The Federal Government has invested N220bn in medical education and training over the past two years to strengthen Nigeria’s healthcare workforce and improve the quality of medical training, Minister of Education, Tunji Alausa, has said.
The minister also announced that the Federal Government would invest an additional N121bn in 2026 to further expand medical education infrastructure across the country.
Alausa disclosed this on Saturday while speaking at the maiden convocation ceremony of Miva Open University held at the Wole Soyinka Centre for Culture and the Creative Arts, Lagos.
According to him, the investments form part of the education sector reforms under President Bola Tinubu’s administration aimed at producing more healthcare professionals and addressing manpower shortages.
He said, “For medical school education alone, we spent N220bn on medical education and training just within the last two years,” Alausa said.
He explained that the funding covered infrastructure upgrades, construction of medical simulation laboratories, and rehabilitation of medical schools and student hostels.
“This investment was directed to include areas of infrastructure upgrade, building medical simulation labs and rehabilitating medical schools and hostels. This is one of the largest targeted investments in medical education in the history of Nigeria,” he added.
He explained that N72bn was allocated to 18 medical schools, with each institution receiving N4bn specifically for infrastructure development.
He added that each of the 18 institutions also received N1.5bn for hostel accommodation.
“We have also invested N40bn in building eight state-of-the-art medical simulation laboratories across the six geopolitical zones, each costing about N5bn,” he said.
Alausa disclosed that the government would sustain the investment in the coming year.
“Following up on our 2025 spending, in 2026, we’ll be spending another N121bn on another six medical schools, N10bn for hostels, N24bn to expand these medical schools, and N56bn to equip all these 21 new medical schools across the country,” he said.
“Our duty here is clear: to train more doctors, pharmacists, dentists and nurses, and ultimately strengthen our healthcare system through education.”
Speaking further, he reiterated the plan of the FG for a N250bn intervention for student accommodation across tertiary institutions.
According to him, 90 institutions will receive N2bn each to construct 500-bed hostels, while others will access about N4bn under a public-private partnership arrangement to build between 1,200 and 1,500 bed spaces.
“For the first time in decades in the history of our country, we’re directly addressing the severe shortage of student accommodation in tertiary institutions,” he said.
He also said the Nigerian Education Loan Fund had disbursed about N300bn within two years, providing access to higher education for more than 1.7 million students.
The minister also stated that the government has introduced a Student Venture Capital Grant Initiative, through which beneficiaries can access up to N50m in equity-free grants to support innovation, entrepreneurship and business incubation.
Addressing the graduating students, the minister urged them to embrace innovation and become agents of national transformation.
“Do not wait for the future to approach you. Create it. Do not wait for opportunities. Build them. Do not wait for change. Be the agents of change,” he said.
Read the full article here
