The Federal Government has announced plans to launch a national digital platform designed to address longstanding challenges associated with fragmented education data and strengthen planning, policymaking, and service delivery across Nigeria’s education sector.
The platform, known as the Digital National Education Management Information System (DNEMIS), will be officially unveiled on Wednesday alongside the launch of the Public DNEMIS Portal and the inauguration of DNEMIS State Implementation Teams.
Speaking during a pre-launch media briefing in Abuja, the National Project Coordinator of the Special Programmes Operations and Implementation Unit in the Office of the Minister of Education, Adebayo Onigbanjo, said the initiative was developed to tackle years of weak and inconsistent education data that have hindered effective governance in the sector.
He noted that education planning and administration had relied on fragmented systems, inconsistent reporting structures, and limited access to reliable, timely data, making it difficult to plan effectively, ensure accountability, and respond to emerging challenges.
According to him, the Federal Ministry of Education established the Nigeria Education Data Infrastructure (NEDI) as a national framework to coordinate, standardise, and strengthen education data management across all levels of education.
Onigbanjo described DNEMIS as the flagship component of NEDI, saying it represents a major milestone in Nigeria’s transition to a modern, integrated, and digitally enabled education management system.
He explained that the platform will provide timely, reliable, and accessible data to support planning, budgeting, policymaking, monitoring, and service delivery, while creating a unified national database containing information on learners, teachers, schools, and public investments in education.
He added that the reform underscores the Federal Government’s commitment to ensuring that education policies are driven by evidence rather than estimates, describing data as the engine of education reform.
Also speaking, the Special Assistant to the Minister of Education on Digital Communications and E-Learning, Mojoyin Adebajo, said DNEMIS was developed on the globally recognised District Health Information Software 2 (DHIS2) platform to modernise education administration and promote evidence-based decision-making.
She explained that the platform will digitise the Annual School Census, replacing largely manual data collection processes with an integrated digital system.
According to Adebajo, the platform will enable government to generate up-to-date information on schools, learners, teachers, and education infrastructure, leading to improved resource allocation and more effective monitoring of education programmes.
She also highlighted the Public DNEMIS Portal as a major feature of the initiative, noting that it will make selected official education data publicly accessible to researchers, journalists, policymakers, civil society organisations, development partners, and the general public for the first time.
Officials said the initiative received technical support from the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the University of Oslo.
The introduction of DNEMIS is expected to address long-standing gaps in Nigeria’s education data system by digitising data collection processes and providing real-time information to support ongoing education reforms under the Nigeria Education Sector Renewal Initiative.
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