By Prof. Chiwuike Uba, PhD 

When a family’s poverty becomes a barrier to an examination, the failure is bigger than a school levy.

How much does it cost to put the promise of free education out of a child’s reach? In one public primary school in Abuja, the answer was ₦3,000.

During a visit by a team from Dynamic Development Initiative for Social Growth to conduct health sensitisation, the head teacher raised a troubling concern. Could the team help pay Parent-Teacher Association (PTA) levies for pupils whose families could not afford them? Some children, the team was told, risked being barred from sitting their end-of-term examinations because their parents had not paid.

Three thousand naira. That was the reported amount standing between some children and an examination.

What are we teaching these children? That education is their right, but exercising it requires payment? That they should work hard, attend classes and prepare, only to discover that poverty can overrule their preparation at the school gate? And what are we teaching their parents? That government may promise free basic education, but when the school needs money, the family must find it, whether it can afford to or not?

The ₦3,000 is small only to someone who does not have to find it. For a household struggling to pay for food, transport and rent, that sum can decide which obligation is met and which is neglected. For a child, the price is heavier: humiliation, anxiety, lost learning and the fear of being singled out because the family is poor.

*A right on paper, a bill at the school gate*
Nigeria does not lack declarations about education. Our laws recognise it, our policies celebrate it, and our politicians call it the foundation of national development. Yet the real test of a policy is not how it sounds at a conference. It is whether an ordinary child can benefit from it without being priced out.

Section 2(1) of the Universal Basic Education Act of 2004 places a duty on every government in Nigeria to provide free, compulsory basic education. In October 2025, the Federal High Court in Lagos reportedly held that section 11(2) binds the Federal Government, the states and the FCT to deliver it, yet noted that whether a state draws down federal matching grants remains discretionary. Section 15 of the Child’s Rights Act 2003 goes further: every child has the right to free, compulsory and universal basic education, government must provide it, and a parent who keeps a child out of school commits an offence. The law punishes the parent for absence, yet a school can exclude the child over a levy the family cannot pay. A binding duty, alongside optional access to federal co-funding, is a right resting on a fragile floor. Law does not pay for examination papers, teaching materials, classroom repairs or sanitation.

PTAs can mobilise extra resources, but voluntary contributions, freely given and properly accounted for, are not the same as compulsory payments that decide whether a child may sit an examination. Asking parents to help fund an improvement is one thing. Threatening a child with exclusion because the family cannot pay is another, and it raises hard questions about fairness, children’s rights and the implementation of government policy.

*The levy that returns under another name*
So why do schools collect money at all? Because they need it. Teachers cannot teach effectively without basic materials. Examinations must be prepared and administered. Buildings deteriorate, toilets need maintenance, and learning materials do not appear by magic, however often politicians invoke the word “free”. Not every school collecting money is acting out of greed, and no head teacher can run a school without reliable funding.

The national picture explains the squeeze. The 2026 federal proposal allocated about 6.1 per cent of the budget to education, against the 15 to 20 per cent that UNESCO recommends. When responsibility outruns funding, pressure flows downhill: from government to school administrators, from administrators to parents, and finally from parents to children. The poorest families have the least capacity to absorb it.

That is why abolishing a levy without fixing the financing may produce a good announcement but a weak solution. A school can be told not to collect money while still expected to meet costs for which no funding has arrived. The demand vanishes from the noticeboard, only to reappear under another name. We must resist the comforting illusion that banning charges alone makes education free. If government has not built a credible financing arrangement that lets schools obey the prohibition, who is expected to pay the bills? The answer cannot permanently be the parent with the least money, the teacher with the least authority over public finances, or the child with the least power to challenge an unfair decision.

*Money that exists but never arrives*
Here is the uncomfortable twist: the problem is not only that money is short. Some of it sits unclaimed. Under the Universal Basic Education framework, states must provide 50 per cent counterpart funding to access federal matching grants. As of March 2026, unaccessed UBEC funds stood at ₦97.88 billion, with ₦68.1 billion recorded in 2025 alone. For scale, that sum would cover a ₦3,000 levy for more than 32 million children. Those grants fund infrastructure and learning materials, not running costs, so this is a comparison of scale, not a ready-made fix.

Who should receive these funds is itself contested. In a separate October 2025 judgment, the Federal High Court in Abuja reportedly declared parts of the UBE Act unconstitutional and ordered that local governments access basic education funds directly, rather than through State Universal Basic Education Boards. The Court of Appeal has since reportedly stayed that ruling pending appeal, so the channel for these funds remains unsettled.

The stakes are national. UNICEF estimates that about 18 million Nigerian children are out of school, 10.2 million of them of primary age. A child shamed out of an examination is a child at risk of joining them.

Serious policy therefore follows the money from appropriation to delivery. Government must budget adequately. The money must be released on time. Schools must actually receive it. It must be spent transparently and for its intended purpose. And the public must be able to see whether the spending improved learning and removed financial barriers. Each step is separate, and success at one guarantees nothing at the others. A budget allocation is not a cash release. A release is not proof that a school received its share.

Where financing is inadequate, the shortfall should be visible to legislators and the public. It should not be quietly transferred to families through compulsory charges that punish the poorest children.

*The child must not become the shock absorber*
What does exclusion do to a child? It does more than interrupt a term. The child may feel ashamed before classmates, fear being blamed at home, or begin to associate education with rejection and financial inadequacy.

We should not exaggerate what happened in Abuja beyond what has been reported, and we do not know the outcome for each child. But the possibility that a pupil could face exclusion over an unpaid levy is enough to trigger a serious inquiry. Did the school have an approved examination policy? Was the levy compulsory? What was it meant to finance? Had the school received its operational funding? Were parents told what was voluntary and what was prohibited? What did the education authority do when the concern was raised?

The aim is not to condemn teachers without evidence, nor to excuse improper practice because schools are short of money. It is to establish the facts, protect the children and fix the conditions that allowed the problem. Where an individual acted improperly, action should follow. Where a school lacked essential resources, government must close the gap. Where policy is unclear, the responsible authority must clarify it. Where oversight failed, monitoring must be strengthened. Blaming only the person closest to the child may be administratively convenient, but it will not solve the problem.

Nor should the burden fall on charities that happen to visit a school. The team was there for health sensitisation, not to become an emergency education-financing mechanism. Development partners and civil society can raise the alarm, offer technical assistance, track public spending and hold institutions accountable. But they should complement public responsibility, not become the unofficial emergency fund for children whose schools lack the basics. A charitable intervention may help a child today. A functioning public financing system prevents the same problem tomorrow. If every school needs a visiting organisation to rescue pupils from a levy, the country does not have a sustainable solution. It has a recurring emergency.

*What Kwara has started*
Is there a better way? One state has begun to answer the question of who pays. In October 2025, Kwara scrapped PTA levies in public primary schools and approved annual grants to cover the running costs of 1,717 public schools. It also approved free English and Mathematics textbooks.

The principle is sound: if schools must not depend on compulsory parental levies, they need another source of operating funds.

But announcements are not results. Do the grants arrive in full and on time? Can schools meet their essential needs? Have compulsory collections actually stopped? Do pupils face fewer barriers? What funding formula is used? How are needier schools treated? Who verifies expenditure? What happens when a grant is delayed? How do parents report illegal charges? Kwara deserves study, not applause, until those answers are public.

*Four reforms that would make free education real*
If Nigeria is serious, concern must give way to action. Begin with predictable operating grants. Federal, state and FCT authorities should settle who is responsible for what, and every public school should receive a grant on a published schedule. The formula should reflect enrolment, location, infrastructure needs and the circumstances of disadvantaged pupils. Where releases are late, government should explain why and publish a time-bound plan, because school administrators cannot deliver services indefinitely on the strength of promises. The cost should be known before it is debated: every ₦1,000 per pupil per year costs ₦1 billion for each million pupils, so a published costing is the first test of seriousness. The FCT, where the incident occurred, should publish what its primary schools are entitled to receive and how the ban on compulsory charges is monitored.

Then make school finances visible. Every public school should display, in a format parents understand, the grants it should receive, the amounts actually received and how they were spent. School-based management committees and PTA representatives should join in oversight, with safeguards against conflicts of interest. Education authorities should publish consolidated data on the share of schools funded on schedule and the value of delayed releases. Where funding depends on applications or counterpart contributions, as with UBEC matching grants, they should publish eligibility rules, outstanding requirements, approvals, releases and reasons for delay. No parent should need advanced accounting skills to learn whether a school received its money.

Next, build a complaints and protection mechanism that works. Parents need a safe way to report compulsory charges that keep children from lessons, examinations or essential services. Each complaint should receive a reference number, an acknowledgement and a response within a defined period. Authorities should investigate credible allegations, protect complainants from retaliation and publish anonymised summaries of cases received and resolved. Schools, too, need clear instructions on prohibited charges and the consequences of excluding pupils whose parents cannot pay. A mechanism that collects reports but never resolves them is little more than a suggestion box.

Finally, measure what matters to children. Government should publish a simple public scorecard showing the proportion of schools receiving grants on time, the amounts allocated and actually disbursed, the number of complaints about compulsory charges, the average time taken to resolve them, and verified cases of children denied lessons, examinations or results for non-payment, disaggregated to show whether poorer communities face greater barriers. A scorecard changes the question government must answer. Instead of asking only how much was budgeted, citizens could ask whether the money reached schools, was used properly and benefited children. That is the difference between reporting expenditure and demonstrating results.

*Conclusion: The question government must answer*
Nigeria’s debate about free education should begin with the child, not the slogan. A child should not need to understand fiscal federalism, budget execution or counterpart funding to know whether an examination is within reach. Government must understand those questions, and ensure that the promises made in law are backed by money, systems, oversight and consequences for non-compliance.

The Abuja incident deserves more than sympathy. It should prompt the authorities to establish what happened, determine whether any child was actually excluded, clarify the rules and ensure that affected pupils are supported. These actions are achievable. They demand political commitment, administrative discipline and a willingness to measure outcomes rather than celebrate announcements.

Free education is not free because government calls it free. It becomes free when families are not compelled to pay unaffordable charges for services the law promises, and when schools have enough public resources to provide them. Three thousand naira may look insignificant in a government spreadsheet. To a struggling household, it is a hard sum to find. To a child facing exclusion from an examination, it can become a barrier to participation and dignity. The real price is not ₦3,000. It is the erosion of trust in public education, the unequal burden on poor families, and the risk that children learn, far too early, that rights belong more securely to those who can afford to pay.

The test of free education is not what government promises at the podium. It is what happens at the school gate.

No child should pay the price of government’s failure to make free education work.