Nigeria's Federal Ministry of Education has connected 119 of its 124 Government owned Tertiary Institutions to a centralised accountability platform, while simultaneously cutting funding to Universities, Polytechnics and colleges of education that cannot demonstrate effective use of public resources.

Data from the Nigerian Education Data Infrastructure showed that 32 million students have been onboarded across 221,229 schools in 21 states, as the ministry pushes to modernise education data management nationwide.

Figures published on the Nigeria Education Sector Renewal Initiative portal revealed that 57 of 60 Federal Universities, 35 of 36 Polytechnics and 27 of 28 colleges of education have uploaded their institutional data to the Federal Tertiary Institutions Governance Transparency Portal, which was launched in 2025 to track performance and funding metrics across federal tertiary Institutions using three years of data.

The ministry directed all federal Tertiary Institutions in 2025 to publish student enrolment figures, annual budgets, research grants, and intervention funds on their websites. That same year, the government set a minimum enrolment benchmark of 2,000 students, though the figure was later cut by 50% following pressure from institutional heads.

Minister of State for Education, Prof. Suwaiba Ahmad, warned at the 2025 Policy Meeting in Abuja that Institutions with student populations below 1,000 would no longer receive intervention funding from the Tertiary Education Trust Fund.

Ahmad questioned the logic of distributing equal resources to institutions regardless of enrollment size.

TETFund Executive Secretary, Arc. Sonny Echono confirmed in an interview with The Guardian that the policy was already active. "Allocations are now competitive, with interventions given to Institutions that can demonstrate their ability to use the funds effectively," he stated.

"Institutions must justify their funding needs by showing improvements in curriculum quality, student impact, research, and personnel quality," Echono added, noting that non compliant institutions would have funding withheld until they provided evidence of compliance.

Echono declined to name the Institutions currently affected by the policy despite repeated requests.