Key Points

• Nigeria’s economic hardship drives parents to pull children from private schools, with public school classes now exceeding 100 pupils per classroom.
• Children as young as seven are lining up at Lagos factories for daily-wage jobs as families struggle to meet basic needs.
• Private school enrollment is collapsing under fee pressure, while an estimated five million Nigerian students have dropped out of school entirely.

The school fees came due and the money was not there. It is a conversation happening in kitchens and sitting rooms across Nigeria right now, and the outcome is rarely good.

Families that once stretched to afford private school tuition are pulling their children out. Some are moving them to public schools already bursting at the seams. Others are sending them to work.

The trigger is well known. Nigeria’s removal of fuel subsidies set off a chain reaction of rising transportation costs, surging living expenses and an inflation rate that has squeezed the middle class and hammered the poor. Education, which was already expensive, has become a luxury many can no longer justify.

“Tuition fees have increased, even for those families that could afford them before, while living expenses have surged four-fold,” said Alake Ayo, an education manager. “An estimated five million Nigerian students have dropped out of school overall.”

That number is not an abstraction. It shows up in classrooms, at factory gates and on street corners.

Children Filling the Gaps Left by Economic Failure

A parent in Okokomaiko, Lagos, who asked not to be named, described what she had been watching unfold in her neighbourhood. Children as young as seven and eight, she said, have left school and lined up outside a local pure water factory looking for work. Some parents, she added, are accompanying their children to plead for jobs on their behalf.

“If you visit Okokomaiko, you’ll see many children lining up, seeking jobs at a popular pure water company,” she said. “These jobs provide daily pay, which, according to them, can help meet immediate needs.”

The daily pay fills an immediate gap. What it costs, in lost schooling and foreclosed futures, is harder to calculate but not hard to imagine.

Nigeria already carries one of the heaviest out-of-school burdens in the world. UNICEF estimates that 20.2 million Nigerian children are currently out of school, the highest number globally. The economic conditions of 2025 and 2026 are pushing that figure in the wrong direction.

Private Schools Emptying, Public Schools Overwhelmed

The shift is visible in enrollment data at both ends of the system. Private schools are losing students. Public schools are gaining far more than they can handle.

A teacher at a public school in the Iba area of Lagos said that midway through the second term, parents were still arriving to enroll their children. “In a class, pupils now number over a hundred,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

That is not a classroom. That is a holding area.

Chris John, an observer of the private education sector, said the economics of fee-dependent schools are deteriorating rapidly. “Private schools depend on fees from families that can pay. However, enrollment is plummeting because of higher taxes and the broader economic challenges. This elitist system is beginning to collapse under these pressures,” he said.

Not every private school is shrinking. A teacher at a school in Igbo-Elerin, Lagos said their enrollment has actually grown, because the owner reduced fees to below N30,000 per term and allowed parents to pay in instalments. Affordability, it turns out, is the variable that matters most.

Mrs. Blessing Uchenna, a primary school teacher in Ikotun, Lagos, said several parents did not return their children for the second term. Three siblings from one family stopped coming entirely. “When we inquired,” she said, “their parents cited economic downturn as the reason.”

Teachers, Fees and a System Under Strain

In Enugu State, the crisis has reached technical education. Alex Onyia, an education advocate, said that government-run technical colleges have set fees as high as N300,000 per term, making them inaccessible to the low-income families who arguably need vocational training most.

“The government allocated N30 billion for feeding school children, but fewer than 10 schools are actually benefiting from this funding,” Onyia said. “A lot of what is happening in the education system just doesn’t make sense anymore.”

School administrators are caught in the middle. Miss Akwa Ugo, a school administrator, said it is increasingly difficult to keep institutions running. Students are leaving. Parents are constantly disputing fees. And teachers, even those receiving timely salaries, are quitting without notice.

“It is not rewarding at all right now,” she said.

Stanley Uzo, a social commentator, put the contradiction in plain terms. “Schools charge exorbitant fees ranging from N200,000 to N500,000 per child, but they pay teachers very little. Teachers are building the future while being compensated as if they belong to the past.”

The system, in other words, is not just failing students. It is failing the people paid to teach them.

Research has consistently shown that stable parental employment enables families to afford school fees and materials, while economic hardship leads directly to children being withdrawn from school to contribute to family income. Nigeria in 2026 is providing a live demonstration of that finding, at scale, in real time.

What happens to a generation of children who entered the workforce at seven years old instead of a classroom is a question Nigeria will be answering for decades.