Structural Determinants of Adult Illiteracy in Nigeria: A Political Economy Analysis

This study conducts a political economy analysis of the structural determinants of adult illiteracy in Nigeria, moving beyond individual-level explanations to examine how historical, political, economic, and institutional structures produce and reproduce mass adult illiteracy. Despite decades of adult literacy programming, Nigeria's adult literacy rate remains among the lowest in the world. Conventional explanations focusing on individual barriers, programme design, and facilitator quality fail to account for the persistence and scale of adult illiteracy in the face of substantial public and donor investment. This study develops a structural political economy framework drawing on historical institutionalism, dependency theory, and political economy of education to analyse the deep structural conditions that sustain illiteracy in Nigeria. Empirical evidence is generated through analysis of colonial education records, post-independence policy documents, national budget data from 1960 to 2023, and 40 elite interviews with senior policymakers, politicians, adult education scholars, and civil society leaders. Historical process tracing and discourse analysis are applied. Findings establish that colonial selective literacy provision, post-independence patronage-based education resource allocation, elite capture of education policy, and the political economy of oil revenue dependency collectively produce a structural equilibrium that is resistant to programme-level interventions. Illiteracy is sustained not by ignorance of solutions but by the structural interests that benefit from limited popular political participation. The study contributes an original structural political economy model of Nigerian adult illiteracy and recommends systemic political economy reforms as prerequisites for sustainable literacy improvement.

Keywords: political economy, adult illiteracy, structural determinants, Nigeria, education policy.