Institutional Fragmentation, Fiscal Opacity, and Corruption Risk in Nigeria's Federal Ministry of Education

Abstract

Nigeria's Federal Ministry of Education (FME) is constitutionally mandated to steer a sector that is central to the country's human capital development. However, it exhibits a persistent gap between statutory design and operational performance. This article draws on the Centre for Fiscal Transparency and Public Integrity's TACRA-012 sectoral assessment, official federal budget documents, transparency and Freedom of Information (FOI) compliance indices, Auditor-General reports, National Assembly proceedings, and investigative and scholarly literature to examine the transparency, accountability, and corruption-risk profile of the FME between 2021 and 2026. Employing principal-agent theory and agencification (New Public Management) theory as complementary analytical lenses, the study synthesises secondary quantitative indicators, including budgetary allocation trends, transparency-index scores, and procurement records, with documented case evidence of financial malfeasance, credential fraud, and legislative oversight failure. The findings show that nominal budgetary growth has coincided with a widening real funding gap against the UNESCO benchmark, that fragmentation across twenty-one semi-autonomous parastatals diffuses accountability even where headquarters-level audit compliance appears comparatively strong, and that Freedom of Information and open-procurement reforms have not translated into operational transparency at agency level. The analysis further identifies a double-agency dynamic in which legislative oversight bodies, themselves compromised by rent-seeking behaviour, undermine the accountability mechanisms they are constitutionally charged with enforcing. The study contributes an integrated theoretical account of how agencification, weak information disclosure, and civic-space contraction jointly reproduce corruption risk within a federating, resource-constrained education bureaucracy, and offers empirically grounded recommendations for policy and institutional reform.