FG to Provide Free Educational Data Access to Nigerian Students From October 1
In a bid to ease the hurdles to children’s education, the Federal Government has announced that Nigerian students will have free access to approved educational websites and digital learning platforms from October 1, 2026.
The Zero-Rated Access Initiative will give participating mobile network operators 100MB of free data per day to eligible learners to access approved educational platforms.
The Minister of Education, Dr Tunji Alausa, said the programme would first be extended to senior secondary and tertiary students before it would be rolled out to other categories of learners.
The programme is designed to help children from low-income families who might not be able to afford internet data to access online lessons, digital libraries and other educational materials, the government said.
Platforms in the scheme will be approved by the Federal Ministry of Education and the Nigerian Communications Commission. These should encompass learning management systems, digital libraries, educational repositories and teacher-development platforms.
In addition to the free-data programme, Alausa announced plans to implement measures to control internet access for children under 16. The proposed regulation would aim to make sure that the content available online to children is safe, credible and age-appropriate, he said.
More information about the upcoming child internet protection measures will be released in the next few days.
The initiative will engage the participating mobile operators such as MTN Nigeria, Airtel Nigeria and Globacom.
