Juliet Oladele, Reporting
IN a country where an estimated 10.5 million primary-school-age children are out of school and only one in four children aged 7 to 14 can read a simple sentence or handle basic numeracy, a leading energy company is arguing that Nigeria’s most damaging infrastructure deficit is not its roads, power supply or ports, but its weak education system.
Seplat Energy Plc, through its joint venture with NNPC, is advocating for a fundamental shift in how corporate Nigeria approaches education – moving beyond the old model of one-off donations and ceremonial scholarships towards a systemic, value-chain intervention.
The company argues that treating education as a peripheral social concern is no longer tenable for an economy seeking to industrialise, digitalise and compete on the global stage . “If a system is broken at several points, meaningful intervention cannot occur at only one,” the company stated, outlining a model that simultaneously addresses teacher development, student motivation, school infrastructure, scholarships and entrepreneurship support.
The Seplat Model: A Multi-Pronged Attack on Learning Poverty
The NNPC/Seplat Energy Joint Venture’s education strategy offers a compelling blueprint because it treats education as a system, not a photo opportunity.
Its initiatives span the entire learning pipeline, demonstrating that corporate investment can be both strategic and transformative.
Central to this approach is the Seplat Teachers Empowerment Programme (STEP), which has trained 1,334 educators to date, including 1,232 secondary-school teachers and 102 Ministry of Education staff.
The programme equips teachers with digital teaching skills, leadership training and income diversification strategies, recognising that “a scholarship may transform one student, but a strong teacher can influence hundreds over time.”
Complementing this is the PEARLs Quiz, an annual academic competition for secondary schools in Delta, Edo and Imo States, with more states to follow. Since its inception in 2012, the programme has impacted 61,035 teachers and students.
Over N101 million in prize funding has supported school projects such as libraries, classroom blocks and buses.
In 2026, the competition expanded to include a STEAM Innovation segment, rewarding schools for developing functional electronic vehicles, AI career guidance tools and other practical solutions.
Strategic Investment, Not Benevolence
Seplat’s commitment extends to widening access to tertiary education through its undergraduate scholarship scheme.
Significantly, 34% of the 780 scholarships awarded have gone to students from host communities, reflecting a balance between national reach and local responsibility.
“The logic is simple,” the company explained. “Every serious sector in Nigeria depends on education for its future workforce: energy needs engineers and technicians; healthcare needs skilled professionals; agriculture and manufacturing need technical competence; and the digital economy needs software, design and analytical talent.
Poor education today becomes poor productivity tomorrow. Private-sector participation in education should therefore be recognised not as optional benevolence, but as enlightened self-interest and national economic strategy.”
A Call for Public-Private Partnership
The policy lesson is clear. For government, the task is to mobilise private-sector capital and execution capacity through intentional partnerships with federal and state education authorities.
For companies, the challenge is to adopt structured, measurable interventions capable of transforming learning outcomes rather than relying on isolated acts of philanthropy.
As one observer noted, Seplat Energy’s model is worthy of attention because it goes beyond the one-off gesture. It links teachers to students, students to facilites, facilities to opportunity, and opportunity to long-term development.
In a country where the future workforce is being shaped today, this is more than corporate social responsibility – it is a strategic imperative for national prosperity.
