Critical Discourse Analysis of Vocational Education Policy Texts in Nigeria from 2004 to 2024

This study conducted a critical discourse analysis (CDA) of major vocational education policy texts produced in Nigeria between 2004 and 2024, systematically examining how policy language constructs social identities, power relations, and ideological assumptions about vocational education, learners, and labor. While vocational education policy has been extensively analyzed for its programmatic content, the ideological and discursive dimensions of Nigerian policy texts remain largely unexamined. The study employed Fairclough's three-dimensional CDA framework, analyzing ten major policy documents including National Policy on Education revisions, TVET reform white papers, and Federal Ministry of Education strategic plans at textual, discursive practice, and sociocultural levels. Findings revealed three dominant ideological formations: a human capital ideology that reduces vocational learners to economic instruments, a deficit discourse that frames vocational education as a remedial pathway for academically weak students, and a dependency discourse that legitimizes uncritical adoption of Western and donor-driven TVET models. Counter-discourses privileging indigenous knowledge, community development, and learner agency were present but marginalized. The study recommends a fundamental discursive reorientation of Nigerian vocational education policy toward dignity-affirming, development-relevant, and contextually grounded framings. This study contributes an original methodology and findings to the critical education policy scholarship in sub-Saharan Africa. Keywords: critical discourse analysis, vocational education policy, Nigeria, ideology, policy texts.