The Political Economy of Adult Literacy Investment in Nigeria: Budget, Power, and Marginalisation

This study conducted a political economy analysis of adult literacy investment in Nigeria from 2000 to 2023, examining how budgetary allocations, institutional power dynamics, and structural marginalisation interact to sustain chronic adult literacy underfunding. Adult literacy consistently occupies the lowest budget priority within Nigeria's education sector, a pattern that represents not merely a technical resource allocation inefficiency but a politically produced outcome rooted in structural marginalisation of adult illiterates as a politically invisible constituency. The study employed a critical political economy methodology combining quantitative analysis of 23 years of federal and state adult education budget data across all 36 states, institutional ethnographic research involving 44 interviews with budget negotiators and education officials, and discourse analysis of legislative deliberation records on adult education appropriations. Econometric analysis confirmed that adult literacy budget shares were significantly negatively correlated with political competition intensity at the state level, suggesting that adult literacy investment functions as a patronage resource more than a developmental commitment. Institutional ethnographic data revealed that adult literacy advocates within the education bureaucracy operated with minimal political backing and faced systematic marginalisation in multi-sector budget negotiations. The study develops an original Political Marginalisation of Adult Education theoretical framework that explains persistent underfunding through power asymmetries rather than fiscal constraints alone. This framework generates a novel evidence-based advocacy strategy for adult literacy investment that targets the political conditions maintaining marginalisation rather than simply making technical cases for increased expenditure. Keywords: political economy, adult literacy investment, budget analysis, marginalisation, Nigeria.