Mbah Seeks National Emergency in Education, Launches Enugu Education Policy

• As UNICEF, UNESCO, others, hail governor’s giant strides in education

Governor Peter Mbah of Enugu State has called for a radical boost in education spending and the declaration of a national emergency in Nigeria’s education sector to guarantee the country’s development and future prosperity.

Mbah made the call in his keynote address at the 2026 Enugu Education Summit and the unveiling of Enugu Education Policy, held at the International Conference Centre, Enugu, on Wednesday.

He said the audacity needed to fund a quantum leap in the nation’s education sector would flow from an appreciation of its necessity.

United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF); United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO); British Council; and other global and national education stakeholders hailed the governor for making education the centrepiece of his administration’s development agenda.

Speaking at the summit, themed, “Transforming Education for the Future: Leadership, Innovation, Partnership, Financing and Sustainable Reform,” Mbah said Nigeria had reached the point where education must be treated as a national emergency.

He stated, “I believe Nigeria has reached the point where we must treat education as a national emergency.

“Not rhetorically, but in our budgets, our teacher development, our infrastructure, the standards we demand, and the partnerships we build between the federal government, states, development agencies, communities and the private sector.

“Our future prosperity depends upon the knowledge and capabilities of our people, after all. And that means every Nigerian child, wherever they are born, must have access to an education capable of preparing them for the world they are entering.”

Mbah added, “Whatever education costs us today, ignorance will cost us far more tomorrow.

“Once we understand that, the question changes. It is no longer: Can we afford to make or fund this quantum leap? It becomes: What will happen to us if we do not?”

He stated that no nation could truly eradicate poverty or achieve sustainable development without addressing the root causes of poverty, including lack of knowledge, know-how, and the capabilities through which people created wealth, found employment, built enterprises, participated intelligently in society, and determined the direction of their own lives.

He stated, “If we fix the road today but fail to educate the child who will maintain it tomorrow, how sustainable was our investment in the road?

“If we build factories but lack the skilled people capable of running increasingly sophisticated production systems, where is our own Industrial Revolution going to come from?

“And if millions of young people reach adulthood without the knowledge and capabilities to participate meaningfully in the economy, what exactly do we imagine the social cost of that will be?”

Mbah said, “So, if Nigeria is to become a creation economy rather than a consumption economy, then we must equip our young people not simply to use what the world creates, but to research, design, engineer and create what the world needs.

“The point here is straightforward: transformation cannot survive on aspiration alone. Eventually, somebody has to pay for it.”

Mbah cited his administration’s decision to invest 33 per cent of the state’s annual budget in education for three consecutive years, building, among other facilities, 268 Smart Green Schools, and more than 7,000 classrooms equipped with 21st-century learning tools.

He said,,“If Enugu’s experience offers one lesson, it is that when the scale of the challenge demands a quantum leap, audacity is not a luxury. It is a necessity.

“When we came into government, we had to look at that reality very closely. We could have repaired the existing system. We could have renovated some classrooms, supplied some desks, put computers into a few schools and called it reform.”

He added, “But we had to ask ourselves a more difficult question: would it be enough? Would an education system essentially designed for the world of 40 years ago prepare an Enugu child for the world of 20 years from now? Our answer was ‘No’.

“What we have attempted in Enugu is, therefore, not a collection of education projects. It is a change in the entire development model – a quantum leap.”

Unveiling the Enugu State Education Policy, Mbah explained that his administration was already implementing the policy, saying it would serve as the benchmark for the state’s education sector over the next six to 10 years.

“This is also a strong indication that nothing in our entire policy is knee-jerk – everything is a product of careful thought,” he stated.

Meanwhile, represented by UNICEF Chief of Field Office, Enugu, Mrs. Juliet Chilewe, the agency’s Country Representative to Nigeria, Wafaa Saeed, said Enugu State had demonstrated a strong commitment to UNICEF’s vision of education transformation through investments in Smart Green Schools, teachers, foundational learning, digital literacy, and experiential learning.

She said UNICEF was proud to have supported the development of Enugu State Education Sector Plan 2026–2035.

In its remarks, UNESCO commended the governor for investing heavily in education, citing the 268 Smart Green Schools, the Centre for Experiential Learning and Innovation (CELI), and the plan to recruit more than 6,000 teachers.

Represented by the Officer-in-Charge of the Education Sector, Mr. Adeyemi Oladeji, the UNESCO Representative to Nigeria, Dr Isaias Barreto da Rosa, said, “I congratulate Governor Peter Ndubuisi Mbah for his leadership and for making education the centerpiece of Enugu’s development agenda.

“The establishment of 268 Smart Green Schools is a landmark achievement that shows schools can be digitally enabled and environmentally responsible at the same time, preparing learners for a changing world while advancing the climate-conscious education that UNESCO promotes globally.”

British Council, represented by its Director on English and School Education, Nigeria, Fwanshihsak Daniel, expressed pride in the Mbah administration’s achievements in the education sector, saying it would continue to partner with the government to ensure that the good policies yield better outcomes in classrooms.

“We commend Enugu State’s bold ambitions of an education system in which every learner develops strong foundations, creativity and the necessary skills to the society and the economy,” Daniel stated.

Commissioner for Education, Enugu State, Professor Ndubueze Mbah, while thanking the governor and stakeholders for their support, assured that Enugu had begun a journey of irreversible educational progress.

The high point of the event was the official unveiling of Enugu State Education Policy and a tour of the Smart Green School Innovation Studio, set up by students of the state’s Smart Green Schools.