The state of infrastructure in Nigeria’s public schools and higher institutions during the administration of the late President Muhammadu Buhari, who passed away on July 13, 2025, remains a complex narrative of effort, neglect, and systemic failure. While the Buhari administration awarded multimillion-naira contracts aimed at improving educational infrastructure, the reality on the ground often contradicted official reports. Many primary, secondary, and tertiary institutions across the country remained in disrepair, with students learning in environments that hardly supported quality education.
Throughout Buhari’s eight years in office, from 2015 to 2023, public schools across Nigeria struggled with dilapidated buildings, lack of basic amenities, and overcrowded classrooms. Investigative reports, particularly from The ICIR (International Centre for Investigative Reporting), exposed harrowing conditions in several schools where children sat on bare floors, studied in unroofed classrooms, and lacked access to functioning libraries, laboratories, or toilets. These conditions painted a grim picture of public education infrastructure under his administration.
In the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) , the seat of Nigeria’s government, many public schools faced years of neglect despite being located in the nation’s capital. In communities such as Sadaba and Kundu in the Kwali Area Council, storms had blown off the roofs of primary schools in 2014 and again in 2020. Sadly, by the time of Buhari’s exit from office in 2023 and even after his death in 2025, these schools were still unrepaired. Pupils in primaries one to three were forced to learn under the open sky, making education almost impossible during the rainy season.
In addition to the FCT, the situation in rural and suburban areas across various states was even more alarming. Reports from states like Zamfara, Katsina, Enugu, and Ondo revealed schools where students studied in classrooms with cracked walls, broken windows, and no chairs or desks. In many cases, toilets were non-existent, exposing children to health risks due to open defecation. Despite government promises and budget allocations, these basic infrastructural deficits persisted throughout Buhari’s tenure.
One of Buhari’s notable policies was the construction of new educational institutions. Between 2015 and 2023, his administration established 11 new federal universities, 10 new polytechnics, and 9 colleges of education. While this expansion of higher institutions was commendable, critics argued that the government failed to adequately fund and maintain existing public schools, leaving many to rot. New schools were built, but old schools were left to decay.
In 2022, The ICIR published a special report highlighting that despite several awarded contracts for school renovations and infrastructural upgrades, many projects were either abandoned or poorly executed. Corruption, bureaucratic inefficiencies, and lack of oversight plagued these contracts. As a result, the funds meant to improve classrooms, laboratories, libraries, and hostels were often diverted or mismanaged.
The Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), under Buhari’s administration, disbursed billions of naira to state governments for primary and secondary school development. However, many state governments failed to match the federal counterpart funding, resulting in stalled or incomplete projects. This left children across Nigeria trapped in learning environments that were hazardous, demoralizing, and unconducive to academic success.
Higher institutions were not spared. Public universities, polytechnics, and colleges of education struggled with outdated facilities, inadequate lecture halls, overcrowded hostels, and decaying laboratories. Strikes by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) repeatedly highlighted the infrastructural collapse in Nigeria’s tertiary institutions. Lecturers lamented poor learning environments, while students were forced to endure substandard facilities, often without access to research equipment or modern libraries.
The Buhari government initiated school feeding programs and social investment projects to boost school enrollment, especially in northern Nigeria. While this temporarily increased attendance in some areas, poor infrastructure and lack of facilities made it difficult to sustain the gains. In some cases, children who came to school for free meals found no classrooms to sit in, no teachers to guide them, and no materials to learn from.
One of the most glaring contradictions of the Buhari administration was the simultaneous expansion of tertiary education while neglecting the foundation primary and secondary education infrastructure. Experts argue that without fixing the basics, building new universities and polytechnics will only produce graduates who have endured a system plagued by mediocrity from the ground up.
The sad reality is that while Nigeria’s education budget under Buhari fluctuated between 4.95% and 7.93% of the national budget far below the UNESCO-recommended 15–20% the little that was allocated often failed to translate into real improvements. The impact of this underfunding is visible today in the broken chairs, collapsing roofs, and overcrowded classes that still characterize many Nigerian schools.
As the nation mourns the late President Muhammadu Buhari, the conversation around his legacy in education remains deeply polarized. While his administration is credited for establishing new institutions and initiating programs to improve access, the chronic neglect of infrastructure in existing schools and the poor learning environment continue to haunt the system. The late president’s era leaves behind a mixed legacy, one that expanded Nigeria’s educational map but failed to fix the crumbling structures already in place.
