Nigeria Faces Renewed Push to Rebuild Early Childhood Development System as World Bank Mission Seeks Unified Action

By Iroyin Yoruba Television News Desk

Nigeria is facing a renewed push to strengthen the way government and development partners support children during the earliest years of life, with stakeholders calling for a more coordinated system that brings health, nutrition, education, social protection and child protection interventions closer together.

The latest development emerged on September 16, 2026, during a consultation involving civil society organisations and the media as part of the World Bank's Early Childhood Development Inception Mission in Nigeria.

Participants at the engagement said the country could not continue treating early childhood development as a collection of separate programmes operated by different institutions. Instead, they called for stronger coordination, evidence-based planning, sustained financing, transparent monitoring and greater participation by parents, caregivers and communities.

The discussions come as Nigeria's large population of young children continues to place substantial demands on the country's health, education and social-protection systems.

The World Bank's Task Team Leader for Early Childhood Development, Dr Ritgak Tilley-Gyado, said Nigeria has about 38 million children under five, highlighting the scale of the population that early-years policies are expected to serve.

For policymakers, the issue is not simply how many children are enrolled in preschool or how many receive medical services. Early childhood development covers a much broader period in which nutrition, health, responsive caregiving, protection and opportunities to learn interact with one another.

The September consultation therefore represents another step in an effort to move Nigeria from fragmented interventions toward a more integrated early-years system.

Why the first five years are receiving renewed attention

The first years of life are a period of rapid physical and neurological development.

During this stage, children acquire foundational abilities related to movement, communication, emotional regulation, social interaction and learning. Their experiences are influenced not only by what happens in a classroom or health facility but also by the conditions in their homes and communities.

A child may receive vaccinations but still face inadequate nutrition.

Another child may have access to food but lack stimulation, responsive interaction or opportunities for early learning.

A third child may have access to a primary health centre but live in an environment affected by poverty, insecurity or inadequate sanitation.

These overlapping circumstances mean that individual services cannot always address a child's needs in isolation.

This is one of the reasons the stakeholders participating in the World Bank mission emphasised coordination across sectors.

The Voice of Nigeria report on the September 16 consultation said participants identified health, education, nutrition, social protection and other critical sectors as areas that need to work together if children are to receive comprehensive support.

The underlying argument is that early childhood development should be approached as a connected system rather than a series of unrelated projects.

Nigeria's large under-five population creates a major policy challenge

The size of Nigeria's young population makes the issue particularly significant.

The World Bank's early-childhood team puts the number of Nigerian children under five at about 38 million.

UNICEF's 2025 early-childhood country profile, using its own demographic estimates, recorded about 33.8 million children under five. The difference between the estimates reflects differences in the underlying datasets and reference periods rather than a reason to treat one figure as a precise count of every Nigerian child in 2026.

What both figures demonstrate is the same broader reality: Nigeria has tens of millions of children in the age group covered by early-childhood policies.

That scale means that even a programme that reaches hundreds of thousands of children may represent only a fraction of the national population that requires services.

It also means that a national system cannot depend entirely on small, isolated projects.

Successful interventions need mechanisms that allow states and local governments to adapt and expand them while maintaining standards, monitoring results and ensuring that disadvantaged children are not left outside the system.

UNICEF data shows persistent development gaps

UNICEF's latest country profile for Nigeria reports that only about 48 per cent of children are developmentally on track according to the indicator used in the profile.

That does not mean that the remaining children have all been diagnosed with developmental disorders.

Rather, the indicator is designed to assess whether children are meeting age-appropriate developmental milestones in areas such as learning, behaviour and social-emotional development.

The same UNICEF profile identifies several conditions that can increase the risk of poor development.

It reports child poverty at 54 per cent, under-five stunting at 34 per cent, violent discipline at 86 per cent and inadequate supervision at 44 per cent.

The figures illustrate why early childhood development cannot be reduced to preschool education.

A child's ability to learn is affected by health and nutrition.

A child's physical development can be affected by diet.

A child's emotional development can be affected by the quality of caregiving and the environment in which the child grows.

And a family's ability to provide nurturing care can be affected by economic circumstances, access to services and social conditions.

The policy challenge is therefore multidimensional.

The rural-urban divide remains important

UNICEF's data also indicates a substantial difference in developmental risk between children living in rural and urban environments.

The 2025 country profile reports that 84 per cent of children in rural areas were in the category used to identify risk of poor development, compared with 39 per cent in urban areas.

The figures should not be interpreted as saying that every rural child is experiencing developmental difficulties.

Instead, they point to the concentration of risk factors in rural settings.

Distance from health facilities can make routine services harder to access.

Early-childhood education opportunities may be more limited.

Qualified personnel may be harder to retain.

Households can also face greater barriers in obtaining nutrition, sanitation, clean water and social-protection services.

This creates a challenge for national policy.

A programme that is designed around services available in urban centres may not work in the same way in a remote community.

For that reason, the integration agenda being discussed by stakeholders will require attention to how services are actually delivered at community level.

Early childhood development extends beyond education

One of the most important aspects of the current discussion is the recognition that early learning is only one part of child development.

A young child needs opportunities to interact, communicate, play and explore.

The child also needs adequate nutrition, protection from violence and neglect, access to healthcare and responsive adults who can recognise and respond to the child's needs.

WHO highlighted this approach in an August 30, 2026 report on Nigeria's efforts to incorporate early childhood development into primary healthcare.

At primary health centres, routine interactions such as immunisation and growth monitoring can provide opportunities for health workers to discuss activities such as talking, singing, playing and responding to children's cues with caregivers.

The WHO report described primary healthcare as one of the most consistent points of contact between government services and pregnant women, caregivers, infants and young children.

This creates an opportunity to provide more than treatment.

A routine visit can also become an opportunity to identify developmental concerns, provide advice and connect families with other services.

What Nigeria can gain from using primary healthcare differently

The idea of integrating early-childhood support into primary healthcare has a practical advantage.

Families already visit health facilities for services such as immunisation, antenatal care, postnatal care and growth monitoring.

If appropriately trained health workers can provide basic developmental guidance during these contacts, families do not necessarily have to make a separate trip to another institution for every aspect of child development.

The WHO report cited the experience of Edo State, where mothers attending a primary healthcare centre in Ugbor, Oredo Local Government Area, were exposed to guidance on simple interactions that can support early development.

The report also pointed to lessons from Osun State, where efforts have been made to strengthen developmental identification and referral within health services.

The approach does not mean that health workers should replace teachers, social workers or specialised developmental professionals.

Instead, it places primary healthcare within a broader network.

Health workers can identify potential concerns.

Parents can receive guidance.

Children who require further assessment can be referred.

Education and social services can address other needs.

The effectiveness of such a system depends heavily on whether those referral pathways actually function.

Nutrition remains a central part of the early-years equation

Nutrition is another area where early childhood policy intersects with health and development.

UNICEF identifies the first 1,000 days — from pregnancy through a child's second birthday — as a particularly important period for preventing undernutrition and its long-term consequences.

The organisation's Nigeria nutrition programme identifies malnutrition as a major child-health challenge and says nutrition services need to be integrated into primary healthcare and community systems.

Recent work in Plateau State provides an example of how financing mechanisms can be used to support preventive nutrition.

UNICEF reported on September 16 that the Plateau State Government invested N300 million in the Child Nutrition Fund in 2025, with the investment matched equally. The partnership unlocked nearly 6,000 cartons of small-quantity lipid-based nutrient supplements for vulnerable children.

The supplements are designed for children aged six to 23 months and provide vitamins and minerals that can help address nutritional gaps when normal diets do not provide sufficient nutrients.

The Plateau experience is important to the wider early-childhood conversation because it demonstrates that financing models can influence whether programmes reach families.

But nutrition programmes cannot operate independently from health services, household support and caregiver education.

That is precisely why the current national conversation is focusing on integration.

The first 1,000 days are not the whole early-childhood period

Although the first 1,000 days receive particular attention because of their importance to nutrition and early development, the World Bank mission is concerned with the wider early-years period.

Children continue to develop rapidly after their second birthday.

Language becomes more sophisticated.

Children acquire more complex social skills.

They begin structured learning.

They develop greater independence.

Their exposure to caregivers, peers and educational environments increasingly shapes their readiness for primary school.

This means an early-years system has to connect pregnancy and infancy interventions with services for toddlers and preschool-age children.

If services stop after immunisation or nutritional screening, families can encounter another gap just as children approach school age.

Likewise, if early learning begins without adequate attention to nutrition, health and protection, education providers may be dealing with challenges that originated elsewhere.

An integrated system is intended to reduce these gaps.

Education is one component of the wider system

UNICEF's Nigeria education data shows that access to early childhood education remains limited.

The organisation's education programme page reports that 35.6 per cent of children aged 36 to 59 months receive early childhood education.

The figure illustrates a substantial gap between the number of young children who could potentially benefit from structured early learning and the number participating in such programmes.

The challenge is not necessarily solved by simply constructing more classrooms.

Early childhood education requires appropriately trained personnel, safe learning environments, age-appropriate teaching materials and approaches suited to young children.

It also needs to connect with the transition into primary school.

A child who enters primary school without foundational language, numeracy, social and learning skills may face difficulties that become more complicated later.

For that reason, early learning needs to be viewed as part of a continuum rather than as a separate stage disconnected from the rest of education.

Why caregivers are central to the proposed approach

Parents and caregivers are often the people who spend the most time with young children.

That makes them central to any national early-years strategy.

The World Bank consultation emphasised the importance of including parents and caregivers in the broader system.

Open Government Partnership National Coordinator Dr Gloria Ahmed said coordination should involve government institutions, development partners, civil society organisations, communities, parents and caregivers.

This has implications for how programmes are designed.

Families need information they can understand and use.

Health advice has to be practical.

Nutrition recommendations must take account of household circumstances.

Early-learning guidance needs to recognise what caregivers can realistically do at home.

Parents also need ways to provide feedback when services do not meet their needs.

Without this feedback, policymakers may measure whether a service exists without adequately measuring whether families can actually use it.

Civil society's proposed role

Civil society organisations were specifically included in the September consultation.

Their role, according to the discussion, can include monitoring service delivery, tracking spending, raising public awareness and representing the concerns of parents and children.

This is connected to the Open Government Partnership's emphasis on transparency and accountability.

For early-childhood programmes, accountability can operate at several levels.

At national level, policymakers need to know how much money is allocated and how it is distributed.

At state and local levels, authorities need information about whether facilities have staff, supplies and functioning referral systems.

At community level, parents need to know where services are available and what they are entitled to receive.

Civil society organisations can help bridge some of these information gaps.

However, monitoring alone does not provide services.

The ultimate purpose of transparency is to make it easier to identify problems and correct them.

Evidence must guide where money goes

Another message from the consultation was the need for evidence-based planning.

Dr Ahmed said effective early-childhood development requires adequate financing, effective implementation and transparent monitoring.

This becomes especially important when resources are limited.

Governments need to know which interventions produce measurable improvements and which populations are being missed.

Data can help identify geographical disparities.

It can show whether rural children are receiving services at the same rate as urban children.

It can reveal differences in access among children with disabilities.

It can identify whether health facilities are successfully referring children who need additional support.

And it can help policymakers determine whether funding is reaching the services for which it was intended.

The World Bank's Nigeria Development Update published in April 2026 devoted a major section to early childhood development, describing persistent gaps in nutrition, health, early learning and caregiving and arguing for an integrated package of services from pregnancy through age five.

The latest consultation therefore builds on an existing body of evidence rather than starting the discussion from zero.

The World Bank's wider early-years agenda

The World Bank has been examining how Nigeria can improve human capital outcomes by strengthening investments in the early years.

Its September 2026 forum on Nigeria's early-years agenda brought together government representatives, development partners, researchers, creative-industry leaders, technology companies and investors.

The forum examined questions involving behavioural science, entertainment media, digital technologies, artificial intelligence, evidence and innovative financing.

That work introduces another dimension to the early-childhood conversation: how information reaches families.

Parents increasingly consume information through television, social media, mobile phones and digital platforms.

This creates opportunities for carefully designed educational content.

But it also creates a need for evidence-based messaging so that families receive information that is accurate and appropriate for young children.

The World Bank has therefore been exploring whether entertainment and technology can complement traditional public-sector services.

The potential role of technology

Technology can potentially help governments track whether services are reaching households.

Digital systems can connect information from health, nutrition and learning programmes.

They can also help policymakers identify gaps that may not be visible when each ministry maintains separate records.

Nigeria's early-years digital initiative already describes a direction toward integrated data.

The Nigeria Early Years platform says the country has developed federated state nutrition scorecards and an integrated data hub bringing together health, nutrition and learning indicators. It also identifies plans for scaling an integrated early-years package across all 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory in 2026.

The proposed use of real-time household-level dashboards from 2026 onward would represent another step toward more detailed monitoring.

However, digital systems are only as reliable as the data entering them.

If frontline workers do not have the equipment, training or connectivity needed to report information accurately, dashboards can give decision-makers an incomplete picture.

Technology therefore has to be accompanied by workforce development and quality assurance.

Children with disabilities must not be left outside the system

The World Bank's current early-childhood mission is also expected to prioritise disability inclusion.

The September 16 consultation specifically identified disability inclusion, environmental safeguards and protection of vulnerable populations as areas of attention.

This matters because children with disabilities can encounter additional barriers when accessing health, education and social services.

A child may need early identification of a developmental difficulty.

Another may need assistive equipment.

Some children may require adaptations in classrooms or specialised referral services.

If systems operate independently, parents can be forced to navigate several institutions before finding the appropriate support.

An integrated system could make those pathways clearer.

It could also allow disability considerations to be incorporated into planning from the beginning rather than treated as an additional programme later.

The importance of early identification

Early identification is another major component of effective early-childhood systems.

Not every developmental difference represents a disorder, and children do not all develop at exactly the same speed.

However, persistent difficulties may require assessment or additional support.

Primary healthcare facilities, early-childhood centres and caregivers can all play a role in noticing concerns.

The key issue is what happens next.

Identification without referral does not solve the problem.

Referral without accessible services does not solve it either.

And specialised services that are too distant or expensive may remain out of reach for many families.

The WHO's recent work in Nigeria emphasises stronger identification and referral systems as part of integrating developmental support into health services.

This is another reason coordination matters.

A system has to connect the first point of observation with the institution capable of providing the necessary support.

Financing will determine whether reforms last

One of the biggest questions surrounding Nigeria's early-childhood agenda is how programmes will be financed over the long term.

Short-term donor-supported projects can demonstrate what is possible.

But a national system serving tens of millions of children requires sustainable domestic financing.

The World Bank's April 2026 Nigeria Development Update argued that Nigeria's improving macroeconomic conditions create an opportunity to strengthen human-capital investment while recognising that poverty remains high and household incomes have not fully recovered.

This creates a difficult policy balance.

Governments must fund immediate needs while also investing in programmes whose benefits may become most visible years later.

Early childhood development is particularly affected by this problem because many of its benefits appear over a long period.

Improved nutrition can affect school readiness.

Better early learning can influence later educational attainment.

Healthier childhood development can affect future productivity.

The time between the investment and the full benefit can therefore be much longer than a political or budget cycle.

States will be critical to implementation

Nigeria's federal government can establish national standards and policy direction, but much of the practical delivery of services occurs at state and local levels.

Health facilities are distributed across communities.

Schools are managed through multiple levels of government.

Nutrition programmes require frontline delivery.

Social protection systems depend on identification and outreach.

This makes state-level participation essential.

In August 2026, the Nigeria Governors' Forum reaffirmed the commitment of all 36 state governors to making early childhood development a strategic priority in human-capital development. The commitment was announced during a North-West zonal consultative workshop organised with the World Bank and other partners.

The commitment creates a platform for state-level action, but implementation will ultimately depend on budgets, institutions, workforce capacity and monitoring.

Moving from separate programmes to one system

The central theme emerging from the September 16 consultation is therefore integration.

Nigeria already has programmes addressing individual aspects of childhood.

There are immunisation programmes.

There are nutrition interventions.

There are early-learning initiatives.

There are social-protection programmes.

There are child-protection mechanisms.

There are disability-inclusion efforts.

The problem is that families do not experience childhood in separate administrative categories.

A mother does not see her child's health, nutrition and learning as completely independent matters.

A child experiencing malnutrition may also struggle with learning.

A child with a developmental difficulty may need healthcare and educational support.

A family facing severe economic pressure may need social protection to maintain adequate nutrition and keep children engaged with services.

A child living in an insecure environment may face interruptions in education and healthcare.

This is why the stakeholders are calling for a system capable of connecting these interventions.

The role of data in measuring progress

A stronger system will also require better measurement.

Governments need to know not just how many children received a service but what happened after receiving it.

For example, counting the number of children screened for developmental difficulties is useful, but it is not enough.

Policymakers also need to know how many children identified with concerns were referred, how many completed assessments and how many received appropriate support.

Similarly, measuring the number of health facilities supplied with nutrition commodities does not automatically show whether children received the commodities when needed.

Data must therefore follow the pathway from inputs to services and ultimately to outcomes.

UNICEF's Nigeria annual report has highlighted efforts to improve nutrition data and integrate indicators into national health-information systems. In 2025, 15 nutrition indicators were added to DHIS2, with the system expected to provide a unified source of nutrition information in 2026.

Such systems can strengthen planning if the underlying data remains accurate and regularly updated.

A long-term human-capital question

The early-childhood debate is ultimately about more than childhood services.

It is also about the future workforce and human capital of Nigeria.

Children entering school healthy, adequately nourished and prepared to learn have different starting conditions from children who have experienced prolonged deprivation.

That difference can accumulate over time.

The World Bank's Nigeria Development Update therefore frames early-childhood investment as part of a wider strategy for improving productivity and expanding economic opportunity.

WHO has similarly described investment in nurturing care as both a health priority and an economic investment, citing estimates of returns of between US$6 and US$17 for every US$1 invested.

Such estimates are global development evidence rather than a guarantee of a specific financial return for every Nigerian programme.

Their significance lies in illustrating why international development institutions treat early childhood as an investment rather than simply an expenditure.

What the current World Bank mission could mean

The September 16 consultation is part of an inception process, meaning the work is still concerned with understanding the landscape, identifying gaps and developing the basis for future interventions.

That distinction is important.

The consultation itself does not mean that all identified reforms have already been implemented nationwide.

Instead, it provides an opportunity for government, development partners, civil society and other stakeholders to identify what needs to change.

The World Bank's involvement also means that the process can draw on international evidence while being adapted to Nigeria's institutional and demographic realities.

The challenge will be converting recommendations into practical systems that operate in states and communities.

What success would look like

If Nigeria's early-years agenda becomes more integrated, success would not necessarily be measured by one national statistic.

It would be visible through several connected improvements.

A pregnant woman could receive health and nutrition support and be linked to information about newborn care.

A new mother could access immunisation and growth monitoring while receiving practical guidance on responsive caregiving.

A child with a possible developmental concern could be identified earlier and referred through a functioning pathway.

A toddler could receive nutritional support while caregivers receive advice on feeding and stimulation.

A preschool child could have access to quality early learning.

A child with a disability could enter the system without having to navigate multiple disconnected institutions.

And policymakers could use reliable data to identify where these services are not reaching children.

Such a system would require cooperation across ministries and levels of government.

It would also require sustained financing.

The next challenge is implementation

The message from the September 16 consultation is clear: stakeholders want Nigeria's approach to early childhood development to become more coordinated, evidence-based and accountable.

The country already has significant programmes and partnerships addressing different parts of the problem.

The next challenge is connecting them.

The scale is considerable. Tens of millions of Nigerian children are within the early-years population, while UNICEF data continues to show substantial developmental, nutritional and educational gaps.

The proposed response is not to create another isolated programme but to build stronger links between services that already exist and improve the areas where major gaps remain.

That includes stronger coordination between health and education authorities, better links between nutrition and primary healthcare, improved referral mechanisms, greater support for caregivers, disability inclusion, transparent financing and stronger data systems.

It also means ensuring that rural and vulnerable communities are not left behind as new systems are developed.

The consultation in Abuja therefore represents another stage in a much larger national discussion.

Nigeria's early-years challenge cannot be solved by one ministry, one agency, one donor or one programme.

The children involved will experience the results of today's decisions across their health, education and development.

For that reason, the strongest message from the September 16 engagement is not simply the need for more programmes.

It is the need for a system in which the programmes, institutions, professionals, caregivers and communities work together.

As Nigeria considers how to strengthen its human capital, the first years of a child's life are becoming an increasingly important part of that conversation.

The task now is to turn the call for unified action into measurable changes in how services are planned, financed, delivered and monitored across the country.