By With a population exceeding 240 million, Nigeria possesses an enormous reservoir of human potential. Across the country, children and young adults possess exceptional abilities in reasoning, creativity, leadership, and practical problem-solving. Some are recognized early under the right conditions, while others complete years of schooling without anyone discovering what they could achieve.

Nigeria has rightly prioritized expanding access to education, improving literacy, and supporting children outside the school system. These priorities remain essential; however, improving education for all learners should coexist with opportunities for those with exceptional potential.

Gifted education identifies these learners and nurtures their abilities through differentiated instruction, enrichment, and mentorship. Developing these learners can also be a long-term investment in Nigeria’s scientific, technological, entrepreneurial, and intellectual capacity.

Nigeria will not start from zero in this regard. The National Policy on Education includes gifted and talented learners within its special-needs provisions and calls for their early identification, appropriate placement, and continued development from early childhood through tertiary education. In practice, however, publicly supported specialist provision remains concentrated at the secondary level. The Federal Government Academy, Suleja, provides specialized education for gifted and talented secondary-level students, with admission through the National Gifted Examination, administered by the National Examinations Council (NECO). The Federal Capital Territory also operates a secondary school in Gwagwalada for the gifted.

At the state level, Lagos State’s 2023 Policy on Education provides for annual screening of gifted and talented learners and the establishment of a specialized academy. These existing institutions and policies demonstrate Nigeria’s commitment to gifted education and provide a foundation for expansion.

However, their reach remains limited relative to the country’s student population. According to the Universal Basic Education Commission’s 2022 data, 3,960,590 pupils were enrolled in Primary Six alone in public schools across Nigeria. Even if only 1% had exceptional potential, that would be nearly 40,000 children in a single year group, with a new cohort of potentially gifted learners reaching the end of primary school every year. Yet the Federal Government Academy, Suleja, admitted approximately 200 students in 2021. Although these figures do not account for other educational opportunities, they illustrate the scale of Nigeria’s challenge in identifying and developing tens of thousands of potentially gifted learners beyond the limited places available in specialist schools. Public schools should play a critical role in addressing this gap, particularly for children from low-income and underserved communities.

Systematic identification within these public schools could help ensure that access to gifted education depends on exceptional potential rather than family wealth or personal connections. In addition to limited capacity and unequal access, Nigeria lacks clear pathways for identifying exceptional abilities beyond academic achievement. Françoys Gagné’s updated Differentiated Model of Giftedness and Talent identifies six natural-ability domains: intellectual, creative, social, perceptual, muscular, and motor control. A child may demonstrate exceptional speed, agility, or coordination in sports while struggling academically, while another may demonstrate exceptional creativity or leadership without achieving top examination scores. A stronger national approach would proactively screen learners across these domains from pre-primary through tertiary education, rather than depending solely on academic results or parents recognizing their children’s abilities. Identification should combine age-appropriate assessments, teacher observations, and practical activities, with opportunities for reassessment as learners mature. This approach could help uncover exceptional potential that conventional examinations overlook, particularly among children in underserved communities.

Identification, however, is only the beginning. A child identified as gifted at age six may require more than a decade of sustained educational support, including specialized instruction, scholarships, mentorship, and advanced opportunities. Financing that sustained development presents a significant challenge. Government funding, domestic and international philanthropy, corporate contributions, tuition, and earned-income activities all support education, but each has limitations when relied upon independently. Public budgets face competing priorities; grants and corporate initiatives may be restrictive, unpredictable, and time-limited, while tuition can exclude learners from economically disadvantaged families. The challenge, therefore, is to combine these complementary sources and secure sustained support without compromising equitable access.

The Nigerian diaspora presents an opportunity to strengthen this financing mix. Nigerians abroad already support education through alumni associations, philanthropy, and professional networks.

World Bank figures show that Nigeria received approximately $19.5 billion in remittances in 2023, demonstrating the scale of its global diaspora’s financial connections, although these transfers largely support private and family needs. According to the Migration Policy Institute, approximately 905,000 people of Nigerian birth or ancestry lived in the United States in 2023, with significant populations in Texas, Maryland, and California. Beyond funding, diaspora communities offer professional expertise, research connections, and institutional networks that could attract further investment and expand opportunities for gifted learners.

Turning diaspora potential into sustained financing requires more than appeals to generosity. A sense of responsibility to Nigeria may inspire initial contributions, but an entrepreneurial approach could encourage continued participation by offering products and services that people value. Social enterprises and businesses serving the diaspora could dedicate a disclosed share of revenue or profits to gifted education, enabling paying customers to support learners whose families cannot afford specialized opportunities. Digital platforms could facilitate transactions, stakeholder engagement, and transparent reporting of financial and aggregate educational outcomes. Pilot programmes would assess customer demand, repeat patronage, and the net revenue available for education after operating costs. Nigeria already has a precedent for linking business earnings to education. MTN Nigeria commits up to 1% of its annual profit after tax to its foundation, whose scholarship programme had awarded approximately 14,700 scholarships to students in public tertiary institutions by 2025.

A Sustainable Diaspora Financing Framework could combine these commercial contributions with voluntary donations and multi-year commitments from diaspora members, associations, businesses, and foundations in Nigeria and abroad. An independently governed and audited fund could house these contributions to cover the recurring costs of scholarships, specialized instruction, and program maintenance over the many years required to develop gifted learners. A retained portion of the fund’s unrestricted income could act as reserves against funding interruptions, while designated contributions could gradually build an endowment for future needs. The government would provide policy leadership, institutional access and oversight, while universities and educational organizations would contribute expertise and program implementation. The framework would finance programs rather than donor-selected individuals, with transparent selection criteria and decisions about learner identification and development entrusted to qualified educators and relevant specialists. Strict data protection and child-safeguarding standards would govern the collection and use of learners’ information, interactions with children, and the disclosure of educational outcomes.

While the proposed financing framework requires further testing, existing partnerships in Oyo State illustrate the kind of gifted-identification and development programs it could help sustain and expand. Working with state education authorities, Quest Schools—a social enterprise—runs extracurricular programs open to all graduating pupils in 50 public schools (35 primary and 15 secondary) to identify high-potential learners. Since 2018, approximately 15,000 students have participated, and about 200 have received scholarships to continue their development in Quest-operated schools. Rather than waiting for families to seek out specialized opportunities, this approach identifies exceptional potential in the schools that children already attend.

One organization in one state can show what is possible, but addressing the needs of tens of thousands of potentially gifted learners each year requires a coordinated national response. A practical next step would be for the Federal Ministry of Education to establish a National Gifted Education Research and Policy Center, initially housed in its Educational Planning, Research and Development Department. Through a public-private partnership with state education authorities, universities, educational organizations, foundations, businesses, and diaspora contributors, the center could develop national identification standards, pilot the financing framework, and provide research and implementation guidance that states can adapt to local contexts.

Pilots could run in phases across selected institutions, comparing approaches such as in-school enrichment and scholarship placements, and evaluating each through actual funding patterns, operating costs, and learner outcomes. The first phase could focus on enrolled learners, with community-based identification of out-of-school children introduced later. Furthermore, an annual national gifted and talented education conference could bring policymakers, researchers, educators, and partners together to share findings and strengthen implementation.

Community-service learning should also form part of gifted-education curricula, encouraging learners to apply their abilities to local challenges and develop a lasting commitment to society. Whether their careers unfold in Nigeria or abroad, their education should foster a responsibility to contribute to national development.

Nigeria does not need to choose between strengthening education for all and developing opportunities for exceptional learners. By mobilizing additional private resources alongside existing public capacity, carefully designed partnerships could advance both priorities without diverting funding from foundational education.

The ambition is not merely to admit more children to specialized schools, but to recognize potential at all educational stages and nurture it over time. Discovering exceptional ability matters. Sustaining its development and connecting it to service is the greater national opportunity.

Omotosho, a doctoral student at the Johns Hopkins University School of Education and founder of Quest Schools, writes via [email protected].