committing to further dialogue and partial implementation of prior agreements. While critics argued that the resolutions were often ad hoc, others acknowledged that the government did make efforts to address long standing issues inherited from past administrations.
Still, many experts agree that Buhari’s most impactful and possibly most under-reported achievement in education was his administration’s commitment to strengthening basic education access and infrastructure. The combination of massive UBEC disbursements and the school feeding programme helped lay a more stable foundation for Nigeria’s educational system, especially in communities where children’s access to learning was historically weak.
As Nigeria looks to the future, the question remains whether successive administrations will build on these foundational gains or allow them to erode. For now, Buhari’s tenure may well be remembered as a period when Nigeria quietly but significantly invested in the youngest members of its population, not just with policy but with meals, classrooms, infrastructure, and a renewed focus on equity in education.
