For many years, the discussion surrounding early childhood education in Nigeria sounded like it does in most places with limited resources and conflicting priorities. The language of childhood, nurturing, and moral obligation surrounded it. Everyone agreed that it was necessary, but for some reason, roads, electricity, security, and oil always came in second. Before deciding to completely alter the course of events, the OMEP Nigeria chapter observed this for a considerable amount of time.
The cause was not what changed. The vocabulary was the problem. At some point, the advocates of the chapter began using the language of economists instead of the language of children. return on investment. human resources. readiness of the workforce in twenty years. Although it was a conscious decision, not everyone in the early childhood community initially agreed with it. Trading the coziness of a classroom photo for a spreadsheet projection is a bit unsettling. However, it turned out that ministers actually read the spreadsheet.
The change reflected global trends. Pre-primary education should receive at least 10% of national education budgets, according to UNESCO’s first global report on early childhood care, which also found that the trained teacher ratio in low-income countries was approximately 57%. These numbers were translated into a regional dialect by OMEP Nigeria. When one-third of Nigerian children are not developmentally on track by the time they enter primary school, how much does this cost the country in lost productivity? What does it cost when the rest of the educational system spends ten years trying to patch up a missing foundation?
The chapter’s comprehension of its audience was beneficial. Discussions about Nigerian policy, at least those that involve money, typically take place in rooms where there is a lot of talk about diversification, going beyond oil, and preparing the country’s youth for jobs that do not yet exist. OMEP Nigeria entered those rooms with a straightforward, nearly unyielding argument. A generation that missed the first five years of the knowledge economy cannot be built upon. Eventually, it was difficult to ignore the math.
Along the way, there were minor successes that hardly ever made headlines. Rarely, officials from the ministries of finance and education attended a workshop in Abuja. State commissioners asked, almost reluctantly, at a roundtable what a true pre-primary budget line would entail. Late in 2024, the OMEP World President visited, giving a local initiative international support. It wasn’t dramatic at all. The majority of it was the tedious, unglamorous work of draft after draft, meeting after meeting.
The way the framing started to proliferate is intriguing. After years of promoting ECCE on humanitarian grounds, civil society organizations began using the economic terminology as well. In places where every cause is shouting at once, this might be the only way for change to occur. You pick up the language of those in charge of the budget. Knowing that the moral argument was never the weak point of your case, you put it away for later.
The work of the chapter also fits into a larger movement that the international ECCE community has been advocating for since the Tashkent commitments, which demanded more robust legal frameworks and sufficient funding. Nigeria hasn’t arrived yet. Many kids are still enrolled in untrained classrooms in subpar facilities that don’t meet anyone’s standards. However, the discourse has shifted. These days, Treasury officials do not roll their eyes when discussing pre-primary investment.
It’s unclear if that results in ongoing funding. Seasons change in politics. Priorities change over time. However, once finance ministers begin using the argument themselves, it becomes difficult to remove it from the table. Ultimately, that might be the most subtle and long-lasting victory of the chapter.
