Alausa Sets 70% Bar for Textbooks, Rejects Substandard Books, Receives first national textbook assessment and ranking report By Beauty Akporido Aroh
The Minister of Education, Dr. Maruf Tunji Alausa, CON, has drawn a firm line against substandard textbooks, setting 70 per cent as the minimum benchmark for instructional materials to qualify for the national textbook ranking.
Alausa made the declaration in Abuja while receiving the report and ranked list from Nigeria’s first national textbook assessment and ranking exercise, saying the move was part of the Federal Government’s broader effort to strengthen quality assurance in education under President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda.
The Minister said the assessment became necessary following the introduction of the revised national curriculum in September 2025, with the Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council (NERDC) developing a standardised assessment toolkit benchmarked against international best practices.
He explained that curriculum alignment accounted for 51 per cent of the assessment, while other criteria covered language and style, instructional design, technical features, social and cultural compliance, and gender sensitivity.
According to him, the 70 per cent threshold was deliberately established to ensure that only textbooks meeting an acceptable quality standard make the national ranking, while publishers whose materials fall below the benchmark would have an opportunity to correct identified deficiencies and resubmit.
The exercise, however, exposed wide disparities in the quality of textbooks submitted, with some materials scoring as low as 25 per cent.
Reacting to the findings, Alausa said the results had exposed a problem that could no longer be tolerated in the Nigerian education system.
“Some of the books being used in our schools, primary schools, junior secondary schools and senior secondary schools are trash. Some of these books are scoring 25% or lower. Is this the way our children should be educated? If this happened with the government, it will not happen with this government,” he said.
The Minister, however, extended what he described as an “olive branch” to publishers, urging the Nigerian Publishers Association and affected publishers to study the assessment results, correct identified weaknesses, align their materials with the revised curriculum and resubmit them.
Alausa also commended publishers who participated in the exercise despite what he described as “pressure and blackmail”, stressing that the objective was to improve the quality of instructional materials rather than exclude publishers from the education system.
He disclosed that the national textbook assessment would be conducted in three cycles to cover all levels of the basic and senior secondary school curriculum.
The first cycle covers Primary 1 and 4, JSS 1 and SS 1; the second covers Primary 2 and 5, JSS 2 and SS 2; while the third covers Primary 3 and 6, JSS 3 and SS 3.
The Minister further announced that the national curriculum would henceforth undergo review every three years to keep pace with emerging educational, technological and societal needs.
Providing further insight into the assessment, the Executive Secretary of NERDC, Prof. Salisu Shehu, said the exercise was conducted in line with the Council’s statutory mandate to develop, review and promote quality educational materials for the Nigerian education system.
Shehu said subject specialists, education experts and NERDC personnel participated in the exercise using approved criteria and a standard scoring framework.
He added that the process incorporated peer review and collective expert judgment rather than relying on the assessment of a single official, ensuring that the results were based on documented professional evaluations.
The NERDC chief stressed that the 70 per cent benchmark is the minimum standard for ranking, meaning that textbooks scoring below the threshold would not qualify for inclusion in the national ranked list.
He said the discovery of textbooks scoring as low as 25 per cent further demonstrated the importance of establishing a transparent and evidence-based national system for assessing instructional materials.
Alausa said the exercise would ultimately serve as a quality-control mechanism, giving publishers clear evidence of areas requiring improvement while ensuring that only textbooks meeting national standards reach Nigerian classrooms.
He assured publishers that the Federal Government would continue to engage those willing to meet the benchmark, while those already meeting the standard would be expected to sustain and continuously improve their quality.
The Minister stressed that the exercise was not merely about ranking textbooks but about protecting the quality of learning, insisting that every instructional material placed before a Nigerian child must be accurate, curriculum-aligned and fit for purpose.
He said the Federal Government would not compromise on quality, because every Nigerian child deserves instructional materials worthy of the education they are being prepared to receive.
