Inclusive education reform must not sacrifice reasoning, logic, or the nation’s capacity to compete in a data-driven world.
By Olarinre Salako & Tolu Omodara
Introduction
The Federal Government’s recent decision to remove Mathematics as a mandatory subject for admission into tertiary institutions for students in the Arts and Humanities—announced on October 15, 2025—has generated wide debate across the country. Intended to expand access for students who struggle with Mathematics, the policy may appear compassionate. Yet it risks eroding standards, weakening human-capital competitiveness, and reversing progress toward a knowledge economy.
Mathematics has never been a narrow academic hurdle. It is the ubiquitous foundation of logic, reasoning, and innovation—the language through which civilization organizes knowledge, constructs systems, and drives progress. To mistake it for an obstacle rather than a bridge is to misunderstand the essence of education itself.
This essay examines the policy’s implications for human-capital development and national competitiveness. It argues that while access and inclusion are essential, true reform must balance compassion with competence. Drawing on global models and Nigeria’s history, it calls for a multidisciplinary, equitable, future-focused curriculum that equips every learner—not exempts them—to thrive.
The Case for Mathematics and National Competitiveness
In today’s data-driven, AI-powered economy, numeracy is no longer optional—it is the grammar of innovation. From business analytics to legal reasoning, architecture to public policy, Mathematics underpins every field that demands logical precision and evidence-based decision-making.
According to UNESCO’s Global Education Monitoring Report (2024), countries that integrate Mathematics and computational reasoning throughout secondary education enjoy 30–40% higher productivity growth over time. Yet Nigeria’s numeracy proficiency remains below the sub-Saharan African average. WAEC data show that in 2023, less than 48% of candidates obtained credit-level passes in Mathematics—an indicator not of incapacity but of systemic weakness in teaching and support. Rural–urban disparities are stark: only 34% of candidates from public schools in rural areas attained credit level, compared to 56% in urban centers (WAEC 2023).
The appropriate response to that challenge should be capacity-building, not exemption. No serious economy can afford functionally innumerate secondary school graduates when innovation and governance increasingly depend on quantitative reasoning.
Equity, Access, and the Need for Smarter Reform
The government’s rationale is inclusivity—removing a barrier to tertiary access. However, inclusivity without intellectual foundation merely increases underprepared entrants.
Equity means equipping all learners to participate meaningfully, not shielding them from intellectual challenge. South Africa faced similar concerns but introduced Mathematical Literacy as an alternative pathway, ensuring practical numeracy and logical-reasoning skills for all disciplines—inclusion without dilution. Nigeria can emulate this.
If education is a ladder for social mobility, every rung must hold weight. Removing Mathematics risks producing secondary school leavers eloquent in expression but untrained in logic—a dangerous combination for governance, innovation, and civic reasoning. As ASUU noted in 2024, weak numeracy training stems more from inadequate teaching support than student inability.
Mathematics Beyond Numbers: Building Multidisciplinary Thinkers
Mathematics is structured thinking. It sharpens the lawyer’s reasoning, strengthens the historian’s evidence analysis, and refines the philosopher’s inquiry. Removing it from Arts education impoverishes disciplines that rely on coherent analysis and logical argumentation.
History shows great minds bridged numbers and narratives. Descartes, the father of modern philosophy, invented coordinate geometry; Leibniz, trained in law and philosophy, co-developed calculus. So did Russell and Fermat.
Nigeria’s tradition reflects similar synergy. Wole Soyinka, Africa’s first Nobel Laureate in Literature, excelled in sciences at Government College Ibadan before turning to literature and the arts. Chinua Achebe began in medicine before turning to English and storytelling—his scientific curiosity shaping the precision and structure of his prose.
In today’s world, the integration of Arts and quantitative reasoning has become even more vital. AI tools now assist journalists in real-time translation, historians in artifact classification, and lawyers in predictive legal analysis—applications grounded in mathematical algorithms, logic, and data. Removing Mathematics risks demotivating some students and closes pathways for others who may later switch from Arts to Business or Science.
Rethinking Nigeria’s Secondary and Tertiary Education Framework
The issue is not whether students should study Mathematics, but how Nigeria’s education system defines balanced learning. Rather than lowering standards for Arts students, we should raise expectations for all, ensuring cross-disciplinary literacy that produces adaptable, globally competitive citizens.
A forward-looking admission policy should therefore promote multidisciplinary readiness. In addition to compulsory credits in four or five core subjects and two languages (Mother Tongue and Lingua Franca), every student should demonstrate balanced literacy across fields: Science, Engineering, and Medical candidates should be required to pass at least one Business and one Arts subject; Business and Management candidates should be required to pass at least one Science and one Arts subject; and Arts and Humanities students should be required to pass at least one Science and one Business subject, and must achieve at least a D7 pass in Mathematics.
Such a model builds well-rounded citizens—scientifically aware artists, economically literate historians, ethically grounded engineers, and numerically competent lawyers. It ensures that secondary education becomes a launchpad for life, not merely a waiting room for tertiary institutions.
A truly educated citizen must combine numerical sense with civic understanding. A journalist questioning a minister on road project costs, or a legislator assessing a budget, relies as much on quantitative reasoning as on moral judgment.
Of course, such integration demands investment in teacher retraining and curriculum support. With UBEC’s 2025 allocation rising by 12%, pilot bridging programs could be implemented across six states, each in a geopolitical zone, to test this model before nationwide rollout. Each pilot could target a 20% improvement in numeracy proficiency within two academic years.
After all, under Nigeria’s Constitution, the minimum academic requirement to contest for the highest office in the land—the Presidency—is a secondary-school certificate (or its equivalent). If national leadership eligibility rests on that foundation, then secondary education must be robust enough to produce citizens capable of reasoned judgment, ethical decisions, and informed governance.
Ultimately, raising university admissions from “700,000 to one million,” as the Federal Government claims, matters far less than producing life-ready secondary school graduates who can think critically, create value, and contribute meaningfully to society.
Learning from Global Models
In the United States, secondary school students often combine Advanced Placement (AP) courses across disciplines: a future engineer might take AP World History and AP World Religion alongside AP Calculus and Physics, while a future historian studies AP Statistics or Computer Science to strengthen analytical reasoning. The result is intellectual agility—the ability to think across boundaries.
This broad foundation explains why innovators like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Mark Zuckerberg could leave university and still build world-changing enterprises. They were products of robust secondary-education systems that integrated Mathematics, Science, Arts, and practical subjects such as Woodwork, Welding, and Computer Programming—forming a bridge between theoretical learning and real-world creation.
Similarly, in China and India, secondary school education deliberately fuses Science, Technology, and Humanities. China’s national curriculum requires computational thinking and problem-solving from early years, while India’s National Education Policy 2020 emphasizes coding, financial literacy, ethics, and multidisciplinary projects beginning at middle school. The message is clear: no subject is dispensable; all are interconnected. Ghana’s reforms now follow a similar path, integrating science and enterprise for employability and innovation.
Federalism, Governance, and Policy Coordination
Beyond the classroom lies a question of governance. Should the Federal Government unilaterally set tertiary-admission standards without consulting states, universities, and professional councils?
In a true federation, education policy—especially at secondary and tertiary levels—should emerge from coordinated dialogue between the federal, state, and institutional actors. A central directive that overrides state authority and university autonomy risks both constitutional overreach and academic inconsistency. Sound education reform requires partnership, not proclamation.
The Way Forward: Raising Standards, Not Lowering Them
Education must challenge, not comfort. By removing Mathematics from the foundational requirements of the Arts and Humanities, Nigeria risks producing citizens articulate in speech but deficient in logic—eloquent yet unprepared for the analytical demands of modern life.
The path forward lies in reaffirming Mathematics as a unifying intellectual discipline—the grammar of logic, the language of technology, and the framework for leadership. Reforms must strengthen teaching quality, upgrade facilities, and support struggling learners through bridging programs.
Access and excellence are not mutually exclusive. A nation that aspires to compete globally must hold both in tension—compassion for learners, but also conviction about standards.
Conclusion
Nigeria stands at an educational crossroads. The removal of Mathematics for Arts students may appear progressive, but it is a reform that mistakes relief for progress and convenience for equity. To build a competitive, ethical, and innovative society, the country must teach every child not just to read and write, but to reason and compute.
Mathematics should remain a must for all—not as a gatekeeper, but as a gateway. Because within Mathematics lie the discipline, structure, and logic of leadership itself.
The Federal Ministry of Education, JAMB, and State Commissioners should convene a stakeholder roundtable before the 2026 admission cycle to review this policy in light of Nigeria’s long-term human-capital goals.
Acknowledgement & Disclaimer
The authors acknowledge members of the PTB4Nigeria in Diaspora Group who contributed to the wider debate on this subject via the group’s WhatsApp platform. The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the positions of their affiliated institutions.
About the Authors
Olarinre Salako, Ph.D., is the Chief Technology Officer of Emakemtos USA Inc – an energy, data, and AI consulting firm. He is a public-affairs analyst and essayist passionate about Nigerian nation-building and people-oriented policy reform. Dr. Salako is also a U.S. Department of Justice–accredited immigrants’ representative. He can be reached at olarinre.salako@gmail.com
Tolu Omodara is a policy, strategy, and communications expert, and Partner for Policy & Strategy at Armourgate Communications Consult. She is a global consultant in policy development and a dedicated nation builder committed to advancing inclusive governance and sustainable national growth. She can be reached at ifeoluomodara@gmail.com