When Zakari Memunat wanted to enroll her children in school, she chose the Al-Nasir Islamic Primary School in Lagos State. Her reason was that the school runs Qur’anic studies alongside the Nigerian curriculum, with prayers built into the day.

She describes secular-only schools as “noisy” spaces filled with competing messages and says enrolling her children in one would be a gamble with their religious identity.

“My husband and I made that decision even before we had our first child. We knew they needed to be in a space where it would not be all about academics, but where they also grow spiritually in the process,” she says. “Obviously, our children will spend more time in school than they will at home, except for holidays. So we want them to have a solid foundation in Islam.”

Mrs. Memunat’s concerns reflect factors researchers have identified in parents’ school choices in parts of Nigeria, including a school’s integration of religious values into the wider academic programme. 

In a 2025 study on school choice and learning outcomes in Bauchi and Kaduna states, researchers Andreea Dogar, Danish Shakeel, and James Tooley say: “Families favor factors such as religious environment and moral values, surprisingly more so for boys than girls.” 

Religion-infused education in Nigeria takes different forms, from privately run Christian and Islamic schools to mission-founded schools now managed through arrangements involving religious organisations and state governments.

For some students already attending such schools, the religious environment is part of the appeal.

“The morning worship settles my mind,” says 15-year-old Samuel Mayowa, a prefect at Amazing Grace School, Lagos. “In public schools, my friends tell me the teachers sometimes don’t show up. Here, the teachers say they are doing ‘God’s work,’ so they are always in class.”

For some parents, choosing a school is about more than academic performance. It is also about who they want their children to become and which values they want reinforced outside the home.

But as families seek schools aligned with their beliefs, the choice raises a wider question: what happens when education becomes increasingly organised around religious identity?

Old roots

Before the government took over many mission schools in the 1970s, Christian missions had played a central role in the development of formal Western education in Nigeria, establishing schools that educated generations of the country’s political and professional elites.

The takeover was driven by several factors, including efforts to expand access, standardise education, strengthen government oversight, and promote national integration in the years after the 1967-1970 Civil War. 

In a 2024 study titled, “Political Bargaining, Religion, and Educational Development: The Nigerian Experience from the Takeover of Schools from Christian Missions,” researchers Chidi Ezegwu and Dozie Okoye found that the takeover increased enrollment while educational quality declined over time.

Decades later, dissatisfaction with educational standards sparked campaigns for some mission schools to be returned to their original owners. Following Nigeria’s return to democracy in 1999, several states began transferring the management of some of the schools back to religious organisations.

For some parents, the renewed presence of mission-run and other faith-based schools has provided another opportunity to combine academic instructions with religious formation. For parents like Frank Ayila in Abuja, choosing faith-based schools is a way of protecting their children from social and ideological changes they believe threaten their religious values.

“When you look at our society, you can see that things are falling apart, and it is our children who are most affected. The secular schools we have now place a premium only on the sciences and the arts. Some even go as far as telling students that God doesn’t exist—that everything is strictly about science and technology,” she says.

“Because I don’t want my children to adopt such an ideology, I feel it is safer to register them in faith-based institutions, no matter how costly it is.”

But what serves as a private solution for a family can create a public dilemma for a nation. 

Amina Abubakar, an education consultant in Abuja, worries that the proliferation of faith-based schools could deepen religious divisions by reducing opportunities for children of different faiths to learn alongside one another.

“When you have a ‘marketisation’ of education based on religious identity, you create silos,” Abubakar says. “If Christian children only go to Christian schools and Muslims to Islamic ones, where do they learn to be Nigerians together?”

Abubakar also worries about what she describes as “academic friction” in some faith-based institutions, where she says religious teachings can sometimes come into tension with scientific inquiry and critical thinking.

Mrs. Menumat, however, sees no contradiction between religious formation and academic learning. 

“I want a school where the teachers don’t just teach maths but model the teachings of Allah,” Memunat says.