The Federal Government has announced plans to regulate internet access for children below the age of 16 as part of measures to strengthen online child protection in Nigeria.
Minister of Education, Dr. Olatunji Alausa, disclosed this on Thursday at the launch of the Initiative for Zero-Rated Access to Educational Platforms and Content in Nigeria, where he also announced the removal of data costs for access to approved educational platforms for millions of learners in senior secondary schools and tertiary institutions.
Alausa said the zero-rating initiative was a major digital education intervention under President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda, aimed at ensuring that poverty, geography and the cost of connectivity no longer determine access to quality education.
According to him, the intervention goes beyond providing connectivity, as it is designed to “put learning within reach of children who may otherwise be unable to afford the data required to access it.”
He said a mobile phone, tablet or computer could become a classroom, library and gateway to opportunity when the cost of connectivity was no longer a barrier, particularly for learners from low-income households and communities with limited access to conventional educational infrastructure.
The minister said the government’s planned regulation of internet access for children under 16 was also necessary to protect them from growing threats in the digital environment.
He said the welfare and dignity of Nigerian children remained central to the government’s digital education agenda, adding that stakeholders must remain vigilant against cyberattacks and other forms of online harm.
“At some point, there would be regulated internet access for every child below the age of 16 years,” Alausa said, stressing the need for stronger measures to protect children in the digital space.
On the zero-rated educational platforms, the minister said the initiative formed part of the broader transformation of the education sector through the Nigeria Education Sector Renewal Initiative (NESRI), with data and digitalisation at its core.
He explained that through the Nigeria Education Data Infrastructure, Digital Nigeria Education Management Information System (DNEMIS) and Learner Identification Number, the ministry was strengthening the planning, management and delivery of education.
Alausa, however, said the ultimate test of digital transformation was not the infrastructure created but its ability to reach learners and improve the quality of education.
He described connectivity as increasingly essential to education, just as classrooms, textbooks and laboratories, and called for sustained collaboration among the Federal Ministry of Education, state governments, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), telecommunications operators, technology companies, development partners, educational institutions and teachers.
He said Nigeria must move beyond producing young people who merely consume technology to developing a generation capable of creating technology, innovating, solving problems and competing globally.
Alausa assured that the Federal Ministry of Education would continue to work with the NCC, state governments, telecommunications operators, educational institutions, development partners and other stakeholders to ensure that the initiative produced lasting benefits for Nigerian learners.
He said the Federal Government remained committed to breaking barriers to learning, expanding opportunities and harnessing technology to build an education system where geography would not determine a child’s future and poverty would not prevent access to knowledge.
In his goodwill message, the Chairman, House Committee on Communications, Hon. Peter Akpatason, commended the NCC for the initiative, describing the high cost of data as one of the major barriers to learning in the digital age.
Akpatason reaffirmed the commitment of the House of Representatives to policies and legislative measures that would leverage technology to bridge the education gap, particularly among learners in underserved and hard-to-reach communities.
Similarly, the Chairman, Senate Committee on Tertiary Institutions and TETFund, Senator Mohammed Muntari Dandutse, stressed the need to ensure that no Nigerian child was left behind in accessing knowledge and educational opportunities.
Dandutse commended the telecommunications industry for its contributions to education, including corporate social responsibility initiatives aimed at supporting children and expanding access to learning.
He said access to knowledge remained fundamental to Nigeria’s development and progress.