Minister of Education Dr. Maruf Tunji Alausa, has engaged the KPMG Advisory Services to carry out a sweeping institutional review of the National Board for Technical Education (NBTE) with the stated aim of recasting the agency as a “high-performing regulator and strategic enabler” of technical and vocational education and training (TVET).
The move forms part of the Federal Government’s broader efforts to align skills policy with President Bola Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda.
In a statement by his Special Adviser on Media and Publicity Ikharo Attah, the Minister said the review will examine NBTE’s governance, organisational design, operating processes and workforce capabilities and produce a roadmap for a new operating model.
NewsQuest reports that Education Ministry wants NBTE to bolster oversight of polytechnics, monotechnics and other technical institutions, tighten quality assurance and deepen industry links so that graduates leave with marketable skills.
“The success of Nigeria’s TVET reforms depends not only on curriculum and infrastructure, but also on the strength and effectiveness of the institutions responsible for implementation and oversight,” Dr. Alausa said in a statement.
He described the exercise as more than administrative change: a strategic intervention to make NBTE modern, agile and fit for purpose.
KPMG’s team, led in Nigeria by Oluwole Adelokun, said its assessment pointed to both structural weaknesses and substantial upside.
The firm highlighted two stark statistics that roughly 93% of Nigeria’s workforce is in the informal economy and about 12% of young people are neither in education, employment nor training.
KPMG also confirmed that Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) graduates perform comparatively well on employability metrics—second only to Singapore among countries it assessed—signalling untapped potential if institutional and curriculum gaps are closed.
KPMG found that more than half of assessed curricula across engineering, science, arts and design were outdated. It singled out funding shortfalls and a five-year curriculum-review cycle as constraints on responsiveness to industry needs.
The statement said recent reforms of agricultural curricula were held up as an example of progress by the firm. Those curriculum efforts are already under way.
With a ₦1 billion intervention from the Tertiary Education Trust Fund, Minister Alausa said the Education ministry has produced 27 new National Occupational Standards and updated four others, bringing the total to 31.
The standards are intended to knit together training pathways from artisan-level qualifications through Ordinary and Higher National Diplomas.
“Technical and vocational education is fundamentally about skills. Everything within the polytechnic system is ultimately geared towards developing competencies that create pathways to employment, entrepreneurship and productivity,” Alausa said.
The Minister stressed that a retooled NBTE would strengthen accountability, accelerate curriculum modernisation and expand collaboration with industry—measures essential to producing the workforce Tinubu’s administration has prioritised for industrialisation and economic growth.
